Super Hi-Vision: UHD-TV

Super Hi-Vision UHD Theater - Image courtesy: NHK Japan

While everyone's still trying to replace their DVD player with Blu-ray and their standard def TVs with HDTVs, the industry already is worrying about the market for UHD — Ultra-High Definition.



Apparently, UHD will debut in the next five to 10 years (if that seems like a long time, remember how long HDTV was being talked about and then how it felt when it "suddenly" hit), but is expected to take a long time before it reaches a "critical mass," deemed to be taking up residence in 5 percent of households globally, according to market research firm In-Stat.



In-Stat's study concluded that high resolution digital cinema would drive consumers to UHDTVs so they could experience the same quality on their home television sets and that broadcasters would start providing content in the lower-resolution UHD by 2017 and the high-resolution technology by 2022. The market in Europe is expected to hit 5 percent penetration by 2021 and then zip up to more than 28 percent by 2025.  According to the In-Stat survey, UHDTV, aka Super Hi-Vision will follow a similar track of adopt as HDTV did:

The rising popularity of high resolution digital cinema will expose consumers to high resolution content.  Then, early UHDTVs will be made available to provide a digital cinema high resolution viewing experience in the home.   Ultimately, broadcasters will start offering UHD content to an addressable market of UHDTVs, between 2017 and 2022.