The turnaround tale at this year’s IBC was all about 4K Ultra HD. While previous year’s themes at the Amsterdam conference had been heralding the onslaught of 4K, 2015 has marked its arrival in spades.
4K television shipments are hitting triple-digit rates while global TV shipments declined by 8 percent in the second quarter of 2015. According to IHS, 4KTV unit shipments grew 197 percent year over year in Q2 2015, to reach 6.2 million units. The analysts attributed growth in 4K TVs to increased price erosion and more affordable tiers of 4K models becoming available. Meanwhile research from GfK forecast that Ultra HD screens in 2020 will represent more than 70 percent of total sales across Europe and almost 60 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. The annual volume of screens sold in these markets is expected by then to have reached 37 million.
Europe is taking the lead in new format adoption as satellite operator SES CCO Ferdinand Kayser, predicted that there would be nearly 111 million Ultra HD displays in homes by 2025.
Manufacturers are clearly viewing 4K as a priority with most major production, postproduction and broadcast vendors attending IBC, which attracted an estimated 50,000 delegates.
Given the growth opportunity, a swathe of pay-TV operators at IBC announced they were making their foray into 4K.
South Korea's KT Skylife revealed that it had become the world's first satellite broadcaster to offer 24-hour transmission of three 4K Ultra HD channels. While Turkish satellite operator Turksat is set to deliver the country's first live 4K TV channel with Media Excel's 4K Ultra HD HEVC encoder.
Other alliances to stimulate adoption of 4K services and content included Samsung’s partnership with Mexico's Televisa and Claro to develop 4K content for Latin America and increase penetration of Ultra HD technology across the region. Samsung also forecast that 2018’s football World Cup would mark the year that Latin Americans will choose 4K TVs.
Live 4K broadcasting was a key drawcard with BT Media and Broadcast, demonstrating a Premier League rugby match in London- shot in 4K shot and transmitted live via satellite to the Intelsat stand. Partners in this test included Ericsson, Sony, Newtec and BT Sport, the telco's pay TV division that launched last month.
Ericsson's Giles Wilson described a move to Ultra HD programming as "moving from viewing it to experiencing it."
In other ground breaking moves, NASA has teamed with video delivery infrastructure firm Harmonic to launch the first consumer Ultra HD channel in North America. Utilising an end-to-end Ultra HD video delivery system from Harmonic, NASA TV UHD will deliver live and linear 2160p60 video ambient content to a range of TV and IP-connected devices. The NASA TV UHD video is being sourced from high-resolution images and video generated on the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble Space Telescope, and other current NASA missions. The new programming will also include remastered footage from historical missions, shots from NASA's development and training processes, and ultimately live launches.
On the standards front, shortly before IBC, the Digital TV Group, an industry association for digital television in the U.K., launched its U.K. Ultra HD Forum, which will aim to coordinate U.K. requirements for the format and will work hand-in-hand with the Forum for Advanced Media in Europe (FAME), an initiative led by the European Broadcast Union, and the Digital Interoperability Forum as well as other European standards organizations.
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