AT&T's Quest to Drive 4K HDR Adoption

Every few years, TV makers push a new gear up of designs and higher definition viewing capabilities to bulldoze what we in the manufacture call TV "refresh rates."

Opinions When the Us switched from analog to digital broadcast signals in 2009, the Telly industry got a huge gift. Analog-to-digital convertors were bachelor, but slimmer designs enticed consumers to buy digital TVs. Past 2022, the marketplace was flooded with cheaper TVs; it was a very profitable time for the TV industry.

The next large affair arrived with HD TVs, but the missing link was and always is content; the historic period-old chicken and egg problem. With Hard disk, TV producers and content makers moved relatively quickly. Hard disk began to option up steam by 2022-2013 and today, 85 percent of U.s. homes accept at to the lowest degree one HD Tv set.

In 2022, the Idiot box industry began pushing 4K, which delivers four times the resolution of an HD Television receiver. Again, the goal of the Idiot box industry is to employ 4K, and more recently 4K HDR, to drive some other refresh wheel, which helps TV makers sell more sets and continue to be profitable.

1 mode to get consumers more than interested in new Idiot box standards is sports. Sony used the FIFA Globe Loving cup in South Africa to launch its HD TVs, and AT&T used the same strategy with 4K HDR broadcasts at the AT&T Pebble Embankment Pro-AM.

I had the privilege of going to Pebble Beach for this year'south Pro-AM and got to view the very impressive broadcast operation. As you know, AT&T purchased DirectTV and was broadcasting its 4K HDR coverage to a channel on DirectTV. But AT&T was also the 4K HDR broadcast partner for CBS, which had the broader rights to the AT&T Pro AM and delivered CBS' 4K HDR programming during the tournament.

John Ward, SVP of Content Operations for AT&T, is responsible for sports operations and content direction for AT&T's Direct TV and U-Verse video platforms, equally well as media operations at AT&T's Dallas Headquarters. He is also responsible for all of AT&T's original amusement content.

Ward showed me how a sports broadcast team works inside their trailers during a golf game tournament. They had their 4K HDR cameras positioned on the grade to deliver stunning images to anyone with a 4K TV. As Ward pointed out, with 4K HDR "yous are getting an paradigm that is as close to an individual seeing the golfers and the surrounding expanse as if one was at the upshot in person."

Eventually, 5G volition exist used to evangelize 4K HDR programs, a potential game changer. He anticipates that with 5G, people will be able to receive 4K HDR content on smartphones, tablets, and mobile TVs that will support 4K HDR images. This is why AT&T has spent hundreds of millions of dollars investing in 4K HDR circulate equipment and various mobile broadcast facilities.

The side by side big crash-land volition exist to 8K TVs; that push volition first in 2022. The goad this time will be the Tokyo Olympics and Sony and many other TV makers that showed 8K TVs at CES 2022 volition start the refresh button afresh. Until then, AT&T's side by side big 4K HDR broadcast will be at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia in April.

Virtually Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin is recognized equally 1 of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists roofing the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981 and has provided inquiry to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the manufacture including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a curtailed, futuristic analyst, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years earlier it hit the marketplace, and identifying multimedia as a major trend in written reports equally early on as 1984. He has authored major industry studies on PC, portable computing, …