DirecTV will launch 4K Ultra HD video on demand for the first time Friday, making it the first multichannel TV provider to do so. The satellite TV company said it will begin offering a variety of new releases, popular films and nature documentaries in 4K resolution.

http://www.twice.com/news/home-satellite/directv-launch-4k-service-friday/54922

LG Display reached 674,000 in shipments for Ultra HD TV panels in September 2014. The amount represents a 24.8% on-month increase as LG aims to further its presence in the Ultra HD TV panel market through various low-priced solutions.

Small diagonal LG 4K TVs are already pretty affordable.

LCD TV sales in China reached 6.02 million from the Mid-Autumn through October 1 period to represent an on-year increase of 2.4%, according to AVC. In the one week October 1 holiday period, LCD TV sales were down 15.6% on year.

During the period the penetration rate of Ultra HD TVs reached 27.3%, up 23% on year and sales of 50-inch and above sizes held a 35.7% proportion, up 7% on year. Smart TV sales held a 64.4% penetration.

@davjd "off-axis" means viewing the tv screen from a position that is not directly in front of the screen.

Hi @v10tdi I'm looking to buy a 4k tv as well, to show my jobs, that in the future will be 4k, FHD for now. So for which reason did you choose the ax800 panasonic? I went through several reviews and specs. I don't want to spend too much and I also looked at the less expensive AX 630 series, but it doesn't have the on board Hevc decoder, only hdmi 2.0 ports. Is the Hevc decoder so important? Will it be matter of a firmware update or it's a purely a hardware caractheristic? Excluding the ax630 I'm deciding between the ax800 or the sony X8500 series. What's that "off-axis" problem? Need some advices.

Let me point out that I’m not saying a native 4K shot doesn’t look good. It does, but often the associated workflow hassles aren’t worth it. For example, let’s take a typical 1080p 50” Panasonic plasma that’s often used as a client monitor in edit suites. You or your client may be sitting 7 to 10 feet away from it, which is closer than most people sit in a living room with that size of a screen. If I show a client the native image (4K at 1:1 in an HD timeline) compared with an separate HD image at the same framing, it’s unlikely that they’ll see a difference. Another test is to take two exact images – one native HD and the other 4K. Scale up the HD and crop down the 4K to match. In theory, the 4K should look better and sharper. In fact, sitting back on the client sofa, most won’t see a difference. It’s only when they step to about 5 feet in front of the monitor that a difference is obvious and then only when looking at fine detail within the shot.

http://www.revuptransmedia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=591:more-4k-by-oliver-peters&catid=47:blog-guest-

Ultra HD TVs are likely to hit or even exceed a 30% penetration rate in overall LCD TV sales during the October 1 holiday period in China, according to market estimates

China is far ahead.

Samsung Electronics announced its plans to further expand its UHD ecosystem by working with global content partners to help accelerate consumer adoption and access to UHD content.

The company plans to launch Amazon’s UHD VOD service in October globally, and has also expanded Netflix’s UHD VOD Service in Europe, which has been available in the U.S. and other countries since last March. Netflix kicked off its UHD streaming service with “House of Cards Season 2,” a popular US TV series, which is now available on Samsung’s UHD TV.

Samsung also reinforced its cooperation with major European content partners, including maxdome, Wuaki.tv, and CHILI to secure more UHD content to work towards a more robust UHD ecosystem.

http://global.samsungtomorrow.com/?p=40034

Today I looked at the top of the line 55" 1080p TV and the 55" 4K TV from Samsung. I was amazed at the difference, and they were both the same price--$1750. Look for 1080p prices to drop I guess. That's a very good picture on the 4K and the 8000 was one of the top rated TVs.

Of course, it depends on the input signal, but still very impressive from Samsung. The Sony's were also very good, but very expensive.

Japan's Ultra HD TV channel, Channel4K, started pilot broadcast on June 2, 2014 and Digitimes Research has found that sales of Ultra HD TV sets continue to enjoy stable growth despite a recent rise in the country's consumption tax. In May 2014, 2.4% of TVs sold in the Japan market were Ultra HD models, which also made up 12.3% of overall sales value, the first time that the percentage has surpassed 10%.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20140711PD210.html

Digitimes Research's freshly published Special Report, "The transition to 4K TV - UHD TV market forecast, 2014-2017," estimates that 26.6% of all TVs shipped in 2017 will be UHD models, and in the 55-inch segment, more than 90% of the LCD TVs to be shipped in 2017 will deliver UHD or higher resolutions.

4K TV broadcast is expected to become popular in Brasil only in 2022, but maybe the internet 4K H265 or VP9 streaming and 4K bluray will be real sooner to justify upgrading cameras and editing computers, but it seems that good 1080p cameras will be useful up to 2022 or even more because lots of people does not have fast internet connections, maybe high end wedding and corporate, advertising shooting will need 4K sooner:

http://tecnologia.ig.com.br/especial/2014-06-12/copa-de-2014-sera-em-hd-4k-so-em-2022.html