Now, before you say that it’s a gimmick and something that only rich people will buy, let me explain a little bit about the Vizzywig 4K app and what it does. Nothing makes you want to take a hammer to your current 42 inch tv; http://www.theguardian.com, like watching insanely-detailed slo mo Ultra HD footage of a surfer conquering the bright, boiling waves of some unspecified tropical locale.
More films and even TV shows are being made/mastered in the format; 4K Blu-rays are expected by Christmas 2015; a handful of streaming services – including Netflix – already offer 4K streaming; and even 4K broadcasting should start to emerge next year.
Netflix turned on its 4K streaming option last April, making its hit series House of Cards available to customers who own televisions equipped with HEVC/H.265 decoders. Showtime, meanwhile, will bundle its app with LG’s 4K TVs, but it’s unclear if its content will stream at 4K. Content providers are also holding back some of their own 4K content as incentives for consumers to sign on to their own services. But more and more will become available, especially as filmmakers continue to shoot in the 4K format, and as studios (once again) mine their archives. Expect to pay up to $9.99 for a 48-hour rental of 4K content, Taylor said, although electronic sales are also coming.
The idea was to replace the term 4K. The CEA’s name lasted less than a day, as Sony then announced it was going to call the technology “4K Ultra High Definition” This is the term now used by most other TV manufacturers too, who seem interested in covering all the buzzword bases at the expense of brevity.
Such stream-shrinking could expand the potential audience for 4K. According to the Akamai, the number of American homes that can handle speeds of 10Mbps or greater jumps to 39 percent. Manufacturers will save all that cutting-edge stuff for their top models, and all those high-end models will be 4K TVs. They’re currently priced around $3,500, and they’re bound to dip even further as 4K dominates the showroom. In response to my previous articles on the stupidity of 4K TVs, many people argued they had better vision, or some other number should be used.
