4K Summit: Western Europe, with sports as killer app, to drive Ultra HD – eventually


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Editor

| 07 November 2015





It may take ‘a little time longer’ than expected to take off but Ultra HD will indeed reach its expected commercial, says SNL Kagan analyst Mohammed Hamza.


Speaking at the 4K Summit in Seville, Hamza told a packed audience that the industry needed to be patient regarding Ultra HD’s commercial development even if it were pretty clear that technologically the 4K ecosystem was in place.

Hamza invited delegates to look at HD development before they turned their attention to Ultra HD. He noted that at present 60% of Western European homes were HD-enabled and that this would rise to around 78% by 2024.

Even in what is regarded as the key market for HDTV, the UK, pay-TV giant Sky had only 55% of its user base switched on to HD while in other leading countries 41 out of 121 of the channels offered by Canal+ in Spain were in HD. Moreover looking at the key distribution platform for high-quality services, the analyst observed that of the 5,800 channels delivered by satellite leader Eutelsat only 6,090 were in HD. It was, he added, a similar story with SES where 31% of the 6,963 channels were high-definition in nature.

Despite warning that fundamentally broadcasters had a job on their hands with HDTV, Hamza assured that that Ultra HD was enjoying greater momentum than HDTV at its comparable period in development.

In terms of hard numbers, Western Europe is the current Ultra HD leader with 11 channels to date. Hamza told the audience that they should bear in mind that this was far in excess of the number of channels that SNL Kagan had expected. He described SES’s bullish prediction of 1,000 Ultra HD channels by 2025 as ‘not that unrealistic’ driven by the fact that all of the key technological pieces of the market’s ecosystem were already in place.

On a cautionary note, Hamza pointed to the fact that essential equipment prices would still be a key determinant as to market development. He noted that premium was the only model that really made sense but that making the required equipment, particularly STBs, would be a painful and expensive process.

VOD he insisted was going to be a key driver for Ultra HD in the mid-term at least and OTT was also presenting an early opportunity for 4K content providers. In his opinion the platform allowed operators such as Netflix and Amazon to experiment more and be ‘more picky' with titles that could attract premium pricing. He also noted that YouTube supported Ultra HD.

Concluding, he described sports as the sole driver for linear 4K but also warned that the current debate regarding HDR, in particular standards could delay roll-out of services. Cuts in PSB broadcasters’ budgets – in particular at the BBC – could also put a brake on roll-out. But in all he insisted that momentum would grow. “There is no need for the market to wait for linear," he assured. “There is enough VOD content. 4K sports will be the killer app with the 2016 Olympics and 2018 World cup key. “