NHK has been working toward HDTV live production of marathon races. At present we do not have enough equipment for HDTV mobile transmission, so the first step is HDTV production using current SDTV technologies. We have been conducting HDTV live production of marathon races in this way since NHK started digital broadcasting via broadcast satellite in December 2000. However, our goal is to achieve complete HDTV production of the marathon race using HDTV mobile transmission system. For this purpose we have just developed an HDTV UHF digital link using QAM-OFDM modulation scheme. We have conducted many HDTV mobile transmission tests and obtained good results. And we made complete HDTV live production of marathon races in 2002.
