Tuesday, January 15, 2013

4K TV Looks Great Are broadband Networks Ready ?

While 4K, or Ultra High Definition, TVs have been around for some time, they were prominently featured at each manufacturer's booth as a technology ready for high-end consumers. At a film technology panel, studio CTO’s spoke of the superiority of the 4K picture versus HD. Film studios have long been capturing films in 4K for the superior resolution, later editing it to the correct format for distribution. While these 84-110” sets and the picture quality are amazing, we are left concerned about network capacity.

Where the content industry and consumers see better picture quality, we see continued network congestion. A 4K TV signal carries 4x the data of an HD signal, and current networks could not carry them in significant numbers. We estimate HD is transmitted a 6-8Mbps; a 4K TV signal at 25-30Mbps represents half the average network capacity of an existing AT&T U-Verse household. For a cable company, a single 6MHz channel can carry 8-10 SH channels or 2-4 HD channels; the same 6MHz allows for just one 4K TV channel.

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