'Matter of Time' Before Broadcast TV Moves to 4K, CE Week Told
Broadcast TV transitioning to 4K will be a “matter of time,” and an evolution to 8K broadcasts is well off, said Sharp Home Electronics President Jim Sanduski. The in-home ecosystem required to handle increased bandwidth required for a fatter 8K…
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signal is “evolving quite nicely” with the ratification of Wi-Fi 6 and with 5G on the horizon, he said at CE Week in New York Thursday. Samsung’s Andrew Sivori, vice president-TV product marketing, said a quarter of U.S. households today can handle 75 Mbps data speeds. That's the high end of what 8K transmissions will demand, he said. “That’s only going to get better and better over time," he said. Value Electronics President Robert Zohn is a proponent for over-the-air 4K and 8K content -- “as they do in Japan and South Korea.” Zohn said he’s been told by contacts in those industries that “when the TV manufacturers are ready, we’ll be ready." He cited ATSC 3.0 and the ability to deliver 8K content over the air, via IP or over the top, and spoke glowingly of the possibilities for sports via 8K broadcasts: “Can you imagine sports at 120 frames per second?" Zohn imagined the ability to have a replay of a wide-angle shot with digital zoom: “You can do that with 8K.” Tim Alessi, LG senior director-product marketing, downplayed the lack of available native 8K content. He compared that to early days of HDTV: “All of a sudden, boom, there it all was.”