Netflix Confident 4K Will Be ‘Practical’ for All Broadband Homes
Netflix is confident it will be able to stream native 4K content to subscribers with enough bandwidth efficiency to make it “practical” for any home with a broadband connection, CEO Reed Hastings told Sony’s CES news conference Monday. Hastings used superlatives repeatedly to tout 4K’s “stunning” picture quality and his company’s warm collaboration with Sony, but was short on specifics about the nature of that collaboration or when Netflix might debut its 4K offering. Mike Fasulo, newly named Sony Electronics president, introduced Hastings by saying: “Today, I'm really excited to announce that our relationship with one of the undisputed leaders in the content delivery space has taken a giant leap forward."
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With that, Hastings came on stage to say that Netflix has been working to solve 4K’s bandwidth constraints “to make it practical for all homes that have broadband.” According to Hastings, “the genius of this is what Sony’s been doing” in commercializing H.265 High Efficiency Video Codec decoders that are built into its Bravia 4K TVs, he said. “So we're going to be able to have stunning 4K in less than 15 Mbps,” he said. “So if you've got a cable or fiber plan that’s rated at 20 or above, you'll have plenty of headroom, and so this is very practical. This is over Wi-Fi if you want to. This is really amazing at 15 Mbps, which is testament both to the work we've been doing on encoding and the work that Sony Bravia’s been doing on the decode.”
Netflix is “working with Sony to create these fabulous entertainment experiences,” Hastings said. When the industry began talking about 4K, “we saw the possibility of it and we saw that the Internet was the natural medium to deliver [4K content] to TVs,” he said. That’s because the million or so 4K TVs sold so far, “they don’t have much content except for the content on the Internet,” he said.
Netflix has been working on all the 4K “delivery mechanisms,” including the encoding, but also with content creators, “many of whom are very excited about 4K and it what it allows them to show in storytelling,” he said. All new Netflix original programming will be shot and produced in 4K, including the second season of House of Cards, which debuts Feb. 14, he said. Netflix also is reworking its older content for 4K, including the popular Breaking Bad series, he said: “There’s going to be a lot of content, and it’s a chance for the Internet to really shine.”