Are you ready for ultra high-def TV?

Television makers like Sony, Samsung Electronics and Panasonic are working overtime to sell you on so-called ultra high-definition 4K television.

My advice: Wait at least another year or two before buying it — the hype and the TV sets themselves.

Keep that bottom line in mind as you hear more about 4K TV, named for the high-definition resolution display. Plenty of announcements about the technology were on tap at International CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas that is one of the tech industry’s largest trade shows. The high-definition televisions was a featured attraction at the four-day event, alongside virtual reality devices, drones and new smartphones.

4K TVs began surfacing about three years ago. To decode the marketing jargon: 4K is the successor to 1080p, the current high-definition resolution found on modern TV sets. The term 4K, also called Ultra HD, refers to screens with two times the vertical resolution and twice the horizontal resolution of current high-definition TVs.

The 4K resolution and other new TV technologies “take a television screen picture much closer to the capabilities of the human visual system,” said Neil Hunt, Netflix’s chief product officer, in an interview. “They are big steps forward in delivering better quality.”

But after interviewing several technology companies and testing a premium Samsung 4K TV for more than a week, I was less than convinced that 2016 would be a good year to buy one of the sets. Televisions with the 4K feature remain expensive, ranging from $1,000 (Rs 66,673) to tens of thousands of dollars. More important, the content available in the new 4K video resolution is sparse. And while images encoded in 4K do look better than normal high-definition ones, the differences aren’t jaw-dropping.

Consider the available catalogue of 4K content. Netflix has just 25 programs to watch in Ultra HD, including its original TV shows like “Jessica Jones” and “Daredevil.” Amazon has a bit more — hundreds of titles are in 4K, but many of them are older movies (like “Jerry Maguire”) that you may have little desire to watch again. Amazon’s original series, like “Transparent” and “The Man in the High Castle,” are also in 4K. Both Netflix and Amazon said they expect all the original content that they produce this year to be available in 4K.

Still, even with more 4K content coming, the higher resolution may not be worth it. In my tests, I compared Samsung’s flagship 4K television, the JS9500, which costs $4,500 (Rs 3,00,030), side by side with my 3-year-old Panasonic 1080p plasma TV. On the 4K version of “Jerry Maguire,” I could see some details that were lost in the 1080p version, such as Cuba Gooding Jr.’s pores, along with some details in the shadows of his face and horizontal lines on a television screen showing a football game. In other words, not breathtaking.

More profound differences could be seen in newer content that was produced with 4K in mind, like Amazon’s TV series “Mozart in the Jungle.” The colours in that show looked especially vibrant and vivid, and the picture was noticeably clearer in 4K than in 1080p. Amazon declined to make an executive available for comment on its 4K offerings.

What makes “Mozart in the Jungle” look exceptional is a new colour technology called HDR, or high dynamic range. This software feature enhances the contrast and colour profile of a picture. In bright colours, you will see brighter highlights; in dark colours, you will see more details. In my side-by-side comparisons, 4K content with high dynamic range was noticeably superior to 1080p content, whereas 4K content without high dynamic range had a negligible difference in picture quality compared with 1080p.

Yet only a small number of 4K televisions include high dynamic range, and only a sliver of 4K content so far is encoded with the richer colour profile. Amazon started offering 4K content with high dynamic range last year, and Netflix plans to begin offering titles supporting the feature this year, starting with its show “Marco Polo.” Those two features combined — 4K and high dynamic range — will probably be the game changer for television. But that is still coming later rather than sooner.

A telltale sign that it’s too early to buy a fancy television is you still won’t be able to enjoy arguably the biggest show on television in ultra high definition: “Game of Thrones.” Jeff Cusson, a spokesman for HBO, which airs the show, said the company had “no plans at this time” to begin supporting 4K content. So fans who were hoping to gaze at the pores of characters like Daenerys Targaryen this year are out of luck.

Overall, sales of 4K TVs are picking up, which should encourage content providers to make more shows and movies in Ultra HD. Amazon said that in 2015, sales of 4K televisions tripled compared with the previous year, although it declined to reveal underlying sales numbers. Samsung, the No. 1 TV manufacturer, said it hoped that 60 percent of its TV sales in the United States this year would be 4K televisions, up from 30 percent last year. IHS, a research firm, predicts that 34 percent of US households will have big-screen 4K TVs by 2019. “4K adoption has been phenomenally quick,” said Dave Das, a Samsung executive, in an interview. “Adoption has been as fast, or faster, than when we launched 1080p.”

At CES, all the big TV manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, highlighted their 4K televisions. Many new sets this year will include high dynamic range. Samsung on last Tuesday promoted its next flagship TV, the KS9500, which it says delivers the most realistic colour range it has ever offered. Roku, the TV streaming device maker, said that it was working with TV manufacturers to introduce 60 Ultra HD television sets including Roku’s software this year.

And there is new branding for 4K television sets, too. The TVs that include high dynamic range will be called Ultra HD Premium. The Consumer Technology Association, a trade group that represents the electronics industry, said Monday that the new specification would help consumers understand the differences between various Ultra HD technologies.

Beware: The sets will take a bite out of your wallet. Well-reviewed TV sets, like Vizio’s M60-C3 or Samsung’s JU7100, cost $1,000 (Rs 66,673) to $1,600 (Rs 1,06,677). Because the software included on television sets is typically terrible, you will probably also want to buy a 4K-capable media player, like the Roku 4 streaming box ($130 or Rs 8,667). If you’re streaming content, make sure your Internet connection is fast enough: You’ll need roughly 20 megabits a second to consistently stream content in 4K resolution, according to Amazon and Netflix.

If you’re happy with your current high-definition TV, do yourself a favour and wait at least a year or two before buying an Ultra HD television. By then, there should be plenty more 4K content to watch. Plus TV prices drop rapidly as their features become more commoditized — if you buy a 4K television set today, a TV with the same features will probably cost less than $1,000 (Rs 66,673) in 2017 or 2018.
International New York Times