Sony pushes 4K TV at the World Cup, even though there"s nothing to watch

At the 2014 World Cup, the weirdest thing isn’t that USA is doing better than England, but that 4K TV is being pushed surprisingly hard. As I watched USA versus Portugal last night, one of the main ads around the edge of the pitch was a hoarding for Sony 4K. This surprised me, because I know there’s virtually zero 4K content actually available. Like a good little potential purchaser I wandered along to the Sony website to see what the deal was, and sure enough it’s selling some 4K TVs priced anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000. Yes, for a sizable chunk of your annual income, you can buy a TV that’s capable of watching Breaking Bad and House of Cards in 4K… and… that’s it.

It is either an amazing marketing move, or diabolical. It’s almost as if Sony is telling you to future-proof yourself by living in the future… on your own… with no one else to experience the future with. I understand that someone has to be the first penguin for 4K — the first one to dive in and be eaten by a killer whale — and I don’t think anyone would call me a Luddite, but still I am surprised to see Sony pushing its massively expensive 4K TVs when there’s almost no reason to buy one.

At the time of publishing, there are a handful of Sony films available in 4K via its Video Unlimited download service, and Netflix is streaming Breaking Bad and House of Cards in 4K (but reports say that it’s still hampered by compression). YouTube has also recently enabled 4K uploads and streaming, which may eventually evolve into a good source for 4K content when 4K video recording becomes commonplace (probably next year, with new smartphone SoCs supporting 4K encoding). But, significantly, there’s absolutely no 4K broadcast TV and no 4K optical discs (Blu-ray doesn’t support 4K) — and there probably won’t be for years to come.

Marvel as Sony teases some poor Brazilian kid with a 4K TV that probably costs in the region of one year’s salary.

At the 2014 World Cup, Sony is filming three games in 4K @ 60Hz: One game from the Second Round, one of the quarter-finals, and the World Cup final on July 13. Sony will use its own PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K cameras to shoot these games (priced at $30,000 each incidentally, before lenses), and its own custom workflow to handle/edit all of the 4K footage. This “Official 4K World Cup film” will then be made available to Sony Bravia 4K TV owners at some point in the future (no word on pricing, but I don’t think it’ll be free).

A Sony 4K TV camera. You are probably looking at around $100,000 of kit.

More interestingly, the BBC is also using the 2014 World Cup for 4K testing. The BBC will beam a live 4K video feed, via satellite, to BBC headquarters in the UK. The BBC says the 4K footage will then be broadcast to a handful of 4K TVs in its “research and development facilities” via digital terrestrial TV (DVB-T2) and internet streaming. The newer DVB-T2 broadcast digital TV standard is capable of data rates in the region of 20-30Mbps, which in theory is capable of carrying a 4K video feed (albeit compressed). And yes, in case you’re wondering, ~20Mbps sustained is what you’ll need for a half-decent 4K stream from Netflix (or Sony or FIFA). [Read: The state of 4K gaming: We’re glitching our way to gaming nirvana.]

The BBC appears to be the exception, though. There are almost no 4K tests being carried out elsewhere in the world. There were hints of a new Blu-ray standard that would support 4K back at the beginning of 2014, but in a more recent press conference Sony refused to answer any questions about it. The good news is that HDMI 2.0, ratified late last year, does support 4K — but HDMI 2.0 TVs and media streamers still haven’t hit the market. [Read: No, TV makers, 4K and UHD are not the same thing.]

Sony’s 84-inch 4K TV. But that’s the problem: Right now, unless you want to look at pretty photos of flowers, there isn’t much in the way of 4K content.

The most likely route towards 4K content is with modern smartphones, tablets, TVs, and PCs that support H.265/HEVC hardware decompression, and then providing the 4K source material via the internet — that way you can avoid the mess of Blu-ray/media streamer/HDMI support. In this scenario, Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube definitely have the edge in leading us towards 4K (though there are certainly not many internet connections in the world that can sustain 20Mbps, especially with the ongoing Netflix/Verizon/Comcast spat). If the BBC 4K DVB-T2 test goes off without a hitch, it’s possible that BBC/Freeview won’t be too far behind Netflix and Amazon.

But in either case, I really can’t recommend that you buy a 4K TV just yet. They have come down in price significantly — but you’re still better off waiting another 12 months, at which point you’ll actually have some content to enjoy, and you’ll be able to get a higher-quality panel at a much lower price. I know that TVs are still considered a “big purchase,” a bit like a new car or fridge, and many people are tempted to buy a very expensive TV every 5-10 years, but I assure you that you’ll be happier (and enjoy better picture quality and modern features) if you buy a more reasonably priced TV every 24 months instead.

Sony pushes 4K TV at the World Cup, even though there"s nothing to watch