The majority of Ultra HD content in Germany’s TV and video market is provided by video-on-demand (VOD) services.
Ultra HD movies are mainly offered as part of transactional-VOD (T-VOD) business models for rent or sale with prices amounting to €3.99-€7.99 (rent) and up to €29.99 (purchase), reports German consultancy Veed Analytics in its latest Snapshot. The average prices per title are slightly lower, but still comparable with prices of physical Blu-ray discs.
T-VOD is used by Amazon Instant Video, Videoload and wuaki.tv to distribute movies and other content such as documentaries or sports programmes in UHD format. Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Sky Deutschland use subscription-VOD business models.
Sky Deutschland with its Sky Sport Bundesliga UHD and Sky Sport UHD channels and Astra platform HD+ with its UHD1 service are the UHD pioneers in the German linear TV market.
With further key players such as ProSiebenSat.1’s maxdome entering the market, increasing competition might become a driver for more high-quality content in UHD, according to the study, but it is still unclear to which extend UHD can be monetised on top of HD.
