There’s some good news for early adopters of 4K televisions at last – so long as they don’t mind waiting a while. Ultra high-def satellite broadcasts are a bit thin on the ground at the moment, but by the year 2025 it’ll be a completely different story, as there will be over 820 channels to choose from.
This latest prediction (which no one will remember to verify) comes courtesy of the research firm Northern Sky Research (NSR), which says the expected proliferation of Ultra HD satellite TV channels will lead to greater customer retention and higher ARPUs (average revenue per user).
NSR says that “all regions” will be able to see some ultra high-definition (UHD) broadcasts, via DTH (direct-to-home) and satellite to IPTV and Cable TV providers. However it will be DTH that provides the vast majority of 4K and 8K channels, totalling some 560, while cable and IPTV will account for 260+ channels.
NSR Analyst Alan Crisp notes that unlike Full HD TVs, which remained prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of consumers for years, the price of 4K TVs is eroding very quickly. That should lead to faster adoption of 4K, and content providers are moving quickly to take advantage of it.
“A number of satellite operators and DTH platforms, from regions as diverse as North America to South Asia, are investing heavily in UHD content and UHD compatible set-top boxes,” said Crisp.
With so many channels to choose from, there’s going to be quite a bit of money to be made too. NSR forecasts revenue growth of $370 million from capacity leasing for 4K content. In addition, 4K TV will also become an important differentiator for those DTH platforms that get in on the act first.
Of course, all of this is years away from actually happening. For the rest of this decade 4K Ultra HD will likely remain a niche product. NSR isn’t the first to say this – earlier this week The Diffusion Group made a similar claim, saying 4K won’t become mainstream until 2019 at the earliest, citing the lack of 4K content as the main reason for the slow rate of adoption.
Source: Northern Sky Research
It’s not a content but slow grow of average screen size (and eventually pricing) which limits demand for 4K. 4K makes sense at minimum 75-85″ screen sizes even on HD content when unbearable pixelation of 1080 screens starts killing viewers in millions. Lot of people have enough or more then enough content even without cable or satellites. That is PC screen, own photo and video, few UHD sources, internet. They don’t have time to watch TV all the time. I do not watch that dumbbox for days and weeks, and *will not* even with your 8K or 16K
Change your mobile site design. It sucks badly. Not possible to get desktop site settings on any Android browser. Not scalable/zoomable text. And look at the waste of space — whole three bezels surround article text from the sides, wow! I got few fingers injury scrolling down some review here. Not editable text — make it at least deletable, the typos and errors we made are sometimes too bad to keep.
@s4h: Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately we are a niche site with limited resources, so it’ll be some time before the changes you suggested can be addressed.
Warmest regards
Vincent