Boosting ‘wow’ experience is TV’s future
The future of television is bigger, bolder and brasher.
This week’s annual Consumer Electronics Show offered a glimpse into the coming wave of TVs, video devices and content.
TV makers and Hollywood want to sell consumers on 4K Ultra HD, which delivers four times the resolution of current HD. And newly agreed-upon standards for Premium UHD include high dynamic range (HDR), which delivers brighter brights, deeper blacks and a richer range of color.
Those imaging improvements bring video “up to another level that everyone believes is going to provide the ‘wow’ experience that consumers are looking for,” said Tim Alessi, director of new product development for home entertainment products at LG Electronics USA.
All of these picture improvements play best at large sizes. LG has 65-inch and 77-inch 4K UHD OLED TVs arriving in stores in March (no price yet), and Samsung’s flagship SUHD has 65-, 77-, or 88-inch sets. Sony’s 75-inch Bravia 4K HDR TV is due early this year (no price yet). To put that in perspective, most sets sold these days are about 50-55 inches.
In the U.S. this year, 4K TV shipments are projected to double to 12 million, according to IHS Technology. “4K is resonating with consumers looking to purchase a TV, especially with prices and premiums falling quickly,” IHS director of TV research Paul Gagnon said.
To address the vacuum of 4K content, Samsung and Philips have 4K UHD Blu- ray Disc players due in March for $400. Panasonic has a player in the works, too.
Look for about 100 Premium UHD movie discs to be available in the second half of year. “We are all now actually working pretty hard to get content out there,” said Hanno Basse, chief technology officer at 20th Century Fox Film Corp., and president of the UHD Alliance. “We really feel this is going to reinvigorate the home entertainment category for us.”
Premium UHD will give “consumers a reason to go back and see movies they have seen before in a way they have never seen before, which I think is a crucial message, especially for Hollywood.”
Cord cutters won’t be left out in the cold with 4K, either. Netflix is shooting nearly all of its original series and movies in 4K in high dynamic range (HDR).
Cord cutting is expected to accelerate. In 2015, nearly 5 million U.S. households dropped pay TV, up nearly 11% from 2014. This year, the number is predicted to increase 12.5%, eMarketer says.