“After fits and starts, it is starting to appear as if the long-awaited 4K TV revolution may be coming to pass, to the delight of TV makers,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “It has certainly reached a critical mass, with more and more low-cost sets supporting the new standard. So I noticed a Samsung 40-inch 4K set for $347.99 at Target, and that’s not the cheapest price you can get. Walmart was offering a no-name (Sceptre) 43-inch 4K TV for $279.99… It has become more and more likely that most any TV you buy this holiday season will be 4K.”
“There’s very little such content available. DirecTV, now part of the AT&T empire, offers some. Such online services as Amazon Instant Video and Netflix stream a small number of shows in the higher resolution format, but you’ll want to check the requirements for minimum broadband speeds,” Steinberg writes. “For Netflix, it’s 15-20 megabits, and you’ll need a lot more if someone in your household accesses the Internet at the same time. I suspect the real minimum is 30-40 megabits.”
“Yet another content source is 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray, such as the Samsung UBD-K8500/ZA, which sells for $209.99 at Walmart,” Steinberg writes. “There’s a small number of Ultra HD discs available.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Amazon and Netflix 4K content looks amazing on our Sony 4K TVs. (There’s no Samsung-labeled crap here and there never will be.)
A 4K-capable Apple TV would be most welcome. In fact, it would have been welcome last year, yet it’s inexplicably AWOL this year, too. In TV, Apple certainly doesn’t lead.
