Global 4K TV shipments will surpass 102 million units this year, with 44 percent of the world’s total volume in flat-panel sets, up from a third in 2017, said ABI Research Thursday. The flat-panel TV market has achieved more than 85 percent household penetration of global households, and overall growth is slowing due to market maturity, it said. The transition to 4K from HD “is expected to be the next key driver of the global flat panel TV market,” it said. Asia-Pacific, on the strength of the Chinese market, will lead all global 4K TV regions this year with 37 percent of unit shipments, though North America and Western Europe currently lead the world in household penetration, said ABI. It forecasts global 4K TV units shipments will increase at a 17.3 percent compound annual growth rate the next five years, reaching 194 million sets in 2022.

The BBC, livestreaming trials of 29 World Cup matches in 4K with hybrid log-gamma HDR over its iPlayer internet catchup service (see 1806200001), will extend those trials to Wimbledon tennis, it said Thursday. Viewers with an iPlayer, compatible TV and an internet connection of at least 40 Mbps will be able to watch all Centre Court matches when the tournament gets underway July 2 for a two-week run, said the BBC.

The BBC is encouraging viewers to share comments about the broadcaster’s livestreaming trials of 29 World Cup matches in 4K with hybrid log-gamma HDR over its iPlayer internet catchup service (see 1805300003), said Andy Quested, head of BBC production standards, at the SES Ultra HD Conference Tuesday in London. The BBC is posting continuous information updates on its blog. It’s stressing that the broadcasts are only a trial, to find out what can and can’t be done with livestreaming in 4K HDR. For the World Cup, “we are using a mix of HD and UHD cameras, with the feed from wireless HD cameras and HD studio cameras upscaled to UHD,” said Quested. Many of the viewer comments concerned latency, with the sound and picture drifting significantly out of sync, he said. In some instances, iPlayer viewers hear cheers from their neighbors’ live-broadcast HD feeds, well ahead of seeing the action livestreamed on their TVs in UHD, he said. Quested recalled how early streaming experiments left the sound and picture several minutes out of sync, because the signals needed to travel around the world by different routes. Things are much better now, he said, but there is still room for improvement in IP latency. Internet speed is all-important, Quested said. “People forget about what the kids are doing with games consoles upstairs, and what other people are doing in flats down the street,” he said. “And an Ethernet cable connection will generally be more reliable than Wi-Fi. In many respects, where we are now with UHD and HDR gets us back to where we were with the old Arriflex Super 16 cameras.”

Boosting screen size and picture quality are leading drivers behind TV upgrades, NPD reported Monday. Of U.S. consumers who bought a replacement set March 2017 to February 2018, 45 percent said larger screen size was the driver, 39 percent were motivated by improved picture quality and 24 percent said they were moved by affordable pricing. Sales of TVs 55 inches and larger grew 8 percent, to a third of unit sales volume. Some 62 percent of upgrade TV buys were for the living room, with average replacement TV size for the living room 52 inches vs. 43 inches in other household rooms. There's “tremendous opportunity” to accelerate the replacement cycle, with 90 percent of the installed base of TVs in the U.S. not yet 4K Ultra HD, said analyst Stephen Baker. “Screen size and picture quality are driving consumer purchase decisions, instead of price, which seems to indicate that the industry has been slow to address the shifting value proposition of the TV in the home.” Despite “splintering” of content among devices, demand for TVs to occupy a “prominent position" in the home isn't diminishing, he said. Findings were based on a Jan. 25-Feb. 8 survey of 5,300 U.S. adult consumers.

Intelsat is partnering with Latin American broadcaster Globoto beam live 8K video transmissions of the World Cup to the Museu de Amanhã science museum in Rio de Janeiro, said the satellite operator Friday. The signal is being transmitted as a 200 Mbps video stream at the International Broadcast Center in Moscow and transported to Tokyo, where it will then be carried to Intelsat via the Intelsat “point of presence” in New York, it said. The signal will be transmitted on the IntelsatOne terrestrial network to Intelsat’s teleport in Atlanta, where it will be re-encoded at 90 Mbps using a special NTT 8K H.265 real-time encoder, it said. Once the video is compressed and modulated, it will be uplinked to Intelsat 14, the company’s “emerging HD video neighborhood in Latin America known for its HD and 4K content distribution,” it said.

Dish Network customers with a Hopper 3 set-top and 4K HDR TV can tune to channel 540 and watch “nearly every” World Cup match in “stunning 4K HDR quality,” blogged the pay-TV service Thursday. The matches will be captured, broadcast and received in HDR10, emailed Dish spokeswoman Chelsea Satkowiak. The World Cup competition opened Thursday in Russia for a monthlong run.

The Apple TV 4K will support the Spectrum TV app starting later this year, Charter Communications blogged Monday. It said mobile Apple products already support its app, which allows live viewing of linear channels and of on-demand content.

Best Buy pitched customers on a $279 Ultra HD 4K TCL 43-inch Roku TV, down from a $299 list price, in an email blast Friday. The entry-level TV scored 4.2 stars out of five in customer reviews, with positive ratings for gaming performance, ease of use and value, and a thumbs-down for long boot-up time and inconvenient placement of the volume button on the side of the remote control. The retailer announced in April (see 1804180002) an exclusive deal with Amazon to sell Toshiba-branded Fire TVs.

BBC will offer two live “cutting-edge” trials of next month's World Cup from Russia, one in Ultra HD with hybrid log-gamma HDR, the other in virtual reality, said the broadcaster Wednesday. The Ultra HD trial will stream all 29 of BBC One’s World Cup matches over the BBC iPlayer, it said. The trial will be available "to watch on a first-come, first-served basis,” it said. The trial will help the BBC “and wider industry prepare for a time when delivering such large-scale events in such high quality, for larger audiences, over the open Internet is normal,” it said. It recommends a connection of at least 40 Mbps to view the matches in 4K resolution. BBC "can only confirm that each game can support tens of thousands of people," emailed spokesman David Turnbull. "The combination of the BBC and the World Cup can drive massive audiences, and right now there is limited bandwidth available to deliver live Ultra HD content to such large audiences over the open Internet," he said. "We’re making our Ultra HD trial available to as many people as possible within those limitations, while testing our systems on the largest scale yet. The experience and data we gather from performing these trials will help us to optimise and scale up UHD delivery in the future." The VR trial will be viewable through a dedicated BBC app available for free soon on Apple, Android, Gear VR, Oculus Go and PlayStation VR devices, it said. The monthlong World Cup opens June 14.

Hisense announced availability of its 2018 4K Ultra HD R7 Roku TVs Tuesday. The lineup offers the 43-inch (14 watts; $349), 50-inch (20 watts; $429), 55-inch (20 watts; $499) and 65-inch (30 watts; $799) models. The R7 TVs have HDR10 and Ultra HD upscaling, said the company. The Roku mobile apps for iOS or Android act as a second remote and offer voice search and private listening with headphones, said Hisense.