From the course: Hypersyndication: Maximizing Your Web Video and Podcast Audience

Comparing 4K to 1080p to 720p

- As you start to target the television set in the living room, it's very important that you keep 4K in mind. What's happened here is an evolution. Most broadcasters still aren't regularly broadcasting in 4K and it can be quite an expensive option with very few channels to choose from in a lot of cable packages. Sure, over time this will change, but for now, there's a real opportunity here. What we're seeing is that people are relying on services like Vimeo and YouTube, as well as other on-demand platforms to get 4K content. Netflix has also made a nice pull ahead here by offering a lot of premium 4K content. Consumers are buying 4K TVs but they're having a hard time finding as much 4K content as they want. Now, there are lots of different flavors of 4K, but essentially, this'll help you understand the difference. Back in the day of DVDs we dealt with standard definition and the content had a height of 480 pixels. 720p is one flavor of HD that's used a lot, particularly for things like sports and was popular with manufacturers like Panasonic. It has a vertical height of 720 lines. The more common HD format that emerged was 1080p and a lot of television sets provided this type of content and most cable networks, as well as things like Blu-Ray discs would provide HD content in the 1080 format. But, what's happened now is double that size, 2160. We're seeing more and more that people are doing content that has twice the height and twice the width. Essentially, four times the information of HD. The main benefit of 4K is that, not only is it good image quality, but it meets consumer demand. People are buying 4K television sets and they want to see 4K content. This does also meet the most common, emerging display formats. More and more 4K television sets are being sold and it's getting increasingly difficult to buy an HD television set. The challenge, though, is that it can be expensive to deliver this well. It does require four times more bandwidth and connection speed, although with the rise of formats like H.265, the successor to H.264, we're seeing similar image quality at a much lower data rate which is going to make this even easier. Both HD and 720, though, are still viable formats. HD is going to have a very long lifespan and it has very broad support. It'll also work well, not just on the set-top boxes but with mobile devices, looking great on phones and tablets. If you are still working with 720, that's fine. It's very fast to deliver. It does offer a lot of flexibility in frame rates and it falls under the category of good enough. If you are price challenged, or this is the content you have, you can still make it work, but as you start to spend new money, or look to expand your reach, make sure you're looking at at least 1080, and better yet, 4K, as you make the move into the living room.

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