According to a transcript of the earning call for DirecTV provided by TheStreet, the company will soon begin offering an UltraHD video on demand (VOD) service by the end of the year. In 2015, a new satellite will offer mostly event-based UltraHD content as well.
The new UltraHD VOD service will be available to DirecTV customers with the Genie HD-DVR set top box, but it must be connected to a 4K ready TV from Samsung.
DirecTV President and CEO Mike White said that, “For those customers who have that Samsung TV, as well as our Genie HD-DVR, we’re going to load a few 4K movies onto the hard drive for instant viewing. In addition, we’ll have additional 4K titles that those customers can select, which they could download overnight. The pre-loaded number of movies is of course flexible, so if demand’s strong we can pre-load more movies into the hard drive.
“But let’s understand, it’s very early days for 4K”, he continued. “We’ve already secured the rights for a number of movies. I think a dozen, as I recall”.
White also said that he thought the number of UHD TVs sold this year will be 1 million. It was not clear if he thought those were US or global sales, but even if US sales, that number seems low. For example, NPD in April predicted 12M UHD TVs globally with 46% sold in China. In June, IHS predicted 15M sales worldwide for 2014.
Nevertheless, DirectTV is getting ready to deliver more UltraHD content. “Our DirecTV 14 satellite is scheduled to be launched next month on December 4th, allowing us to introduce additional 4K channels in 2015, as well as providing important in-orbit backup capacity for our service”, concluded White. He declined to be specific about any 4K service but suggested it would be “event driven”.
Comcast is also expected to launch a 4K VOD streaming app on Samsung TVs before the end of the year.
DirecTV lost 28,000 net subscribers in the quarter in part to aggressive offers from competitors and tighter credit policies. – Chris Chinnock
