opinion: UHD TV Ultra HD; a clear future?


Retailers need to ensure they are profiting from the boom in the UHD TV market, writes techUK market engagement and membership director Paul Hide


W


hen the first television programmes were broadcast back in 1929 they were most


definitely low definition, at 30 lines of information and viewed on televisions of no more than 10 inches in diameter. Innovation quickly followed, the first broadcasts defined as ‘High Definition’ took place in the UK in 1936 from Alexandra Palace, London, delivering 405 lines of picture information. In today’s digital world we have three levels of definition; Standard (720 x 525 pixels), High (1280 x 720 pixels) and Ultra High (3840 x 1260 pixels), also known as 4K. SD, HD and UHD are all broadcast daily with a large amount of viewing remaining in the SD format; perhaps hardly surprising when the first channels you tend to find within your EPG are still SD quality and BBC regional news is only broadcast via the SD stream, forcing you away from the HD channel when you want to watch local news programmes. The UHD TV market is growing year on year by 40% in volume and 25% in value (GfK, Jan- August 2018) so that is very encouraging. UK customers have purchased over five million TVs in the last 12 months, at a total value of £2.4 billion. More than 50% of the total TV


volume and 75% of the value is now UHD. Average screen sizes continue to grow, with 55in becoming the most popular main room size. All of the TV volume and value growth is now in 50in plus screen sizes, GfK reports. Previous forecasts that large screen viewing will decline, to be replaced by video consumption via smartphones and tablets, has proved to be wrong. Yes, mobile screen viewing is on the rise, but it is in addition to, rather than instead of, viewers’ continued love of a big screen home experience. Average unit sale prices are also on the


rise after many years of stagnation/decline, helping to put more £s in retailers' tills. Manufacturer innovation in enhanced screen performance technologies, larger screen sizes in compact frame formats and stunning designs are all contributing to a healthy consumer appetite to upgrade. Picture resolution alone is often not enough


to show an impactful difference between UHD resolution and HD resolution on a TV of less than 60in. Recent developments in High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) deliver improvements to the picture in terms of greater contrast and colour, delivering pure blacks and more lifelike colours resulting in a picture upgrade that is


both noticeable in its improvement versus HD and impactful whatever the screen size. It is less well known that HDR and WCG


technologies will also deliver improvements in SD and HD content. However, from a marketing perspective, there is little value in making the non-UHD formats look better than UHD, so understandably the industry focus is to apply these technologies only to the highest resolution format. Of course, there is no benefit in having UHD/4K hardware capability if compatible content is not available. Whilst it is unlikely that we’ll ever see UHD content broadcast via digital terrestrial television, as bandwidth capacity is in short supply, content is plentiful via subscription-based satellite and IP content providers such as Sky, BT, Virgin, Netflix and Amazon. The BBC are also delivering increasing amounts of UHD content via iPlayer. And the future? Is 8K resolution just


UHD TV displays, especially for those models benefitting from High Dynamic Range and Wide Colour Gamut technology, make for compelling demonstrations in store


December 2018 / January 2019


around the corner? Whilst some noise about this format has been made in Korea and Japan, 8K has no consumer awareness in the UK/Europe. It's far too early to consider 8K as a commercially viable consumer offering and why risk damaging a healthy 4K market by suggesting to viewers that they delay purchases and wait for the next ‘new thing’? My view is that the jury is still very much out as to whether 8K is a format with a clear consumer value. Try to push it too early, without content, and premiums for 8K TVs will disappear quickly, eroding profit margins for all in the supply chain. In summary, the TV market remains in rude health, largely thanks to the ever-growing appetite for larger screens, sizes that benefit the most from UHD content. You can blow a customer away with a 4K HDR super large screen demo and close the sale now, with the added opportunities of selling a home theatre solution so that the audio experience equals the visual one. Sales are booming; are you getting your share?


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