Ok, so now that you have your 4K camera, what do you do with your 4K footage? You could scale it down for web in 1080p, or upload to YouTube in 4K. Sure, that’s one option, but what about home viewing options.
Unfortunately, when it comes to 4K broadcast content your options are quite limited. Broadcasters are really lagging behind in their delivery of 4K content, as evidenced by the heavily pixellated matches on non-HD channels on my 4 your old 40″ HD TV.
I am amazed that in mid-2014, 90% of the channels on my TV are in SD?! I can see football matches in HD (720p at that) on only 2 channels at the moment!
Most broadcasters haven’t even began broadcasting in HD, and here we have 4K knocking on the door with 4 times the resolution and probably twice the bandwidth required to stream.
I do believe that most broadcasters have the capacity to upgrade in the near future, but I think they are quite hesitant to make the jump into 4K for the simple fact that they are heavily invested in an HD infrastructure. But that’s a topic for a whole new post, so rant over.
You may not be able to watch the FIFA World Cup 2014 from Brazil in 4K, but you may be able to spice up your home viewing experience via other outlets.
We recently did a post on Netflix, who recently began streaming popular shows like “Breaking Bad” in Ultra HD or Quad HD, as some refer to it. Still, as it was the case with HD TV’s 10 years ago, 4K TV’s started popping up at first at higher prices, but not until recently, have they started to come down to more reasonable and affordable levels. In this post, we’ll go over some options for 4K TV’s that won’t break the bank.
40″ and 49″ inch models from budget 4K TV maker TCL
China’s UHD TV manufacturer TCL Corporation introduced earlier this week their new line up of 4K TV’s for 2014. Their line-up includes a 40-inch TV for just under $500, which is an impressively attractive price point for the market. The budget model 40UE5700 will retail for a dollar or two below $500 and will feature 120Hz refresh rate for minimizing motion blur, and four HDMI inputs for connecting other devices to the set.
4K televisions have been declining in price since the end of 2013, but it seems like TCL are pushing the market aggressively in terms of affordability.
TCL’s new line-up of 4K TVs will also include a premium range of TV’s under the model range UH9500 starting with the 55″ at $800 appropriately named 55UH9500 and two larger models – the 65″ 65UH9500 for $1,300, and the 85-inch 85UH9500 for $8,000.
The 85″ 4K monster from TCL
All models in their new line-up have are capable of UHD resolution of 3840 x 2160, exactly 4 x the pixel count of full HD (1080p) screens. In addition, all models feature multiple HDMI 2.0 inputs.
The premium models also come with a H.265 HEVC decoder and will also feature a slim bezel with “ultra-thin” design, dual-band wireless on-board connectivity. At the heart of each model of the premium UH9500 range beats a dual-core processing unit combined with Quad-Core graphics.
The full line-up is set to be released in the US by the end 2014.
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