TVs designed to stream
Set makers, to keep relevant, are offering new technologies.
Does anyone just watch TV anymore? The shift toward online and mobile viewing is driving television set makers to design as much for streaming video as for watching broadcast or cable channels.
Traditional TV is far from dead, but these days viewers care less about watching shows live and even prefer saving certain series to watch in an evening or weekend of binge watching. Broadcast networks and cable channels share viewer attention with thousands of online services, including amateurs creating their own series on YouTube.
Netflix has outbid traditional channels for hits such as “House of Cards.” Dish this week said it will sell online access to a bundle of channels including live sports network ESPN for $20 a month. Online video will account for a third of all video viewing in 2020, up from about 10 percent in 2013, predicts The Diffusion Group, a research firm that specializes in Internet video.
So how to keep the TV set, that focal point of the American living room for decades, relevant? Design for online video.
At the International CES gadget show this week in Las Vegas, TV makers unveiled models with 4K resolution, or four times the clarity offered by today’s high-definition TVs. They are pushing the features even though not a single TV channel is yet available in 4K. But Internet services such as Netflix, Amazon and M-Go are starting to offer 4K video.
Sony on Monday vowed to create more 4K content for those sets. Four popular shows from its entertainment division — “The Goldbergs,” “The Blacklist,” “Masters of Sex” and “The Night Shift” — will soon be available in 4K and it’s working with partners including Netflix and YouTube to deliver more 4K streaming video. Sony also launched an alliance with other TV makers, content providers and distributors to create technical standards for 4K video.
“It’s going to be the first format primarily driven by streaming,” says Jim Funk, a senior vice president at Roku Inc., which makes streaming TV devices.
Beyond 4K, Sharp developed an engineering trick to make its high-end set look even sharper. Samsung added a nanocrystal semiconductor layer to make colors purer. LG is pushing organic LED screens with richer colors and pure black — the kind typically limited to small displays such as phones because of price.