What The Rapid Adoption Rate For 4K UHD Means For Digital Signage

The marketplace, at least in the US and by extension Canada, is going 4K UHD at a rate far quicker than the advent years ago of HDTV.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has announced holiday season shipments of 4K UHD televisions in the United States are expected to reach 4.5 million units, bringing the total for the year up to 10 million units. That’s up 40% over 2015.

All that said, the CTA had initially thought 4K UHD TV sales would pass 14 million for the year.

The CTA says the adoption rate has been very fast compared to the start of HD in 2000, reflected in the chart at the top.  Keep in mind, those were very different times, when most people still had tube TVs.

The signage industry is, of course, about pro displays and not TVs, even if the TVs are pretty awesome. But all those 4K TVs and the normalization of 4K means more content being produced at that resolution and a consumer expectation of how they see motion media.

Does that mean someday soon everything needs to be 4K? No, not at all. There are many, many, many situations where even 720P is going to be fine, given sightlines and the type of content. But there are going to be more cases in which 4K not only makes sense, but from the perspective of the audience, would be somewhat expected.

There’s still, however, not a lot of material being produced in the format, and the steady push to drive cost out of hardware media players means there are not a lot of boxes out there that can “do” 4K UHD well … at least not at the tiny price points a lot of the market seems to want.