UHD Alliance to Broaden Public Outreach as It Works With Other Sectors
The UHD Alliance will “soft-launch” for consumers ExperienceUHD.com this month as part of a broadened outreach to educate the public, Mike Fidler, new alliance president, told us at IFA. The alliance also will maintain its existing membership website. The new…
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site will “hot-link” to each member manufacturer’s products that are certified by the alliance as Ultra HD Premium-compliant, he said. Streamed content from Amazon or Netflix won’t be on the site yet, he said. “We’re working with both our Netflix and Amazon partners as a way to identify maybe using the Ultra HD Premium logo” on their content, as both are founding alliance members, he said. Company representatives didn’t comment Monday. Tackling Ultra HD “interoperability” challenges will be an alliance priority under a new working group chaired by Sony Pictures Entertainment Chief Technology Officer Don Eklund, Fidler said. Of the 40,000 conversation threads studied, about 25 percent expressed some form of dissatisfaction with the Ultra HD experience, Fidler said. Part of the alliance’s “effort” on interoperability will be to “work across industry groups,” including the Blu-ray Disc Association, CTA, the Digital Entertainment Group and SMPTE, “to try to be sure we have a comprehensive approach,” Fidler said. The alliance estimates that consumer awareness of 4K technology is 70 percent or above, he said. “But HDR is below 50 percent.”