4K's technical challenge: ATEME, Envivio, Harmonic, Wowza move forward amid fragmented market

It's no secret that television viewing has changed drastically in recent years. From debates over cord-cutting, streaming and OTT content and more, TV-related innovation is not only widespread, but necessary. But what about the view itself?

Ultra HD and 4K content isn't an entirely fresh concept -- companies have been working on software, hardware and content for the high-res technology since 2012, at least. And with the advent of such technology, of course, came a variety of challenges, many of which Ultra HD innovators are still struggling to combat.

According to Chris Knowlton, vice president of cloud-based media streaming server Wowza, the immediate challenge for 4K and Ultra HD is disjointed video coding standards and services. HEVC, Google's VP9 and Cisco's Thor are among the top coding formats being used to compress high-resolution video, but the lack of a single standard, as well as potential patent issues, has made it difficult for content providers and companies like Wowza to know the best way to move forward. Expect some insight at Friday's "High Efficiency Video Coding Meets UHDTV Broadcasting" Paper Session.

In July, licensing company HEVC Advance announced a patent pool that some speculated could slow the adoption of 4K and Ultra HD technology as producers and distributors try to navigate a variety of patents surrounding the technology. Still, Envivio CEO Julien Signes said, "Patent pools, when they get established, can slow down initial deployments. But if you review the history of the development of MPEG-4, and before that MPEG-2, we went through the same phases of posturing and competition among patent holders and different patent pools. History shows that rights ownership issues will always be resolved. No one thinks AVC is not usable today, so there is no reason HEVC can't move forward."

And Ultra HD certainly is moving forward. Some critics initially warned of a chicken-and-egg problem in the adoption of the tech: Producers won't make 4K content without a solid base of viewers, while viewers won't invest in the programming without a multitude of available 4K content. It seems the problem is being remedied not by the growth of one, but of both. As 4K TVs become more common, companies like Fox have already begun broadcasting content like the 2014 Super Bowl in 4K, even foraying into virtual reality broadcasts for the US Open in June. Thomas Edwards, the company's vice president of engineering and operations, said Fox is also pouring effort into high frame rate content.

Because content and televisions are becoming more available, the challenge may shift to optimizing hardware for home viewing, said Harmonic's Tom Lattie, emphasizing that the difference in resolution from regular HD may not be obvious unless consumers change their spatial viewing habits or invest in even larger TVs.

As 4K content becomes more widely available, Wowza's Knowlton added that he believes the move to live broadcasts in 4K will make cloud-supported encoding like Wowza's essential as a means of bypassing the hardware that clients might otherwise need. And according to industry experts, 4K and Ultra HD are not the end of the line for high-res home viewing.

"The future of TV is HDR [high dynamic range] and WCG [wide color gamut]," said Yossi Aloni, CMO at broadcast equipment company ATEME. "Over the last 18 months we've worked closely with several Hollywood studios and display vendors to ensure we are the first to market with a proven solution."

Regardless of the specifics, it seems standards and content need only keep up with creativity.