Elefanten II tackled the potential development of Ultra HD services, against a background of payment for content, and the future of Germany’s DTT platform.
The second session of heavy hitters from Astra, Unitymedia, ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL were confident UHD would make its mark, but not necessarily with the impact of previous technologies: “The move to UHD will make a change, but not of the same proportions as previous years,” said Wolfgang Elsäßer, Managing Director, Astra Deutschland. He said the platform currently had 300 German speaking TV stations of which 100 were in HD. “For all these things we need business models, and we already have them, we have public stations and we have HD Plus.”
Lutz Schüler, CEO, Unitymedia was in agreement. “The content has to be found I don’t think that UHD will revoluntionise the market again. Just like with HD it was an improvement, 4K will be an improvement , and there will be more investment.
Having earlier reminded delegates that as an established brand it wouldn’t be placing free catch up apps to Android and Apple stores, Marc Schröder, Member of the Managing Board, Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, said UHD is unavoidable. “It will happen but we also see the critical business problems. It could be the New 3D, just because the TV sets can receive it, doesn’t been the customers will accept it,” however, he promised RTL would play its part.
The actual platform that distributes UHD in Germany was up for debate. Here, Maxdome appears to be substituted for Netflix as the wild child turned good, though the U.S. platform had its fair share of namechecks.
Terrestrial at 2.2 million homes isn’t seen as dead, yet, though
Schüler argued Horizon Go was more than a match for HbbTV.
Elsäßer quipped that the clue to DVB-T2 was in the name – and it should be used for secondary sets in the garden.
