Forget hi-def TV—the next big thing is ultra-high def

Posted by Dennis Sellers Nov 4, 2009 at 7:00am

While the market for high-definition TV (HDTV) has hit the mainstream, the industry has already started speculating about the commercialization of ultra-high definition (UHD).

In-Stat, a market research firm, believes there’ll be a lengthy time period before the UHD market reaches a critical mass of 5% household penetration. However, as the initial market debuts over the next 5-10 years, there’ll be plenty of opportunities for technology companies, manufacturers, service providers and media companies to experiment with business models and strategies to make UHD a strong business in the long term.

“UHD formats Provide between four and sixteen times the resolution of Blu-ray or 1080p high definition as well as 22.2 multichannel three-dimensional sound,” says Michelle Abraham, In-Stat analyst. “This is a vast imProvement over the currently available end user viewing experience in the home.”

As originally proposed, UHD comes in two levels of resolution: 7680×4320 pixels (i.e., 8K resolution), and 3840×2160 (i.e., 4K resolution). The rising popularity of high resolution digital cinema will expose consumers to high resolution content. Then, early UHDTVs will be made available to provide a digital cinema high resolution viewing experience in the home. Ultimately, broadcasters will start offering UHD content to an addressable market of UHDTVs, between 2017 and 2022.

In-Stat expects the total installed base of UHDTVs Europe to approach 5% household penetration until 2021, and increase to over 28.2% penetration by 2025.

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