During today’s earnings call, DirecTV’s CEO and President Michael D. White announced they will be launching their own 4K Video On Demand (VOD) 4K service “before the end of the year”. White also spoke about the rest of DirecTV’s ambitious 4K plans.
The details appear after the break.
White told the audience he expects in “2015 or early ’16 to be able to stream live content” in Ultra High Definition (3840 x 2160) resolution.
To accomplish this depends on the successful launching of 2 new satellites for the US market during the next 18 months. The new birds “will unlock a tremendous amount of incremental capacity for our system, and we fully expect some of that capacity to be used to be able to stream 4K content” White said.
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When asked if the quality of service will be better that it is with cable HD right now, White replied “I don’t — I haven’t seen — I know Comcast is working on it, … and I haven’t seen their execution. I’m sure they’ll do a great job, but we certainly expect fully, with the 2 new satellites going up, it’s going to give us a unique advantage of capacity to be able to provide a great customer experience. And as I said, we actually hope, even before we get those satellites up, to do (4K) VOD before the end of the year.”
White added DirecTV is working on securing native 4K content as one of the challenges in being able to launch 4K VOD and live satellite broadcasts.
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You need a 4k box to see it!!!
All this means to me is that the case for buying a 4K tv is that one should simply wait – no rush. Still at least 2 years.
Best Buy near by has UHD Samsung and Sony televisions on DirecTV feed being upscaled to 4k and it looks pretty good from a normal viewing distance.
none of the cable/sat providers can even get 1080p
right I guess 4 K will have 4K arifacts as well
at least the artifacts will be more details close up
This is great news. I love the way 4K looks in the stores but was waiting for Directv to implement. VOD is still a limited start.
“2015 or early ’16 to be able to stream live content” Does this mean network tv will be in 4k? This will be a slow rollout until networks start 4k broadcasts.
“DirecTV is working on securing native 4K content as one of the challenges in being able to launch 4K VOD ” Apparently not much native 4K.
Will still wait until at least the end of 2014. OLED 4K just coming out later this year.
BTW the various major network (who use 108i or 720P) and other broadcast channels on Directv are not even 1080P even 10+ years after HDTV implemented. Not sure how good 10801 or 720P looks when upconverted on 4K sets.