4K-UHD Summit 2016: industry unclear on who pays for the 4K fiesta
| 11 November 2016
The second 4K-UHD Summit in Seville has kicked off, showing not only a local TV industry with a strong commitment to Ultra HD but one asking searching questions as to how demand is monetised.
4k uhd summit 1Maria Jesús Almazor director of southern territories for Telefónica and in charge of the area’s Movistar TV offering, revealed that the Spanish national telco was driving up its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network and that it would pass 16 million homes by the end of the year. This she said would provide a robust and reliable enough base for the most demanding of applications, of which 4KTV was a prime example.
The executive revealed that Movistar would ramp up its Ultra HD offer over the next year, offering not only the required bandwidth within bundles for 4K services but also developing in-house content for millennial users.
“Subscribers demand quality in content. We will develop 4K technology to enrich the user experience,” she said. “We have flexible content consumption.” Movistar, Almazor said, would be 4k uhd summit 2taking the words of its president at heart for Movistar to be ‘house of emotion’ and that its strategy was 4K for everyone. It was planning eight to ten original series a year from 2017, the first of which would be a thriller series set in Seville which will begin shooting before the end of 2016.
Almazor also offered live football as a key 4K use case, noting that the company made its first foray in the area with El Clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona in November 2015. Yet despite enjoying success, she cautioned that such services needed to be offered at a ‘reasonable’ cost, still a thorny issue within the industry. The key, she said, for Telefónica was bundling. “A significant amount of TV services in Spain [are available] only as part of a bundle. It is clear that telco and media are part of the same business. 4K presents a revenue opportunity for Telefónica. There will be a significant increase in net traffic and [4K will be] a driver for FTTH take-up.”
Yet taking up the cost issue, Cellnex product manager Xavi Redón, argued at the 4K-UHD Summit that advertising needed to support the cost of the broadcaster and that there needs to be, for the user at least, some free TV environment. “Broadcasters should invest in content,” he said. “When it’s reaching the user, the users are demanding more quality and want to have it. Even if you are not broadcasting in 4K, [that is transmitting in HD] you should be producing in 4K because of economies [of scale]. The 4k party needs to start right now and let’s include it wrapped up in distribution.”
| 11 November 2016
The second 4K-UHD Summit in Seville has kicked off, showing not only a local TV industry with a strong commitment to Ultra HD but one asking searching questions as to how demand is monetised.
4k uhd summit 1Maria Jesús Almazor director of southern territories for Telefónica and in charge of the area’s Movistar TV offering, revealed that the Spanish national telco was driving up its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network and that it would pass 16 million homes by the end of the year. This she said would provide a robust and reliable enough base for the most demanding of applications, of which 4KTV was a prime example.
The executive revealed that Movistar would ramp up its Ultra HD offer over the next year, offering not only the required bandwidth within bundles for 4K services but also developing in-house content for millennial users.
“Subscribers demand quality in content. We will develop 4K technology to enrich the user experience,” she said. “We have flexible content consumption.” Movistar, Almazor said, would be 4k uhd summit 2taking the words of its president at heart for Movistar to be ‘house of emotion’ and that its strategy was 4K for everyone. It was planning eight to ten original series a year from 2017, the first of which would be a thriller series set in Seville which will begin shooting before the end of 2016.
Almazor also offered live football as a key 4K use case, noting that the company made its first foray in the area with El Clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona in November 2015. Yet despite enjoying success, she cautioned that such services needed to be offered at a ‘reasonable’ cost, still a thorny issue within the industry. The key, she said, for Telefónica was bundling. “A significant amount of TV services in Spain [are available] only as part of a bundle. It is clear that telco and media are part of the same business. 4K presents a revenue opportunity for Telefónica. There will be a significant increase in net traffic and [4K will be] a driver for FTTH take-up.”
Yet taking up the cost issue, Cellnex product manager Xavi Redón, argued at the 4K-UHD Summit that advertising needed to support the cost of the broadcaster and that there needs to be, for the user at least, some free TV environment. “Broadcasters should invest in content,” he said. “When it’s reaching the user, the users are demanding more quality and want to have it. Even if you are not broadcasting in 4K, [that is transmitting in HD] you should be producing in 4K because of economies [of scale]. The 4k party needs to start right now and let’s include it wrapped up in distribution.”
