After 16 years, HDTVexpert.com is closing its doors. What began when HDTV was just finding its footing evolved into a front-row seat for every major display revolution, from 1080p to 4K and beyond. The author moves on to Sound & Communications and Display Daily, but leaves readers with a tantalizing question: if 8K is next, what unimaginable display technology waits further down the road?
AV-over-IP is reshaping more than signal routing - it's quietly dismantling the engineering workforce that built broadcast and professional AV from the ground up. As facilities trade dedicated technical staff for IT generalists and swap capital hardware investments for disposable commodity gear, the industry faces a reckoning few are openly discussing. Whether this shift delivers genuine efficiency or simply trades deep expertise for short-term savings remains an open and urgent question.
Twenty-five years of NAB Show attendance offers a striking vantage point: enormous hardware booths have shrunk, tape has vanished, and software now rules a floor once dominated by six-figure broadcast gear. Attendance dropped 11.6% in two years, and the show's identity feels uncertain. Yet 8K cameras from Sony, Sharp, Ikegami, and others signal where professional video is heading, with the 2020 Olympics poised to accelerate adoption in ways few anticipated.
Cable TV's slow death march is accelerating. Smaller operators like Cable One and Mediacom are hemorrhaging subscribers at double-digit rates, and analysts now question whether pay TV bundles are worth saving at all. As streaming reshapes how Americans consume content, major MSOs may soon pivot to pure broadband delivery - charging by the gigabyte rather than the channel. The shift is already underway, and the next decade could redefine how every household pays for television.
UltraViolet's shutdown announcement nearly vanished unnoticed into a spam folder - a fitting metaphor for a service most users had already abandoned. The digital content locker promised seamless access to purchased movies across devices, but its clunky registration process drove customers straight to Netflix and Amazon Prime instead. With major studios already gone and 30 million largely inactive accounts, its quiet death reveals how quickly even well-funded digital ecosystems can become irrelevant. The real question is what that means for today's streaming services.
8K television is arriving faster than the industry can support it. Supply chain decisions in Asia are driving Chinese fabs to mass-produce 8K panels, anticipating five million shipments by 2022, yet critical pieces remain missing: lenses, display interfaces, codecs, and content are all lagging behind. AI-powered upscaling may bridge the gap temporarily, but the deeper question raised at HPA Tech Retreat 2019 challenges whether chasing pixel counts is even the right priority anymore.
CES 2019 delivered a striking reminder of how far display technology has traveled since plasma giants and upscaling DVD players ruled the show floor. Eight-K televisions from LG, Samsung, Sony, Sharp, and a wave of Chinese brands dominated booths, while AI-powered processors scaled standard-definition content with jaw-dropping results. Mini-LED backlights, collapsing TV prices, and near-field wireless technology at 96 gigabits per second signal where home entertainment is heading next.
HDMI 2.1 arrived with a quantum leap in bandwidth - jumping from 18 Gb/s to a stratospheric 48 Gb/s - yet a New York press conference revealed surprisingly little new ground. Packet-based signaling, DSC compression, and Socionext chipsets are moving the standard forward, but optical support remains absent and manufacturer adoption stays murky. With 8K TVs hitting shelves and high frame rate video looming, the real test comes at CES.
Twenty years of TiVo loyalty culminates in a hands-on look at the Bolt OTA, a cord-cutter's DVR that pairs four tuners and a robust streaming app lineup with the iconic program guide that made TiVo a household verb. Setup is refreshingly simple compared to the CableCard era, and 4K output plus MoCA-connected Mini VOX support add genuine modern muscle. Whether the channel scan results and real-world performance justify cutting the cable bill entirely is where things get interesting.
Falling flat-screen prices are quietly threatening home theater front projection's survival. With 85-inch Ultra HD displays now matching decade-old projector prices, and 8K panels from Samsung and LG arriving faster than anyone anticipated, the case for keeping a projector and screen grows harder to justify. Micro-LED advances in commercial cinemas hint at where home displays are heading next, and the trajectory points toward a future where projectors become nostalgic relics.
