Netflix and the future of 4K

Sky, Virgin and Netflix are all experimenting with the ultra high-definition 4K, but, Raymond Snoddy asks, will free-to-air broadcasters be able to keep pace? And will consumers want to upgrade their TV sets like they are items of fashion?

It won’t take off this Christmas but beware, before long the television set manufacturing industry will be trying to sell you 4K, or ultra high definition television, sets.

The new higher resolution picture, which offers four times the resolution of good old fashioned HD, is on the same launch trajectory as that well known golden oldie hit – 3D TV.

At the huge IBC exhibition in Amsterdam in September 4K was the next big thing. Crowds gathered round the 4K sets, now available on the market at around £4,000, to watch recorded football from the Confederations Cup in Brazil.

The BBC and Sky have already got together to promote 4K with a “UHD Ready” sticker even though there is precious little to actually see on 4K now, or in the immediate future.

West Ham fans will be glad to know that their home game against Stoke at the end of August created a little bit of live television history. The game was beamed back in 4K to a single 84-inch set at Sky headquarters for the enjoyment of Sky executives and engineers.

Stoke won 1- 0, since you ask.

Then this week it was revealed that Netflix, the rapidly growing OTT (over the top) operator had begun 4K trials by adding a small number of Ultra HD videos to its service in the US.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings has recently made it clear the company wants to be “one of the big suppliers of 4K content next year.”

It is believed that the second series of House of Cards is being shot in 4K, although at the same time Netflix has admitted that its flirtation with 3D TV is rapidly being scaled back. The likely march of 4K is not a repeat performance of the 3D fiasco. You don’t need glasses for a start and really, what’s not to like about higher resolution pictures?

With a little poetic licence its supporters claim you can clearly read advertisements written on the fingernails of those in the crowd thanks to those near 4,000 pixels per set.

Surely there is something inevitable about the move towards the highest definition the engineers can come up with, at least until the limits of human perception are reached. As costs come down it will only be a matter of time before we’ve all got one and everyone from viewers and producers to advertisers will rejoice in the better and better quality pictures.

There are, however, just a few problems standing in the way of such a technologically deterministic approach.

The first is that when you stand in front of the 4K screen you are not instantly bowled over, without quite knowing why.

The resolution is higher, of course, and you can obviously see more detail, but the overall impression is pastel – almost muffled – and the overall impact therefore mildly disappointing.

It took a proper engineer, Mark Schubin – the man responsible for delivering HD operas from the Metropolitan Opera in New York around the world by satellite – to explain the vague sense of unease.

Resolution is not the same as sharpness, he explained in an IBC debate that ended up, rather surprisingly, with a vote against 4K as the next, inevitable step forward in television.

Viewers tend to value sharpness of picture, particularly for sport and perhaps opera as well.

In the end it’s the votes of the consumer which count, and whether they will step up to buy the new sets as they move on from the early adopters towards the mainstream.

Here again there are problems and one of them is the television set replacement cycle. The dramatic move to HD flat screens has increased the propensity of consumers to throw out their old sets and embrace the new.

The TV set replacement cycle is, however, still around seven years later and many millions of viewers must have HD sets a mere two or three years old. Some retailers are now offering five-year guarantees.

Are the improvements offered by 4K enough to persuade consumers to get rid of perfectly good, modern receivers?

The television set manufacturers would like to turn the TV set into a fashion item along the lines of the mobile phone and persuade viewers it is perfectly normal to change their TV sets every two or three years to enjoy the latest upgrades.

I wish them luck.

There is also the small matter that the 4K sets are typically large – 55-inch or considerably more – so they might not pass the wife TV test – I am not having my living room totally dominated by a television.

Even if you manage to sneak the 70 incher into the house – small flats could be problematic and there could be another small issue; for ideal viewing conditions a bit of furniture rearranging may be needed. To appreciate the higher resolution pictures you have to sit between five and six feet away from the giant screen.

There is a danger for the set manufacturers that consumers will sit this dance out, particularly if they have been persuaded fairly recently to buy a 3D set, to see whether the industry goes on to produce more user friendly sets, maybe even with sharper images.

Broadcasters, however, do face a dilemma on 4K and one that is intensified by the likely loss of broadcast spectrum over the next few years to the ever-expanding mobile operators. Free-to-air broadcasters may not have the spectrum to launch 4K services and their successors even if they wanted to.

And this is where Netflix, and maybe even the mobile companies, come in. Netflix can continue to upgrade its picture quality by streaming on the internet if there is enough online capacity to sustain normal viewing speeds.

Companies such as Sky, Virgin and Netflix will be able to continue to experiment with higher and higher quality pictures in places where free-to-air broadcasters find it difficult to go.
But at least no-one has to worry too much about such dilemmas this side of Christmas.