ASTRA UHD conference


Pinewood for three years now. There has also been significant interest in broadcast trials, with broadcasters learning how they can potentially make UHD signal distribution work. David added: “We’re seeing growing commissions, but not an avalanche. Content creators are interested in UHD, 100%, but it’s still a small proportion who take it to delivery.” The next panel included figures from the


broadcast world, namely BBC TV Productions head of technology Andy King, Atlantic Productions associate creative director Mike Davis and Arqiva director of media and data networks Keith Frost. Andy commented: “I’ve got a real sense of déjà vu about this, having lived through mono to stereo, 3:4 to widescreen, and SD to HD, except it’s all happening quicker.” He continued: “It takes an average of three


years to make a programme from conception through to distribution.” Understandably, then, the UHD conversation has been ongoing behind the scenes for some time. Mike commented: “We’ve been shooting in 5K since 2011, so we’ve gathered lots of content over the past few years, but it’s not been seen in that format. We’ll continue to shoot in 4K and above, even for content that’s not set to be delivered at that standard.” Keith added: “2016 is a year for standards. That infrastructure takes significant investment, and we should remember that UHD is just part of the wider technological landscape. If you’re talking about OTT, you need high speed internet and capacity to shift this content around.” Andy continued: “The audience is so


important. The content has to be right. We say to our film crews, shoot it as high quality as you can, but don’t forget that 99.9% of the audience will see it in HD rather than UHD, so don’t compromise that.”


The retail picture The retail panel featured Samsung head of business development and industrial affairs John Adam, LG home entertainment product and range planning manager Robert Taylor, Hughes Electrical managing director Robert Hughes, DTG chief executive Richard Lindsay- Davies and ERT editor Sean Hannam. Of the manufacturers, chair Chris Forrester


asked: “Are you the tail wagging the dog? Should you have waited and come out after standards had all been agreed?” John commented: “I don’t think we should


have done nothing. We’ve seen the market develop. We saw the launch of Ultra High Definition sports here in the UK with BT. We saw increased investment in UHD from Netflix and Amazon. We saw, and we still see, UHD phase one service launches around the world, albeit not here in the UK. Only yesterday in our facility in Staines, we had our first UHD Blu-ray player carrying the UHD logo, purchased in a local shop, playing a UHD Blu-ray with the


BBC TV Productions head of technology Andy King revealed the BBC has long been commissioning works shot to UHD standard but very few consumers would be able to receive such broadcasts


UHD logo, played on a TV with the same logo. The UHD infrastructure is growing.” Robert Taylor agreed. “We’ve seen the market


really push forward in the last 12 months, in some cases more than our expectations,” he explained. “The introduction of HDR has been a massive theme for the market. We’ve talked about additional broadcast support; don’t forget Sky’s plan to roll out UHD and a new generation of set top boxes with Sky Q, but we’ve also seen incredible levels of investment from the OTT players to deliver 4K and HDR titles. Having devices that can play this back is what we owe to the consumer.” However, Robert Hughes suggested that the UHD message is not as compelling at store level as it might be hoped. “It might disappoint you, but customers are not coming in asking for a 4K TV,” he said. “Generally, they’re coming in saying, ‘I’ve been given the go-ahead to get a bigger TV’. For them the decision is perhaps OLED versus LED, or curved versus flat, or screen size against budget. “We will put 4K content up as best we can,


but we’re not selling the immediacy of 4K content; we’d love to, but for a lot of people, saying it’s on Netflix or it’s on Amazon is not a very powerful message. You want to say, ‘It’s on BBC, free to air’. Until that happens, we’ll get the early adopters, but as a retailer, we make our money supplying the whole mass market.” Richard repeated the call for standards to


be set. “One of the key things for us is, as we sit here today, the UK has fallen behind a lot of other European countries on broadcast standards for UHD,” he explained. “It’s time the UK made some decisions and committed to some UHD standards. “Until we get significant deployment of


technology that is interoperable, TVs that are going to work on these new broadcast standards, broadcasters won’t be in a position to launch services. They need deployment in the millions to make it worthwhile.”


July/August 2016 Communicating key technology messages


often comes down to retail staff. Robert Taylor commented: “We need to focus not just on point of sale material, but the good quality members of staff that retain that knowledge. They’re the ones that sell the high ticket items.” With the challenges of the market, there


is a danger that fewer retailers will remain committed to it. “We’ve gone from a 10 million market to a six million market,” Robert Hughes commented. “That’s a big loss. We’ve lost a lot of retailers and a lot of suppliers in this space. There is very little margin in the industry. There are 101 reasons why that is the case, but we have very few suppliers, very few retailers, and none of us, truthfully, are making much money out of the sale of a panel. “We do sell a lot of product, but it’s very slim


margins. The reasons retailers are saying it’s good is because it’s easier to sell things around TV. I always tell our staff, the television is like the sun. You’ve got to sell the sun, but actually the interest is in all the planets around it; the soundbar, the wall mount, a multiroom sound system, all of that is what we’re trying to sell and where we make money. The TV is a means to that end.”


He added: “You had the switch to flat panels, and the digital switchover, which created those market peaks, and on the replacement cycle those should be coming up for replacement next year and the year after. If we have UHD standards in place, with UHD broadcasters, by 2018 we might see a pickup in our market. I’m telling our staff, don’t lose faith with television. We’ve got a lot of staff in a lot of shops who would rather be selling a premium washing machine than a television, and that’s sad.” While broadcasters and manufacturers continue to improve services and technology, the industry must also make sure that there is sufficient value in the market to keep selling TVs viable.


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