4K HEVC Video Is Years Away From Being a Streaming Reality
While there's a lot of talk about 4K video at the major conventions, such as CES and NAB, the reality is that 4K won't be streaming to homes anytime soon. Speaking at the recent Streaming Media West conference in sunny Huntington Beach, California, encoding expert Jan Ozer explained that even Netflix can't reliably deliver 15Mbps video over one of the fastest connections around.
"Can you even deliver 15Mbps HEVC over the internet?" Ozer asked. "UHD 4K is being encoded by Netflix at 15Mbps. Can they deliver 15Mbps? They had trouble delivering 2 1/2 Mbps…[Netflix is] averaging 3.4Mbps over FIOS, which is one of the fastest systems out there. Even if the TV sets were out there, even if the content was out there, can you deliver 15Mbps video to these UHD sets? The answer is unless you have your own pipes, probably not."
For anyone in the market for a 4K television set, the message is to wait—probably years.
"Why should Roku add 4K UHD or 4K HEVC decode to their retail boxes when you can't get anything close to 15Mbps video to them?" Ozer asked. "I would not buy a 4K set for the next two or three years, and I think anybody who knows about these issues probably would make the same decision. Even though there are services launching, what's the Magic 8-Ball say? Are we going to see a lot of big advances in 4K HEVC production?"
Spinning into view, Ozer's Magic 8-Ball says, "Outlook Not So Good."
Watch the full HEVC discussion below and download Ozer's presentation.
HOW TO: Producing and Distributing HEVC
This session explores the current status of HEVC, identifying options for encoding live and on-demand HEVC and discussing player options in the streaming and OTT markets. Topics include the comparative quality and usability of HEVC encoders—including encoders from Cisco, Elemental, Harmonic, and Telestream— how HEVC quality compares to H.264 and VP9 (if encoders are available), and known trials and deployments of HEVC.
Jan Ozer, Principal - Doceo Publishing
Related Articles
The future of UHD is happening right now. Here's how one production company streamed low-bandwidth 4K live from a South by Southwest music stage.
21 Sep 2015
Does a higher resolution guarantee the best image quality, or does better contrast and brightness? And can today's limited bandwidth handle all that data?
07 Aug 2015
While it's fun to be on the cutting-edge of new video codecs and formats, H.264 should be every publishers' primary focus for the time being.
04 Jun 2015
Broadcasters could stream 4K video today at 15Mbps, but the results wouldn't be impressive, and might look worse than HD.
13 May 2015
Which delivers better quality, encoding time, and CPU performance—HEVC or VP9? We put them to the test to decide once and for all.
28 Apr 2015
Last week, HEVC Advance announced it is forming a new patent pool in addition to the one offered by MPEG LA. While the new group—which will likely include Dolby, GE, Mitsubishi Electric, Philips, and Technicolor—did not announce licensing terms, past precedent indicates that the royalties won't likely be onerous for most encoding and decoding vendors, though how it will affect content publishers is less clear.
01 Apr 2015
It's time to get started. Here's a look at best practices for encoding to H.265/HEVC with the MainConcept and x265 codecs
05 Mar 2015
If you've spent any time at NAB or IBC, you'd think that HEVC is ready for prime time. The reality is that, for almost every use case, it's nowhere close.
15 Sep 2014
Companies and Suppliers Mentioned