But since no U.S.-market sets ship with tuners for that standard - also called "Next-Gen TV" - you shouldn’t expect local stations to rush to broadcast in it. "They’re still waiting for content."īroadcast TV is limited to HD today, but the Federal Communications Commission voted in November to let broadcasters start airing signals in the 4K-compatible “ATSC 3.0” format. "Technology is leading content," summed up analyst Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics.
At Comcast, your only 4K options for now are two streaming apps, Netflix and its own Ultra HD Sampler, that you can run on an upgraded version of its X1 box.
DirecTV does offer 4K channels, but its schedule shows only 13 live events for the rest of December. If you have a soundbar set up as the hub of your home-theater setup - with the TV plugged into its outputs and your streaming-media or Blu-ray player plugged into its inputs - you will also need to replace that with one that includes “ HDMI 2.0” ports compatible with 4K.Ĭable or satellite TV, meanwhile, probably won’t help you watch any 4K content. Best Buy’s site shows 324 4K Blu-ray titles versus 14,563 standard Blu-ray discs. But the selection of 4K Blu-ray remains a tiny fraction of what’s available in that format’s older HD version.
Since early 2016, the Blu-ray disc format has offered an offline alternative for 4K viewing. Trading up to that speed may not cost much extra if you have cable: At one San Francisco address, Comcast’s 55-Mbps service only cost $15 or so more a month than its entry-level 10-Mbps offering, with the difference even less when factoring in promotional discounts.īut it will probably require changing ISPs if you have phone-based digital-subscriber-line broadband, which rarely gets past 10 Mbps.
That is five times the bandwidth the company recommends for high-definition streaming.
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