If you’ve been blown away by the demonstrations of ultra-HD television (UHDTV) at recent NAB Shows and other industry gatherings, you’ll have some time to wait until UHDTV achieves critical mass with 5 percent household penetration, according to a new forecast from research firm In-Stat.
Regardless, the next five to 10 years will provide service providers, technology firms and media companies a prolonged period during which they can experiment with business models and strategies to make UHD a reality. As originally proposed, UHD offers two levels of resolution: 7680 x 4320 pixels (8K resolution) and 3840 x 2160 (4K resolution). High-resolution digital cinema will expose consumers to high-resolution content. Then, early UHDTVs will be made available to provide a digital cinema high-resolution viewing experience in the home. Ultimately, broadcasters will start offering UHD content to an addressable market of UHDTVs between 2017 and 2022, the research firm predicts.
New research from In-Stat projects that the total installed base of UHDTVs won’t approach 5 percent household penetration in Europe until 2021. It will increase to more than 28.2 percent by 2025, the researcher says. In Asia-Pacific, Japan will be among the early adopter countries.
