New 4K UHD Channel Available Worldwide

NEW YORK: Berk Uziyel, the executive director of Filmbox International and director of new media for SPI International, talks to World Screen about the first worldwide native 4K/Ultra HD TV channel, FunBox 4K UHD.

At this past ANGACOM in Germany, SPI International introduced the first worldwide native 4K/Ultra HD TV channel, FunBox 4K UHD, whose free-to-air demo is broadcast from Eutelsat’s Hot Bird Satellite, serving 138 million homes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Uziyel tells World Screen Newsflash. “We’ve been in serious talks with a number of platforms in all major territories…. Our most advanced discussions are being held in the U.S., the U.K., France and Russia, but we are also working on several distribution agreements with potential partners in Indonesia, Portugal, Thailand, Latin America, Switzerland, Turkey and Canada. It won’t be long before we start announcing the new deals.”

Uziyel explains that SPI International opted to work with Eutelsat to give platforms the opportunity to explore the content available on FunBox 4K UHD and “discuss the benefits of making FunBox 4K UHD available to their customers.” In addition, SPI International recently launched a pilot version of the channel with Vodafone Portugal on TV Net Voz, an IPTV platform in Portugal. The full commercial version of the channel will roll out this fall as an encrypted offer for cable and IP headends in Germany and the rest of Europe.

According to Uziyel, “We do feel and know that 4K/UHD will soon be taking over. We wanted to be ready for Ultra HD just as we had been at the time when HD was introduced.” Uziyel believes 4K is an important focus for the future because of audiences’ desire to view the very best picture quality. “Once you see…4K TV sets you will start to compare the UHD picture to HD and you will automatically notice the advantages delivered by 4K screens: more nuance and detail, faster frame rates, exceptional contrast dynamics and extended colors,” he says. “People always appreciate a better quality if they can get it. We are getting ready to give people what they want to see.”

In fact, a recent report predicts that 4K-capable TVs will be in 10 percent of all North American households by the end of 2018. That number is projected to reach 50 percent by the end of 2024.

“Our first pilot UHD project was the 4K movie service that we launched on the LG smart TV platform in Poland and recently expanded into other countries in Europe,” Uziyel says. “Moreover, we are aware that 4K displays are also coming to all major applications and they are expected to boost 4K revenue 94 percent year-over-year, reaching $18 billion in 2015. This is why we presented our super-efficient compression technology to platforms and manufacturers of devices supporting 4K streaming over the internet.”

According to Uziyel, SPI International is one of just a few companies that make 4K-quality streaming available to operators on any 4K-supported device. “We are becoming one of the largest native 4K/UHD content aggregator[s] in the world,” he adds. “We are building the worldwide native 4K channel featuring documentaries, animation, concerts, music videos, sports, live events and eventually movies as well as TV series.”

The company’s UHD library is comprised of a range of titles, including nature documentaries and CG animation. The slate of upcoming 4K documentaries includes Khumbu Valley, Barcelona, Circles of Life, The Garden of the Cappadocia Gods, Auroras and Hayaku. FunBox 4K UHD will also air feature movies from Hollywood and festival winners, as well as music and sports content.

While the company is open to acquiring exclusively native 4K content, Uziyel explains, “We have been developing 4K products for more than one year.” The company plans to produce more of its own 4K content as well.

“We have a solid team dedicated to 4K/UHD working around the clock,” Uziyel says. “I can easily say that we are ahead of the game when it comes to aggregating content and developing 4K TV channels. We’ve got the content and we’ve got the technology to deliver it to end-users—a perfect combination [that] creates new opportunities for our partners around the world.”