What They Say
The Deutsche TV Platform reported that cumulative sales of UltraHD TVs in Germany have now reached over 20 million units since 2014, with 1.1 million out of a total of 1.45 million TVs sold in Q1 of 2021. That puts the technology at 75% penetration in the most recent quarter.
Almost all (97%) of the UHD TVs sold in Q1 2021 support at least one High Dynamic Range (HDR) method and 77% of HDR displays (845K units) support dynamic metadata as Dolby Vision or HDR10+ as well as HDR10 and HLG.
What We Think
The acceptance of dynamic metadata is good news for the development of the installed base in Germany. As long as German broadcasters don’t supply poor quality ‘talking heads’ content! A friend of mine in Germany was pleased to get a new job at a TV maker and bought (at staff price) a very big and high quality TV. It was then that he realised how much really bad content in really bad quality was supplied by German public broadcasters. I told him to sign up to Sky, which had good quality imagery, but in a typical German manner, he didn’t mind spending the cash on a set, but thought that the content should be as cheap as possible. That mind set has been changing, but only slowly.
Separately, Sony is reported to be including support for the German HD+ service in its Google TV 2021 models. Whereas Panasonic, Samsung and Vestel support the service via HbbTV, Sony will have its own app. New sets will include a six month free trial for the service. (BR)
