Gadgetory

an update to 4k TV which we talked about in our very first episode of this show back in September of 2013 and back then we were talking about the 4k TVs themselves now as always the conversation turns from the gear to what you're going to get on it to the content welcome back well the new LG TPS will be able to watch 4k television from Netflix with a great user interface on webOS and it's just amazing set of progress play ladies and gentlemen feast your eyes when I'm calling the reference standard for 4k going into video is really important to Amazon right now they've been focusing a lot on it lately because it means Britney viewers back into their ecosystem I don't know whether to be proud or terrified Netflix is first out with 4k streaming they've got their own show house of cards out an unlimited release to just some of their streaming plugins not all of them and they're showing a variety of those kind of lush nature porn films which is ironic is that's how HDTV got started - almost 20 years ago samsung continues to build their Smart TV platform which is built into their televisions and their blu-ray players as a place to come to get the content they have deals with Fox DirecTV Comcast and Amazon for future 4k streaming and of course they'll also pull in Netflix 4k speaking of Amazon that'll be the next big shoe that drops because they've commissioned at least four new series to be shot in 4k and of course streamed that way look for that to coincide with a new version of their fire TV streaming box that'll have the ability to pull in and decode that 4k signal and then spin it out on a cable to your 4k television and I expect they're going to tie that with a certain level of Prime membership owning that box and maybe getting special access to their in-house produced shows at this point I bet you're cringing thinking wait a minute what's all this 4k continents coming out I'm going to do to my poor old home broadband connection which struggles today to deliver an HD stream well that's where the good news comes in from the codec side of the story most these providers with their new content are using the h.265 codec it's related to h.264 not trying to glaze your eyes over with numbers here but that latter one is probably already on your home HD camcorder so it's a cousin of that the dark horse is Google's vp9 codec this of course will be used to create 4k streams coming off of YouTube but they've also got LG Panasonic and Sony promising to use it in their televisions as well we don't expect those products or a lot of YouTube 4k streaming to be taking until about 2015 now if you're wondering where the disks are in all this so is the rest of the world the folks that run the blu-ray technology say they have an extension coming that will allow the blu-ray format to stretch if you will to carry and then decode 4k content I don't think it's going to be a major player we've moved too far past the physical media era and it's clear right now the Internet can do at least a credible job of delivering 4k streams by the way a benefit to all this codec stuff that you're not going to hear as much about is the possibility of getting near bufferless streaming at standard HD levels because when you apply h.265 or vp9 to what we're already looking at it gets a lot smaller and with the vp9 codec in particular google says it could be instant start for standard HD not too far in the future that'd be nice