What They Say
Advanced Television reported comments from Ben Schwarz, writing for the Ultra HD Forum as saying that it is very hard for broadcasters to justify 8K adoption. The article identifies just five current channels, globally, four of which are OTT services.
- BS8K (Japan)
- NASA, an OTT service launched in 2018
- Rakuten TV, OTT launched in 2018
- The Explorers, OTT available since 2019
- YouTube, OTT, since 2013
“As for terrestrial broadcasters and cable operators, the bandwidth is just too limited today. With IPTV and especially satellite delivery, there’s more room. However, with an 8K channel taking up as much space as four 4K channels, 16 HD channels, or a few dozen SD channels, it’s easy to see how it’s still hard to make a business case for 8K delivery over managed networks. Streaming service providers don’t have the same investment concerns, which may explain why they currently own 80 per cent of the market.”
What We Think
No real big news here. We all know that 8K display adoption (content capture and creation is a different issue) is being driven by Japanese technology providers that want to promote new generations of equipment and LCD makers that know that the adoption of 8K will disadvantage OLEDs, which have a much more complex active substrate. (Sorry, Chris!) (BR)
