This article was originally published at www.mesalliance.org
LOS ANGELES — Deluxe Digital Distribution’s Ken Goeller looks at the nascent 4K, Ultra-HD (UHD) business, and sees something similar to what happened when consumers shifted from bulky cathode ray tube TVs to sleek flat-screen LCD, plasma and OLED sets.
Deluxe is invested in 4K, not because of the aesthetic appeal of a flat screen, but because the company believes 4K will quickly become a standard in the consumer electronics industry.
“There’s so much velocity behind 4K, and I think the pattern [of consumer adoption] is going to follow the same as standard definition to high-def,” Goeller said, speaking at the recent Cable Show conference.
Deluxe has an investment in the 4K economy: the company announced at the Cable Show that it was providing UHD mastering and encoding services for several of the films including with Samsung’s UHD Video Pack (a hard drive pre-loaded with 4K movies, intended for Samsung’s 2014 UHD TV line-up).
Along with the ability to meet the security requirements for hosting and streaming UHD content to CE devices, Deluxe stresses that it’s uniquely positioned to work directly with the studios on developing UHD content, and that it can deliver 4K video “at the highest quality and optimal bitrate for bandwidth, transport and storage efficiencies across the multiscreen landscape.”
Besides working with studios to convert, restore and master UHD-optimized content, Deluxe says it’s invested in the workflows and operational processes for the production of 4K, including High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC).
“Our strong relationships with studios and CE brands like Samsung are essential to Deluxe’s ability to bring higher quality UHD-optimized content to market,” said Cyril Drabinsky, president and CEO of Deluxe Entertainment. “We’re investing in the advanced technologies, workflows and ecosystem partnerships to enable our customers to access and distribute a broader range of exciting and compelling titles that their consumers will want.”