Planet Earth II is about to get way better — but there’s a catch

For the last several weeks, viewers have been captivated by David Attenborough's wonderful Planet Earth II.

BBC has announced today that they'll be using their iPlayer to broadcast four minutes of Planet Earth II footage to viewers in 4K Ultra High Definition. 4K is a definition that shows picture and video in four times as many pixels as the 1080 pixels per frame needed for typical HD. Of course, BBC iPlayer is only available for viewers in the UK, so Irish people who want to see the footage — which will show Planet Earth II in more colours, greater sharpness and brighter highlights — will have to download a VPN in order to get around the restrictions. Until now, UHD had been the preserve of broadcasters such as Sky, Netflix and BT  — and can be found on certain YouTube videos. With state broadcasters getting in on the action, this could make for quite an advancement for television in general. Hopefully this paves the way for future events such as Planet Earth II to be originally broadcast straight to TV in 4K.