Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

New deal means the future just got a whole lot brighter for current 4K TV owners

Kris Wouk
By

samsung SUHD TV 4k
Rich Shibley/Digital Trends
When most people kick back and stream a movie, they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what it takes to squeeze all that video over the Internet and into their home, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If they suddenly had to buy a new device just to watch the same old content, on the other hand, they probably would take notice.

With the increased resolution bump in 4K TVs, a new codec was needed to compress all those extra pixels, and currently the codec of choice is H.265 or HEVC (high efficiency video codec). The future of the codec was in jeopardy, however, as the HEVC Advance group, which represents the codec’s patent holders, wanted to charge a hefty sum for its use.

Recommended Videos

HEVC Advance has announced that it has significantly reduced the royalty rates it charges for use of the codec, which is good new for current 4K TV owners. If the codec were too expensive for companies to use, both content providers like Netflix and Amazon as well as TV manufacturers like Samsung and LG would be forced to find an alternative. This wouldn’t be much of a problem for customers who hadn’t upgraded to 4K yet, but early adopters would be left in the dust.

Related

“After our initial pricing announcement we reengaged with key segments of the HEVC community, including content owners and distributors as well as device manufacturers, to better align our licensing structure and rates with the industry’s long-term technology goals,” HEVC Advance CEO Peter Moller said in a press release (PDF link) issued by the group. “We are pleased with the results of our industry engagement and confident that the revised pricing structure and rates balance the needs of both HEVC users and patent owners.”

In addition to cutting rates, the new agreement also waives rights for public and non-profit TV broadcasting as well as over-the-air broadcasts. The revised agreement also sets a cap, which can reach as high as $40 million per year depending on how the service is used, but is still significantly cheaper than it had been.

This doesn’t mean that companies like Netflix won’t continue to work on their own compression, but it should mean that you won’t need to replace your 4K smart TV in a year.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kris Wouk
Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
YouTube TV finally gets the 4K Plus plan’s price right
YouTube TV 4K Plus channel.

The price of the 4K Plus add-on for YouTube TV always has been a bit weird. Technically the add-on has been $20 a month since its launch in mid-2021, but subscribers have always gotten the first year of service for half that. And that will remain true come April 2023, when the YouTube TV base plan goes up to $73 a month and the add-on changes price to $10 a month, with the first year of service at $5 a month.

That's a much more palatable price for an add-on that's absolutely an extravagance.

Read more
Why aren’t sports in 4K and HDR? It’s harder than you think
Fox Sports Camera

I don’t know if we can pinpoint a moment at which 4K content became normalized -- it sort of snuck up on us -- but today 4K and 4K HDR content is not hard to come by. Netflix, Amazon, Disney +, HBO Max – they all have it, and plenty of it. So we’re starting to get used to it. We’re hungry for 4K and we expect it on our plate. This has a lot of folks wondering: Why is it so hard to get sports in 4K?

Three years ago, I was fortunate enough to fly down to Florida to go behind the scenes with Fox Sports as it delivered the first-ever 4K HDR Super Bowl broadcast. Not only did I get to watch the Fox team do its live daytime broadcasts from South Beach, but I also got to go to roam around Hard Rock Stadium, where I had totally unfettered access to the stadium and all the cameras in it – as well as a massive broadcast compound. I got to go in every production truck, I saw every step of the production, from the cameras to the outbound feeds, and I got every question I asked answered by some of the top video production pros in the business. I learned so much while I was there.

Read more
Samsung shows off the first two 77-inch QD-OLED 4K TVs at CES 2023
Samsung S95C QD-OLED 4K TV.

Samsung was the first company to show off a 4K TV based on QD-OLED technology at CES 2022, and now, at CES 2023 it has unveiled two new QD-OLED models -- the S95C Samsung OLED and S90C Samsung OLED -- and each will be available as 77-inch models. Both will also be offered in 55- and 65-inch sizes.  The news came one day after Samsung Display confirmed it would show its next-gen "QD-OLED 2023" panel at the show in a 77-inch size.

When QD-OLED-based TVs debuted in 2022, Samsung and Sony revealed the first two 4K TVs models within hours of each other: the Samsung S95B and the Sony A95K. Both TVs proved to be absolutely stunning in terms of picture quality, leaving our reviewer no choice but to award them a rare 10/10 rating. But the TVs themselves weren't especially large; only 55- and 65-inch sizes were introduced.

Read more