Ultra High-Definition TV

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Kana Inagaki and Jonathan Chen, High-End TV Prices Tumble; Little Ultra-Def Content Is Available but Chinese Makers Crank Production. Wall Street Journal, Jan 3, 2014.
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB30001424052702304361604579292630876600834

Quote:

"The first UHDTVs were a hot topic at last year's Consumer Electronics Show [Where price tags were between $9,000 and $25,000].

ultra high-definition TV or "UHDTV technology, also known as 4K (for 4,000-pixel horizontal resolution), promises to display four times the number of picture elements as current high-definition TVs. The big-name manufacturers mainly use the technology in diagonal sizes larger than 55 inches. Chinese consumers—who have shown a penchant to jump on technology trends early—have driven the buying so far. NPD DisplaySearch puts 2013 shipments of UHDTVs at 1.9 million units, with 1.7 million of them sold in China.

"Even at that small fraction of the [entire] television market, the [sales] volume is surprising because of the lack of content. Most widely used sources of video—such as cable and satellite networks and Blu-ray discs—support only high-definition resolution, in part because 4K images generate a lot more data. [Thus ordinarily UHDTV gets the same resolution as HDTV, unless two things happen. One is side-by-side com[arison at retail stores, where UHDTV is supplied with the requisite content. The other is:] Japanese TV makers are trying to justify their price tags by using extra chips that adapt regular high-definition content so an improvement is noticeable on 4K sets.

"Chinese companies such as Skyworth Digital Holdings Ltd and Sichuan Changhong Electronic Co are determined to crack the global market, aided recently by low-cost display panels from Taiwan,

Note:
(a) There is a graphic (headingNext-Gen TVs) in print but not online,
whose left panel displays "Television shipments" from (Jan) 2012 to (Dec) 2015;

and whose right panel "Averageselling prices" shows
..............................2012 .............Estimate 2014
World-wide ...........$7,851...........$1,120
China.....................$4,503..............$973
North America ....$18,667............$1,986

Note: Figures for 2013 are based on actual figures through 3Q; 4Q and following years are forecast
Source: NPD DisplaySearch"

(b) Taiwanese Take Early Lead in UHD LCD-TV Panel Market as South Koreans Focus on AMOLED. IHS,  Sept 5, 2013
press.ihs.com/press-release/design-supply-chain-media/taiwanese-take-early-lead-uhd-lcd-tv-panel-market-south-kore

, whose table shows:

"Global Ranking of UHD TV  Panel Suppliers (Ranking by Unit Shipments in Thousands)

Suppliers......Unit Shipments..........Market Share
INX ...............243 ..........................42.8%
AUO .............202 ..........................35.6%
CSOT .............99 ...........................17.4%
LGD ...............18 ..............................3.1%
SDC .................5 ..............................0.8%
Sharp ..............1 ..............................0.2%
Total ............568 ...........................100.0%

IHS Inc August 2011 [sic]"

CSOT = Shenzhen China star Optoelectroincs Technology Co (founded in 2009)
SDC = Samsung Digital Corp