Sky will beam coverage of the May 19 royal wedding live in 4K, a “world first for any royal event,” reported the broadcaster Wednesday. Sky will position 51 4K cameras around St. George's Chapel, the grounds of Windsor Castle and around Windsor town center for the daylong event, it said.
JVC next month will ship a $2,499 4K Ultra HD HDR DLP projector, it said Wednesday. Features of the LX-UH1 include vertical and horizontal lens shift, HDR10 and Hybrid Log Gamma HDR and an HDR Gamma mode for broadcasts and streaming services, said the company. The BT.2020-compatible projector uses a 0.47-inch Texas Instruments' TRP digital micromirror device and an RGBRGB color wheel, JVC said.
Many cord-cutting homes likely already are consuming at least half of their 1 TB bandwidth cap with normal TV watching, and even a modest amount of Ultra HD streaming may push them over it, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. He said Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu don't give subscribers robust enough control of when they receive HD content that would let them control their bandwidth use. He said one simple option is to use a Roku, since users can go to a Roku's settings and set the video quality at either HD or below.
Sharp will use the IFA Global Press Conference April 19-22 in Rome to make a “bold announcement” on the European launch of the first 8K TVs to consumers, said organizers in a Wednesday email blast. Sascha Lange, Sharp vice president-sales and marketing Europe, will describe the company’s strategy and product innovations in one of several “power briefings” at the event, they said: “Sharp has established itself a name as pioneer and innovation driver,” and 8K “in particular is a very exciting topic as the new technology will finally arrive in consumers’ everyday lives in 2018.” Foxconn, which bought a majority of Sharp in March 2016, said it wants to make Sharp 8K displays and 5G products the linchpins of the LCD display fab his company plans to build in Wisconsin (see 1707270017). Foxconn CEO Terry Gou abruptly withdrew as an IFA keynoter at last year's show, saying he would appear at the 2018 IFA (see 1708160025), which opens Aug. 31 for a six-day run. Organizers haven't yet announced the slate of 2018 IFA keynoters, and likely won't do so for several months.
MGM's Epix premium network is adding 4K Ultra HD programming to its library later this year, it said Tuesday. It said it's the first broadcast or cable network to stream 4K Ultra HD in its apps.
Global sales of 8K TVs are expected to increase to 5.8 million sets in 2022 from 100,000 this year, with China having more than 60 percent of the total market during the period, said Insight Media and Display Supply Chain Consultants in a Monday report. The Tokyo Olympics, which open in July 2020, will be “a major driver in the development of 8K infrastructure,” with NHK leading the efforts to produce and broadcast Olympic programming to homes, it said. “NHK continues to meet or exceed milestones for 8K broadcasting in 2020, as the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, will mark at least the sixth major world event since 2012 where NHK has demonstrated 8K capture and display,” it said. The display industry “plans for massive expansion of Gen 10.5 capacity,” which will enable “efficient production” of 65- and 75-inch panels for 8K TVs, said the report. Capacity of “Gen 10+” substrates for displays is expected to increase to at least 807 million square feet in 2022 from more than 86 million in 2017, it said. Manufacturing costs for 8K LCD panels will be high, said the report, which estimates it currently costs $1,000 to produce a 65-inch LCD panel for 8K TVs, though it’s expected the cost will be reduced to $595 by 2021.
Sony announced pricing and availability Thursday for 2018 55-, 65- and 75-inch X900F 4K HDR Ultra HD LED TVs it launched at CES. The X900F series’ 4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme, said to have twice the processing power of its predecessor (see 1801090001), has object-based HDR remastering, Super Bit Mapping 4K HDR and dual database processing, said the company. X-Motion Clarity technology is designed to produce smooth action scenes with no loss in brightness, Sony said. The 55-inch ($1,499), 65-inch ($2,299) and 75-inch ($3,999) models will be Dolby Vision-compatible with a firmware update later this year, it said. The X900 Series is designed to be sold with the company’s HT-X9000F Dolby Atmos sound bar. The XBR-X850F lineup is priced at $1,999 (65-inch) and $3,299 (75-inch). Both smart TV series include Android TV and integrate Google Assistant voice control. Users press the mic button on the TV’s remote to ask Google a question or give a command. The TV works with Google Home and Amazon Alexa-based speakers, said Sony. Sony Android TVs were mentioned in a Wednesday Consumer Reports article on cybersecurity and data privacy tests the magazine did with smart TVs (see 1802070046). A Sony Android TV was the only model tested requiring users to agree to a privacy policy and terms of service to complete setup, said the report. Consumers have to click "yes" to Google agreements “even if they don’t plan to connect to the internet,” it said. The report quoted Sony as saying customers concerned about sharing information with Google don’t have to connect their TV to the internet and can use cable or broadcast signals. Sony responded to us after our Wednesday deadline that the company is committed to privacy, security and transparency for the collection, use and disclosure of customer data through its smart TVs. “Our commitment is demonstrated by making consumers aware, during the set-up process, of the Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policies for the Google/Android TV operating system and Samba TV services, as well as the Privacy Policy for Sony smart TVs,” it said. Sony uses an optional opt-in process for acceptance of smart TV privacy policies, it said. The company “does not sell or share any personally identifiable information with third parties in order to allow them to target ads or otherwise market non-Sony products and services to Sony customers,” it said.
Dish Network will deliver NBCUniversal's 4K high dynamic range coverage of the Winter Olympics, it said Wednesday, giving customers with the Hopper 3 DVR access to 2,400 hours of live, on-demand and streaming coverage starting with Friday’s opening ceremony. Dish also will offer a sports hub on channel 147 to help customers navigate NBCU coverage across NBCSN, USA Network, CNBC, the Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA and Dish channel 540 showing 4K HDR Olympics coverage.
The UHD Alliance has “absolutely no intention of letting the trademark lapse or become abandoned” on the “Mobile HDR Premium” certification logo for qualified smartphones, tablets and laptops, President Mike Fidler told us Wednesday. The logo has had “clear usage in the market since early last year,” said Fidler. The trademark “is fully valid and in force and will continue to be an integral part of our premium mobile strategy,” he said. “The Mobile HDR Premium mark will continue to be a very visible part of our marketing communications and anticipated expansion as we move forward into 2018.” Fidler had no explanation why the alliance was unresponsive to a Patent and Trademark Office examiner's report rejecting the application to register Mobile HDR Premium as a certification mark. PTO declared the application dead Dec. 27, but the alliance has two months to petition the agency to revive or reinstate it (see 1801160024 or 1801140001).
The Patent and Trademark Office declared dead the UHD Alliance’s application to register the “Mobile HDR Premium” certification logo for smartphones, tablets and laptops, said the agency’s Dec. 27 abandonment notice. It gives the alliance two months to petition PTO to "revive" or reinstate the application. The alliance introduced the logo and certification program with much fanfare at last year’s Mobile World Congress for high-resolution, high-dynamic-range battery-operated devices because they’re a “primary mode of video consumption” and a “key component of the rapidly expanding Ultra HD ecosystem" (see 1702280045). The alliance filed a Feb. 27 application to register the logo as a "certification mark," but a PTO examiner rejected it in a May 23 notice for several flaws, including its lack of a “disclaimer” that the alliance would make no claim to the “exclusive right” to use the words, “Mobile HDR Premium,” apart from the logo. That's because the wording “merely describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose [of] applicant’s goods and/or services that will be certified, and thus is an unregistrable component of the mark,” said the agency, which gave the alliance six months to appeal the examiner's decision or fix the application's flaws. PTO officially killed the application about a month after the November deadline lapsed without an alliance response. "We have every intention to absolutely retain the trademark for Mobile HDR Premium," alliance President Mike Fidler told us Monday. Fidler, who took the job last summer (see 1708140048), declined further comment until he consulted with alliance trademark attorneys about why the PTO application was allowed to lapse. Mobile HDR Premium still appeared Tuesday as a TM-designated logo for an unregistered, but applied-for certification mark at the top of the home page of the alliance’s consumer-facing website, ExperienceUHD.com, which also listed Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones as the only mobile devices qualifying for the certification.