By Stuart Thomson

Portuguese service provider NOS has carried out what it describes as the first international holographic transmission over 5G in the country.

The experiment saw the director of Hollywood movie Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, transported in hologram from London to Lisbon, to participate in a press meeting about the release of the film in Portugal, distributed by NOS Audiovisuais.

The holographic operation involved the creation on London of a stage set made up of a substance of carbon nanotubes – Vantablack – known as the “darkest substance in the world”, capable of absorbing more than 99.9 per cent of light. Images were captured using a 4K HD camera and transmitted in Portugal through NOS’ 5G network.

In Lisbon, the image was transmitted in Full HD 1080 resolution, using high-speed HD codecs, which the company said were capable of encoding and decoding 50/60 frames per second in less than 75 milliseconds.

NOS said its 5G transmission at the Avaláxia cinema in Lisbon reached more than 1 Gbps, combined with virtually zero latency.

NOS was supported by Musion, a specialist in holographic technology.

“Today, NOS took another important step towards achieving 5G in Portugal. Thanks to the infinite possibilities of this technology, it was possible to shorten distances, bring people together and make real what until now seemed impossible. Seeing Joseph Kosinski interact with a room full of people and feel his presence as if he were really here was absolutely fascinating. This is the true power of technology and it is to provide these types of experiences that we work every day,” said  CTO of NOS, Jorge Graça.