Trapped between the “TECH’ie” that I am, and an advocate for the consumer, leads me to the following conclusions from the International Consumer Electronics Show of 2014.
We seen a want, a need? and a push for 4K visual displays. Some Huge, some bendable and some both. While they are extremely nice and who would not want to watch things in such a high resolution that it almost looked like you could take a fruit from the screen and eat it. You are left with the following realities.
1 – Cost. While Sony introduced us to a 4k Hanycam priced at $2,000, you will spend $5K/10K to see it in 4k. OK, I’ll grant you that the price always comes down. But it takes a strong demand for the product and strong competition to do that. I predict that will take 3-5 years. And even longer if some other tech gets more demand in that time frame. Why Sony, LG and Samsung were not showing a cam/tv combo they could enjoy for $3500 while showing off their mammoth bendable displays very few will ever own is beyond me. A missed opportunity to drive it home.
2 – Content. Where are the movie productions? If not recorded in 4k, what is the point. It’s like having a car that can go 350 mph but no road can handle more than 150 mph. While Amazon, YouTube, Hulu and NetFlix are promising to fill that void. It brings us to the largest hurdle…
3 – Delivery. What device will I use to get this 4K high-res? DVD… Not big enough, Satellite… Can not happen with the existing satellites. The internet? Can’t happen yet. Why?
( don’t this sound a lot like what happened to 3D )
The why has been a long running story of history. While the Cable Companies are the largest provider of “high bandwidth” service. They have been investing in owning all the movie houses that have or generate new content and have not been investing that money in high bandwidth to it’s existing infrastructure or expanding it’s existing consumer base in the way of providing internet services to rural America.
If you remember a few years back, Comcast made a point to bring a case forward to throttle back or slow the speeds of those who were “high users of bandwidth”. I understood exactly why they were making a court case at that time before most anyone understood the implications.
They seen the trend of users getting their content from the internet. A competitive force but they are also in control of that delivery of service. If you can not reasonably enjoy that movie or show brought to you on the internet, your only alternative is to get it from them.
The use of video compression technology for that new demanding hi-res video called VP9 / H.265 standard backed by Google/YouTube and others will certainly help in bandwidth demand, but it’s still not enough.
While it is a great start of an answer to a problem, you can’t get to the underlying problem that the cable companies are in control here. They will find excuse after excuse, some having little reality in fact for problems they themselves created for delivering this in a viable way. Hoping it will go away and or just delaying it. We are talking about Billions of dollars here.
If you never really understood the concept of the need for “net neutrality“, here it is staring you in the face. When that issue last surfaced, it was demonized by those in control through groups that seemed like they were on your side while misrepresenting what it really meant in encouragement for you to lobby congress to stop it. This kept the money flowing to candidates in Washington and those petitions gave them a excuse for giving in and protecting the Cable Co’s from competition. Everyone got off the hook.
One of two things is true here. Congress is not intelligent enough to understand the implications of legislation they create on the behalf of the industry lobbyist who have all the money. Or they know and just don’t care.
We should be able to benefit from the new video compression in a standard (720p/1080p) res and the birth of new internet movies and shows will finally be delivered in spite of the cable co’s. WebTV falls into this same niche but is likely to succeed because of the lower bandwidth required. But for how long before the Cable Co’s declare they have not enough bandwidth to provide for all those folks watching TV in a internet stream. Throttling back those that use it more. Now, they have the law on their side.
Can you really see the Cable Co’s investing more money in a tech that is competitive to 80% of their everyday revenue. A big conflict of interest as warned by many, years before we got here to see it in action.
The only way we will truly fix this problem is to have more Internet providers competing for the same real estate areas in the US. Nothing else will work when you have the folks who own all the content also own the pipe that delivers alternatives.
Presently I could have a choice of 2 providers. One telco based that can hardly deliver bandwidth for a 1080p video and a cable co that no longer promises a minimum service level of anything but is at least twice as fast as the telco. The same 2 competitive choices I have had for over 15 years.
It is also possible that satellite delivery of 4k tv could happen if the FCC goes along with some major changes and someone invests in some new satellites. That could take 5 years. Many things could happen in the time it takes to deploy that kind of tech. It’s hard to see that investment before the US has at least 10% saturation of 4k tv’s in homes. So 5 years from a unknown starting point in the future… …The internet is the only reasonable answer.
So if you want 4K TV to work for you, you will need to lobby Congress for net neutrality and more competition in internet services. It’s the only way to get the bandwidth required and some freedom of choice and affordability for Broadband service.
If Google, Amazon, Hulu, Apple and others are truly interested in this succeeding, they will need to “lead the charge” by lobbing Congress to change the monopoly rules currently in effect and becoming a Internet Service Providers themselves.
For myself, Since I refuse to reward bad behavior, I will be happy to watch any original internet content, even delivered at or under 1K until the broadband provider throttles me out.
Till then, enjoy your 5-10K investment in 4K as a conversation piece.