Amazon.com Inc is teaming up with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and major media corporations including Warner Bros and Lionsgate to popularize “4K” ultra high-definition television.<\/p>\n
Amazon, whose Instant Video service serves up thousands of movies and TV programs in direct competition with Neflix Inc, did not outline specifics on their collaboration in a Monday announcement.<\/p>\n
But Samsung and other consumer electronics makers are hoping that 4K TV – so-called because they are said to offer four times the resolution of conventional high-definition images – will take off as a format and recharge sales.<\/p>\n
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the South Korean tech giant said in a separate statement it also will work with other content distributors, including Netflix and cable operators Comcast and DirecTV, on promoting 4K TV.<\/p>\n
Amazon, for its part, has been investing heavily in digital media, hoping to draw traffic and drive new sales as consumers increasingly spurn traditional TV offerings in favor of on-demand content.<\/p>\n
Ultra high-def TV has been slow to take off, partly because of the high cost of the new-fangled displays and insufficient content. High-definition television took years to become mainstream, after TV prices came down and content became more widely available.<\/p>\n
Netflix has said the second season of its popular political drama “House of Cards” was shot and will be available in ultra high-def, becoming one of the first major TV series to take advantage of the technology.<\/p>\n
“There are a number of elements that need to work together to create a true 4K experience for customers,” Bill Carr, Amazon vice president of digital video and music, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“You need great content and compatible devices, but you also need a service that can deliver that content to your devices so that it plays beautifully.”<\/p>\n
In Monday’s announcement, Amazon also named 20th Century Fox and Discovery among its media partners. It added that it will film all original series slated for 2014 in 4K ultra high-def.<\/p>\n
Samsung, LG going big with curved TVs<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Amazon delivery drones still far from <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n reality<\/strong><\/a> For sale: $500 million for Intel TV service<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amazon.com Inc is teaming up with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and major media corporations including Warner Bros and Lionsgate to popularize “4K” ultra high-definition television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":20667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25,55,7272,2939,7271,7270,1464,7269],"class_list":["post-51360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-active","tag-amazon-com","tag-century-fox","tag-comcast","tag-directv","tag-neflix","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51360"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51998,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51360\/revisions\/51998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}