4K Netflix 2014 Launches Next Month

4K Netflix Launches Next month: Is 2014 the year that 4K finally reaches mass market?

4K Netflix 2014 Launches Next Month

Netflix has announced that it will begin streaming Ultra HD 4K video in 2014, with season two of Netflix’s own House of Cards (February 14) being the first and only show (for now) that will be available in 4K quality. With Netflix’s huge presence in streaming video (and increasingly production), combined with news that Amazon Studios intends to shoot all of its original shows in in 4K, YouTube’s support of 4K, and the rapid march towards affordable 4K TVs, it’s now not a case of if 4K will go mainstream — it’s just a question of when.
According to Netflix, House of Cards season two will be shot and edited for 4K (3840×2160) streaming. At this time, it sounds like this will be the only full show/movie available in 4K. ”There will be some additional pieces, but initially it’ll be a set of sample offerings, not a big part of the catalogue,” Netflix’s Neil Hunt told Stuff. Amazon will be shooting all of its 2014 original drama and comedy series in 4K, but there’s currently no word on how or when that 4K content will be delivered to viewers — and really, in both Amazon and Netflix’s case, this is the key point right now.

While there are already a handful of 4K TVs and displays on the market, it is — rather ironically — currently very hard to display 4K content on them. In some cases, you can insert a USB stick (loaded up with 4K content) into the TV. The easier option is to connect a beefy PC to the TV via HDMI. (The general lack of HDMI 2.0 means you’ll be restricted to 25 fps for now, though.) Some TV companies, such as Japan’s NHK and Europe’s Sky, have experimented with over-the-air broadcast 4K and 8K, but those services are nowhere near ready for public consumption. The Xbox One and PS4, despite not supporting 4K games, may be able to receive 4K video streams in the future. (Blu-ray doesn’t yet support 4K, so that option is out for now.)
To circumvent the current Blu-ray and HDMI bottlenecks, Netflix plans to get 4K content onto your TV via smart TV apps. According to Netflix, “several of the major TV vendors” will reveal 4K smart TVs at CES 2014 that are capable of receiving 4K content to a special built-in Netflix app. If you watch Netflix on your TV via a separate media streamer (Roku, Apple TV, etc.) you won’t be able to watch 4K content until you get some new hardware that supports it (which will probably be a while).

4K Netflix 2014 Launches Next Month

 What about those of us who watch Netflix on our PCs? Netflix hasn’t confirmed it, but we assume that if you have a 4K display, a 4K-capable graphics card, and plenty of bandwidth (probably 15Mbps+), you will be able to watch House of Cards in 4K. After you’ve watched every single episode on the day of release, head on over to the YouTube 4K playlist and enjoy some pretty — if rather pointless — videos of ink in water, leaves blowing in the wind, and stuff like that. And then… then you play the waiting game while Amazon, Netflix, and other TV/movie studios prepare their content for release in 4K. By the end of 2014, I think there will be a lot of 4K content available.