SES launched the first of its kind “live and linear” Ultra HD trial with U.S. cable operator Armstrong aimed at speeding Ultra HD delivery to cable homes, the companies said Monday in a joint announcement. Armstrong is testing SES' camera-to-screen Ultra HD ecosystem at its headquarters in Butler, Pennsylvania, they said. SES' Ultra HD offering, unveiled at this year’s NAB Show, “combines broadcast and IP technologies in a fully managed, scalable service,” they said. “The solution leverages satellite's inherent broadcast advantages and the multicasting capabilities of DOCSIS 3.0, the advanced transmission standard in use by Armstrong and other leading cable systems today.” The outcome of the trials with Armstrong “will support progress toward our objective of accelerating the roll-out of linear-live Ultra HD,” SES said.

The UHD Alliance filed written notifications June 17 with the Justice Department and the FTC disclosing the identities of its members and “the nature and objectives of the venture,” the DOJ said in a public notice published in Friday’s Federal Register. The notifications were filed to give alliance members antitrust protections under the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993, the notice said. New members listed in the notice, but not previously disclosed as members by the alliance, include Amazon, Intel, MediaTek, Realtek Semiconductor and Toshiba. Those company names still were not posted on the alliance's website when we checked its member roster Friday. The alliance told DOJ and the FTC it wants to “create a framework to enable the global industries interested in premium next generation content related technologies,” including Ultra HD, high dynamic range, wide color gamut, high frame rate and next-gen audio, the notice said. It will “specify and develop requirements” for premium content, as well as for “related devices, distribution and other elements of a UHD Alliance-based ecosystem,” it said. The alliance also will “promote the global development and adoption” of specifications and spec-compliant “content, devices and services,” and will “provide clear definitions, industry guidelines and best practices on emerging technologies and collaborate with other standards development organizations,” it said. The alliance also will “develop and administer” compliance “testing methodologies and certification programs” based on its specs, establish a logo program for identifying certified products and services in the marketplace and will “promote the UHD Alliance brand and ecosystem to consumers,” it said. Completing work on a logo and certification program within a year was “the stated goal at launch” of the alliance on the eve of the January CES (see 1501050023), “and we’re on track” to finish that work by the end of 2015, Mark Turner, a vice president at founding alliance member Technicolor, told us last month (see 1506030045). The alliance also filed separate, but nearly identical, notifications with DOJ and the FTC, also on June 17, “in its capacity as a standards development organization,” said a second notice in the Federal Register, also published Friday.

Netflix is “really optimistic” about Ultra HD as a subscription and revenue “driver,” CEO Reed Hastings said on a quarterly earnings interview Wednesday. “So as more and more Ultra HD TVs get sold at major electronics outlets over the next five years, more and more people will want Ultra HD” from Netflix, he said. Each Ultra HD stream is about 15 Mbps, “so it takes a good-quality Internet connection,” he said. “Of course, that's getting more and more reliable. So when we see those coming together, we see over time a significant percentage of our membership upgrading to get the Ultra HD service, again, over the next couple of years.” Netflix is confident about its long-term success in Japan after launching there this fall, Hastings said. It plans to launch in Japan with “aggressive” pricing and local content, including “some local originals,” he said. “We're really focused on doing a great job.” Japan is “unique” among other markets “because it's very brand-sensitive,” Hastings said. “So Japan will probably be our slowest market to get to a certain penetration threshold, but it may be one of our best markets in the long term because when the Japanese society embraces a brand, it's a very deep connection, very long-term. So we're willing to make that investment, knowing that it's not the quick route to success that it might be in other countries.”

Japan’s plan to broadcast the 2020 Olympics in 8K will spur​ a new round of resolution increases, an IHS report said Monday. While 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) shipments haven’t started in meaningful commercial volumes, 8K Ultra HD TVs are expected to increase from 2,700 shipped worldwide this year to 911,000 in 2019, IHS said. The IHS 8K TV forecast hinges on the 65-inch screen size, which has by far the highest volume in production and will account for almost 80 percent of 8K TV shipments in 2019, it said. “The biggest inhibitor to the growth of 8K TV will be consumer screen size preferences,” IHS analyst Paul Gray said, noting that 8K requires a very large screen for the higher resolution to be perceptible. Although the average screen size in the TV market has grown “by an inch each year over the past decade,” Gray said, “it is still a long haul before sizes over 70 inches become commonplace.” With new LCD manufacturing plants due to ramp up in the next three years, capacity to produce 8K TV displays will increase “dramatically,” Gray said. Chinese consumers have adopted new TV technologies early, as shown by their recent uptake of 4K UHD, he said. A combination of enhanced local panel production and “consumers eager for the latest technology will make China the driving factor in 8K television growth,” Gray said.

Taiwanese chipmakers dominate the market for Ultra HD TV chipsets, “but their position is being challenged by a number of fabless semiconductor vendors across North America and China,” Strategy Analytics said Tuesday. U.S.-based suppliers such as Marvell Technology and Sigma Designs are among “a group of vendors that are implementing new designs to support next generation Ultra HD TV features and standards,” it said. The system-on-a-chip (SoC) market for 4K TVs is highly competitive and dominated by Taiwanese vendors MediaTek, MStar and Novatek, it said. Within the SoC market itself, devices “are now commonplace” for what the European Broadcasting Union defines as Phase 1 of Ultra HD, meaning devices that support HEVC’s Main10 profile at 60 frames a second, with HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 support, it said. A “handful” of suppliers have devices that support Phase 2, with features such as high dynamic range and BT.2020 colorimetry, it said. More suppliers “are expected to implement these features later in 2015 and early 2016,” it said. Few if any suppliers have plans to introduce SoCs with high-frame-rate support “anytime soon,” because 4K at 120 frames a second carries “the largest potential cost impact on Ultra HD TV decoders,” it said. "Silicon with support for internal HDR decoding is slowly emerging but it may take increased availability of HDR content and 10 bit panels before the majority of silicon vendors jump in," said David Watkins, Strategy Analytics service director-connected home devices. His findings are in a report on the impact of Ultra HD on TV SoCs.

LG Electronics’ 65-inch 65EG9600 4K OLED TV ($8,999) won a Value Electronics TV Shootout at Metropolitan Pavilion in New York during CE Week. Four flagship 4K Ultra HD TVs vied for bragging rights in the contest, which pitted the LG OLED model against three full array locally dimmed LED-lit LCD TVs. In Value Electronics’ previous shootout, last August at the retailer’s Scarsdale, New York, store (see 1408200052), a 2013 Samsung 64-inch HD plasma TV finished with the highest average score, all categories being equal. The official winner, because of a score weighted toward results in black level and contrast ratio, was also OLED: LG's 2014 55-inch 55EC9300, also an HD model. The year’s TV contestants -- which also included the Panasonic 65-inch TC-65CX850U, Sony 75-inch XBR-75X940C and Samsung 78-inch UN78JS9500 from the new SUHD family -- were 2015 4K Ultra HD TVs. The LG and Samsung TVs were curved models and the Panasonic and Sony models flat. All tested panels were concurrently fed content through a professional HDMI distribution amp from three reference Blu-ray players, a Sony FMPX10 4K media player and USB. The LG 65EG9600 won according to audience votes and votes from an expert panel that included professional TV evaluators and professional TV calibrators. Values of 1-10 were given by voters for black quality, perceived contrast, color accuracy, off-axis performance, screen uniformity, motion clarity and ambient light. Results were calculated by averaging all votes from each ballot over two days and five voting sessions, said Value Electronics owner Robert Zohn, who organized the event. The seven attributes were added for each TV and averaged for the final score, he said. Final votes from audience members were LG, 57.32 points; Samsung, 55.44 points; Sony, 54.89 points; and Panasonic, 46.79 points, said Zohn. Votes for TVs from the experts, who weren't publicly identified, finished in the same order, with slightly higher point totals, he said.

Parks Associates joined other naysayers in the market research community that have begun casting doubts about the viability of next-generation Ultra HD Blu-ray players and discs (see 1506250030). It’s true that Ultra HD Blu-ray discs will “have the potential to provide a better 4K user experience” than other forms of 4K content delivery, Barbara Kraus, Parks director-research, emailed us Saturday. Among its other attributes, Ultra HD Blu-ray will have a high dynamic range component and HDR as a feature “is expected to be highly attractive to consumers,” Kraus said. “However, HDR will also be available via streaming,” she said, citing Amazon’s announcement last week that Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.S. can instantly watch the debut season of the Amazon original series Mozart in the Jungle in HDR through the Amazon Instant Video app on Samsung SUHD TVs at no additional cost (see 1506240038). Kraus thinks adoption of Ultra HD Blu-ray players “will depend to some extent” on 4K TV adoption, which “will be somewhat tempered over the next few years due to lack of content as well as the TV replacement cycle,” she said. “As some current Blu-ray players already convert 2K to 4K, consumers who have purchased these players may not feel the need to upgrade to a 4K UHD Blu-ray player. The ability to have comparable picture quality through streaming also has the potential to depress adoption. While 4K UHD Blu-ray players offer some strong picture quality benefits, adoption is not necessarily a slam-dunk.”

Broadcom signed memorandum of understanding agreements with several Chinese companies, including two for the development of Ultra HD equipment, it said in a Thursday announcement. Its joint development agreement with Inspur Group, a systems integrator, is aimed at fashioning a new DOCSIS 3.0 Ultra HD set-top "that can power an entire digital home system,” Broadcom said. The goal of a separate pact with Beijing-based pay-TV operator StarTimes is to jointly define and develop set-top offerings for Africa, Broadcom said: “Both sides will invest engineering resources to develop a series of low-cost set-top boxes and high-end Ultra HD home gateways.”

Sony began pre-sales for the X900C and X910C series 4K Ultra HD TVs that will be available at Sony stores, Amazon and Best Buy next month. The X900C 55-inch ($2,499) and 65-inch ($3,999) models, measuring less than 0.2-inch front to back, are the company’s thinnest TVs ever, it said. The 75-inch X910C ($5,499) is the thinnest model of its size, said the company. All three TVs have a frameless design and can mount flush to a wall. They’re powered by the X1 processor engine and Android TV, and Sony’s X-Reality Pro picture engine upscales HD content to 4K, said Sony.

Contrary to recent statements from chipmaker Sigma Designs that Ultra HD's adoption rate "is going quite a bit faster than the industry forecasters had it pegged for" (see 1506100003), the growth of 4K TV "has been rapid, but perhaps less so than hoped for by supply chain stakeholders,” said an IHS white paper on how Ultra HD is “shaping” the display market. Market growth has “almost certainly been limited” by the scarcity of “diverse native UHD content and content sources, along with poor upscaling quality by some brands initially,” it said. For Ultra HD to become “an ongoing and long-term success like HD has been, it is not only about the deployment of technology into devices, but also about ensuring consumers receive and value 4K content,” it said.