The
Consumer Electronics Show isn't known for producing cognitive dissonance (sore
feet are another story). But walking the show floor and keeping half an eye and
ear tuned to the media frenzy that follows in its wake, it wasn't hard to find
it in abundance -- at least around television.
Take
what was arguably the show's biggest trend: the emergence of 4K (aka Ultra HD)
televisions. From the established TV leaders like Samsung, LG and Panasonic to newcomers
to the North American market such as Hisense, enormous 4K TVs dominated the
show floor. Sure, they're priced for the one percent (Sony's, for instance,
will set you back a cool $12,000), but TV manufacturers are clearly banking on
4K to generate another upgrade cycle now that 3D TV has stalled out.
Yet
when it came to pay TV providers and the companies, like Cisco and Akamai,
tasked with actually delivering video content to the home, 4K was not on
anyone's lips. In fact, the discussion wasn't about how to ram higher quality
video into the home but how to shrink down and disperse existing HD video to
multiple, lower resolution, mobile screens.
Dish's
big CES news, for instance, was the addition of its Sling transcoding
technology to the Hopper DVR, allowing subscribers to access live TV and DVR
content on mobile devices away from home. Cisco's introduction of Videoscape
Unity -- the next iteration of its video delivery infrastructure and service
platform -- focused exclusively on personalized content and "second
screen" functions.
If 4K
is the next big thing, in other words, someone forgot to tell some of the key
players.
There
were several exceptions, of course. Broadcom announced its first ever chip to
support the HEVC/H.265 codec -- compression technology deemed essential for 4K
broadcasts. European satellite firm Eutelsat also unveiled its first
"demo" channel broadcasting 4K content.
Yet it
was evident that the immediate future of TV has nothing to do with huge,
ultra-crisp displays but how to incorporate those tiny, less-than-optimal LCDs
on smartphones and tablets into the viewing experience.
