4D TELEVISION SETS MAY BE HOT — BUT WHERE ARE THE 4D SHOWS?

Ultra High Definition TV — sometimes called Ultra TV or UDT or 4K — television sets may have been all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, but don’t expect to see your favorite TV shows using the technology for some time, broadcast and cable executives have told Advertising Age magazine. Scott Teissler, who oversees digital strategy for Turner Broadcasting, told the trade publication “The video quality is impressive but the business economics and technical delivery of 4K files and signals need to be solved before this can be scaled across the industry.” The biggest problem, it seems, is finding a way to transmit pictures with four times the definition over current broadcast and cable systems. “That’s a lot of content to push into the pipe, Elizabeth Huszarik, head of media research for Warner Bros., told AdAge. Besides, several executives observed, most people don’t really notice much of a difference between HDTV and UTV unless they are viewing very large TV screens, and, many ask, in the case of most television shows, does that difference in technical quality make much of a difference in the overall experience anyway?