Sony: First Live 4K Football or Baseball Game Will Be a Milestone
4K is coming to live sports, and when it does consumers will really start paying attention. At the recent Streaming Media West conference in sunny Huntington Beach, California, Nick Colsey, vice president of business development for Sony Electronics, explained why that event will be a milestone.
"We've showed live 4K demos. We had one at NAB. It's definitely possible today, and that was over a fiber link from New York to Las Vegas, but with the last mile going through a standard cable MVPD's infrastructure. It's doable right now," Colsey said. "That's what's really going to open it up—the first football games or baseball games that are shown live in 4K, that's going to be a real milestone in the adoption of 4K."
Viewers might be surprised at just how much premium 4K content is already out there. How established is the idea that 4K is now a filming essential?, the moderator asked.
"I think we're close. We're pretty much there in the minds of many cinematographers and filmmakers," Colsey noted. "As of today, you can go out and buy our 4K media player which, as well as supporting Netflix 4K and eventually Amazon 4K, it also has our own Video Unlimited 4K service on that, and that has 245 native 4K pieces on there, about 70 movies, 110 TV episodes, and various other short-form content…That's a pretty big start."
For more on the challenges to creating a 4K ecosystem, watch the full session below.
The 4K Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges In The 4K Workflow
This session will look at the opportunities and challenges in delivering 4K streaming across the entire workflow and supply chain, as well as discuss the 4K timeline and real dates for 4K deployment. Speakers will discuss content creation and editing (including remastering), encoding (including HEVC profile definition), streaming (HLS vs. MPEG-DASH), CDN and network bandwidth cost and capacity issues, and client-side (i.e. device platform) issues. Attendees will hear how 4K streaming compares to other delivery methods, including physical media (4K Blu-ray) and 4K over pay-TV.
Keith Wymbs, CMO - Elemental Technologies
Nick Colsey, VP, Business Development - Sony Electronics
Kanaan Jemili, CEO - DivX
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