SHaaS (Smart-Home-as-a-Service) provider Alarm.com has integrated its cloud-based connected-home platform with Amazon's Echo wireless speaker and voice-command device as well as the new HomeKit-compatible Apple TV.
Alarm.com's new Apple TV app, available from the tvOS App Store, sounds almost identical to the Amazon Fire TV app that the company launched last June. You can use it to watch live HD feeds from your home-security cameras on the biggest and most convenient screen in your home--your TV. According to the firm, the app’s interface includes support for multi-user logins and the viewing of video feeds from across multiple properties. Although the company's press release doesn't provide details, we presume that this new app can be used to view up to four camera feeds simultaneously, just like the Fire TV version.
If there’s one area in which the Apple TV version appears to be somewhat superior to its Fire Stick counterpart, it's ease of navigation. This is due to the Apple TV’s touch-sensitive remote, which lends itself to smoother navigation than remotes that only have a physical D-pad.
“The Apple TV Siri Remote with Touch surface also controls Alarm.com’s pan and tilt cameras, making it easy to see more of what’s happening around the home,” reads the press release. Speaking of Siri, it reminds us that you can’t still use your Apple TV to control smart-home devices with voice commands; that’s only possible on iOS-based mobile devices.
But even if the opposite were true, it would be of no consequence in this particular case as Alarm.com is not on the fairly short list of HomeKit-certified services and devices. However, just out of sheer curiosity, we have asked the company if it has any plans to support HomeKit and, by extension, Siri-based voice control in the future. We will update this article as soon as we hear back.
If your connected home is powered by Alarm.com, and you own Amazon's Echo, you'll soon be able to tell Alexa to turn your lights on and off.
if you find voice control to be an essential feature for your connected home, on the other hand, you'll want to know that Alarm.com has added support for the Amazon Echo and its voice-activated digital assistant Alexa. While this voice-control feature is limited to smart lights at launch, the company says efforts are underway to expand it to other connected-home devices in ecosystem, beginning with smart thermostats.
“With Amazon Echo and its cloud-based voice service named Alexa,” says the company, “a simple spoken command, such as ‘Alexa, turn on the living room lights,’ triggers a response in the home.” Alarm.com says users will be able to control both individual lights and user-defined groups of lights.
The Alarm.com app is also available for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android devices, Windows Phone and, of course, Fire TV. The app itself is free, but it only works with an Alarm.com-powered security or home-automation system, which you can purchase from an Alarm.com-affiliated service provider.
These service providers resell Alarm.com’s service and hardware (control panels, thermostats, sensors, lighting controls, security cameras, and more) on a subscription basis, often subsidizing the price of the hardware in exchange for the consumer signing a long-term contract (typically two years or more). According to Alarm.com’s website, a system typically costs $100 to 200 up front and $40 to $60 per month, depending on which services you opt for.
Why this matters: Alarm.com revealed last year that its smart-home platform had more than 2.3 million residential and business subscribers as of December, 2014. To put that into perspective, according to research firm Park Associates, the company enjoyed a 50-percent lead over its next largest competitor, iControl, at the time. And iControl is no slouch itself, being the brains behind the security/connected-home offerings from companies such as ADT (Pulse), Comcast (Xfinity Home), Time Warner Cable (Intelligent Home), and Cox (Homelife).
CES 2016 is shaping up to be the year of HDR, and one of the most vocal proponents behind high dynamic range imagery has announced a pair of new content partners and a new line of televisions from TCL to help move the ball forward. Dolby has announced that this year both Universal Pictures and MGM will be releasing movies in Dolby Vision, the company's forward-thinking, high dynamic range system that helps display images that are brighter and sharper than traditional televisions, with better contrast and a strikingly improved range of colors. Ready to display those titles will be the newly-announced X1 line of televisions from TCL, which follow LG's new 4K OLED TVs as the latest devices to incorporate the technology — what already appears to be a clear trend at CES this year. The 65-inch X1, set to launch in the US later this year, features a 4K UHD screen utilizing quantum dot technology, with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. For point of comparison, the Vizio Reference displays that have impressed us in the past max out at around 800 nits, and your normal modern television display clocks in at around 500 nits. (This brightness is important when dealing with things like sun glinting off a car's bumper; in Dolby Vision, those highlights pop just like they do in real life.) Matched with 288 zones of local dimming, the direct-lit television also supports a much wider color gamut, a built-in Harmon Kardon sound system, and a curved screen. When all of the Dolby Vision pieces fit together, the result is an image that is sharper, clearer, and more lifelike than what we've grown accustomed to from traditional displays. So much so that high dynamic range has been seen as the vital technology that could finally make 4K a must-have upgrade for consumers — but as with anything, there have been wrinkles. Like many things on the bleeding technological edge, high dynamic range has found itself the subject of a sort of mini format war. Dolby first started showing off its system several years ago — we were impressed after seeing Dolby Vision demos at the end of 2013 — and last year Vudu started adding Dolby Vision titles like Mad Max: Fury Road. But at the same time, companies like Samsung and Fox announced that they would be rolling out content and systems using a slightly different flavor of HDR, one that could work with televisions that weren't as bright as those Dolby required. When the official specification for Ultra HD Blu-rays was settled upon last year, it included that different, non-proprietary version of HDR as a standard, meaning that when Warner Bros. announced that it would be releasing 35 4K Blu-ray discs in HDR in 2016, those titles would have to support the non-Dolby version of HDR. But 4K Blu-rays still support Dolby Vision as an option, so with the landscape far from settled each new content and hardware partnership becomes even more vital. Dolby's long-term strategy is for as many titles to be mastered in its format as possible — something mastered in Dolby Vision can still gracefully degrade into the non-proprietary version of HDR if needed — hopefully making it the de facto choice on the post-production side of the industry even if it doesn't win in all of the television sets out there. Making the situation even more fluid, Dolby has also been bringing high dynamic range imagery into movie theaters with Dolby Cinema, a laser-based projection system that takes advantage of many of the same strengths as Dolby Vision and arguably creates a more organic, fluid pipeline from theater to home release, particularly for filmmakers like Pete Docter who have been quite enthusiastic about Dolby's solution. Of course, as with most television news at CES, it should all be considered a work in progress until customers can actually sit down at home with their new television and watch 4K HDR content for themselves. With the 65-inch X1 just the first in a line of Dolby Vision televisions from TCL — and the LG model already catching our eye as a contender for best television of the show — this may be the year that Dolby Vision finally starts to shine.See all of our CES 2016 news right here!
The much-anticipated Apple TV streaming service may have stalled, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait to watch live TV with Apple’s newest set-top.
On Tuesday, Tablo announced a tvOS app that will let you watch live network television with an antenna on your 4th-generation Apple TV. This gives cord-cutters the ability to watch local news and live sports programming. The Tablo app also provides over-the-air DVR capabilities so you can record shows and watch them later. Tablo offers a 2-Tuner DVR device for $220 and a 4-Tuner DVR device for $300. These OTA DVRs require an external USB hard drive to store your recorded programs.
tablo apple tv interface
Tablo’s app for Apple TV will be available in the Spring, and it will be the first service to bring live TV and DVR recording capabilities to the Apple TV.
Tablo also offers a subscription service of sorts. You can also subscribe to Tablo’s TV guide for $5 a month so you can browse and record upcoming programming. You can use the Tablo DVR devices and tvOS app without a subscription, but you will only be able to browse and set to record same-day shows.
According to TechCrunch, the Tablo tvOS app is easy to setup but it takes some time to format the hard drive, scan for your OTA channels and download the TV guide subscription data. After that, however, navigating the app is straightforward with three sections: My Tablo, Live TV, and Recordings.
One big perk of Tablo’s tvOS app is that it’s responsive to Apple TV’s voice-enabled remote control and Siri commands, so you can skip commercials by asking Siri to fast forward.
Why this matters: Previously Tablo introduced similar apps for Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Android TV, as well as mobile devices like tablets and smartphone. The company seems to think that live network television is still vital to would-be cord-cutters, especially programming like local news and live sports that can not be found on Netflix or Hulu.
Apple seems to think so, too. Sources have stated that one of the reasons that the Apple TV streaming service has failed to get off the ground was that it was too difficult to include local programming. Thankfully services like Tablo can help fill the gaps in the meantime.
A TV used to just be a TV. Now, televisions aren’t just trying to be electronic hubs for all your entertainment needs. They’re also trying to become control centers for your future home—more all-in-one PC than boob tube.
Samsung unveiled its new flagship SUHD 4K TVs at CES 2016 today, and it sets the stage for what to expect out of televisions moving forward: Console-level gaming without a console, smart home controls, and super-bright backlight systems designed for HDR viewing, all wrapped up in a slick, elegant package.
The sleek KS9500 is Samsung’s new flagship model, and it certainly looks like it gets the “TV” part of the equation right. It’s a quantum-dot enhanced, HDR-capable set that pushes its brightness beyond 1,000 nits. That brightness comes in handy for things other than HDR: Samsung says the new set has been designed for viewing in both bright and dark environments, as consumer studies have indicated that most people watch their stories with the lights on or in broad daylight.
And whether it’s powered on or off, it looks beautiful. The clean, curvy lines and metallic stand are similar to last year’s great-looking JS9500 SUHD set, but there are a couple of things missing. One, the bezel: The new set’s screen appears to just float in midair above the stand. And two, the screws: Samsung says it concentrated on giving the JS9500 a unibody look, and it designed the set to look smooth from all angles.
But the KS9500 is also a smart-home hub, designed to work with SmartThings-compatible components. During a demo, Samsung showed how the set could be used to set up and control lighting schemes and be used as a big-screen baby monitor. It’s not just a fancy way to turn off a light or see who’s at the door from your couch, as you can group several IoT devices together and create “mood” schemes with one click.
Samsung also announced a partnership with PlayStation Now and Gamefly that will bring games to the KS9500 without having to buy a console. Some slick conveniences are built into the set, too, such as the ability for it to recognize connected components and let you control them all with the included remote without having to configure anything.
LIMA, Ohio—Workers accidentally struck oil here in 1885, putting this tiny city on the map as the world’s biggest oil field—a valuable patch that John D. Rockefeller later controlled.
Now Lima, (pronounced lye-ma), a rust belt town of 38,000 people, has another highly sought-after resource. This time, the riches are above ground and the deep-pocketed buyer is the U.S. government.
The Federal Communications Commission recently set opening prices for an auction of airwaves it gave away to many local TV stations across the country more than half a century ago. And by next week, broadcasters have to decide if they want to join the auction that will let wireless carriers like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. acquire those station rights for tens of billions of dollars.
The process gives small TV stations a chance to cash out just as their business faces challenges from online video, wireless services and shifting audience behavior. After multiple delays, the process is expected to begin in March. Nearly 2,000 stations across the country could join the auction to sell their broadcasting licenses.
In giant media markets like New York City and Los Angeles, the bidding will start out high. One station broadcasting in Manhattan, an affiliate of Telemundo, has an opening bid of $900 million. But smaller cities may hit the jackpot, too. In Lima, the first—and maximum—offer for its most-watched station is about $110 million.Changing habits
The auction demonstrates the shift in technology taking place across the media landscape—and resources being adapted to meet new needs. Momentum is tilting from over-the-air television to the Internet. As people use their smartphones to stay connected and watch video on the go, more bandwidth is needed to provide that connectivity.
“The FCC’s goal is to make the most efficient use of the spectrum,” says Lawrence Chu, an investment banker who worked as an adviser to the agency. “It is in high demand.”
The process will start off similar to a Dutch auction, in which values are set at a high level and then diminish until the FCC gets the licenses it needs at the lowest possible price. Once it determines the amount it will pay for each station, the agency will then turn around and sell the licenses to carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US Inc. in a traditional auction with rising bids. Sprint Corp.has decided to skip the auction. Any difference in the amount paid out to the broadcasters and the resale will go in the U.S. treasury. If the bids from the buyers are too low, the whole process will restart.
Television stations that agree to sell their spectrum have two options: Take the full payout and go off the air, or be moved to another frequency for a lesser cut of the money. Either way, those channels could still be viewable on systems like cable and satellite. Stations that decide not to join the auction may be relocated to another spot on the dial whether they want to or not.
The FCC’s auction is optional but the participation of certain stations in smaller markets could unlock important licenses in much larger markets. For example, channels relinquishing their airwaves in Lima could give the government more options for moving around stations in Toledo, which in turn could free up space in Detroit.
In Lima, stations could pull in as much as those in much bigger cities like Phoenix, a city nearly 40 times its size.
Like any auction, the outcome isn’t a sure thing for any participant. Some stations could be frozen immediately, meaning their sale is accepted, while others could ultimately find that they aren’t in demand.
Local media mogul Allan Block is one owner who has a quandary on his hands. The 61-year-old is the scion of a 115-year-old media dynasty which owns nearly all the local TV stations in Lima, a small cable television system—as well as the Toledo Blade newspaper and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His twin brother John is editor in chief and publisher at both.
In a quirk that could only happen in a small-town market, Block Communications owns all four network affiliates in Lima. The same live nightly local news program is simulcast—both at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.—across its NBC, CBS and ABC channels. The stations, including the local FOX channel, broadcast from a single 550-foot tower that sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“Lima has never been a great growth market,” says Mr. Block, who lives in Toledo, about an hour-and-half drive away. “But it is very steady.”
Block’s portfolio of local broadcast stations, which includes the Fox affiliate in Louisville, and an NBC station in Decatur, Ill., have opening bids of more than $1.2 billion from the FCC, he says. He has hired lawyers and financial advisers and is planning to jump into the auction.
To drum up interest in the auction, officials at the FCC spent months on the road trying to convince stations to give up their licenses. They even took the unusual step of enlisting Mr. Chu—now a managing director at investment bank Moelis & Co.—to make the pitch directly to station owners. The agenda for the roadshow listed Lima among the roughly 50 markets whose participation the agency deemed as potentially crucial.
The airwaves being shuffled around are prime for sending signals far into the countryside but are also good for penetrating deep into buildings, both qualities that are attractive for wireless service providers. The government’s last airwaves auction—the first major sale since 2008—closed in January 2015 with bids of nearly $45 billion.
The dollar amounts connected to the auction are staggering for some of the stations in the government’s sights, especially outfits such as PBS affiliates and religious broadcasters that are used to operating on shoestring budgets.
“We have spectrum and we always need money,” says PBS Chief Executive Paula Kerger, referring to member stations. She is worried that some areas could lose their access to local PBS stations, noting that some of its member stations have 20% of their audience receiving an over-the-air signal.
“There are no do-overs,” she says, “once you sell your spectrum, it is gone.”Tough choices
In Pittston, Pa., a town of 7,700 nestled between the bigger markets of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, local PBS channel WVIA has decided to enter the auction after months of deliberation. The FCC’s opening bid for WVIA’s broadcast license is more than $300 million.
The station occupied two rooms in a church at a local college when it was founded in 1966. It now resides in a small one-story building on a side road with few other businesses nearby. One of its most popular shows is “Pennsylvania Polka,” which features locals dancing to a live polka band.
But it won’t consider going off the air, President Tom Curra says, because it would lose its PBS affiliation and go against the station’s stated mission of serving the public.
The channel, which has a $5 million annual budget, estimates its signal covers about a third of the state and that 10% to 15% of its viewers watch using over-the-air reception.
Although bids will likely fall from the opening price, a station like WVIA could still walk away with substantial funds. In a report, the FCC estimated in October 2014 that the median compensation for channels in the Pittston area would be $140 million—more than the $120 million projected for stations in Chicago and enough to cover WVIA’s strained annual budget for decades.
The issue is delicate. In Bowling Green, Ohio, PBS station WBGU triggered public outcry when it said it was considering entering the auction and shutting down its broadcast. The station’s signal covers Lima, but it is considered to be in the Toledo market. Feedback at local town hall meetings helped convince the station’s owner, Bowling Green University, to keep it on the air—but it will enter the auction nonetheless.
“It is a very complicated issue and one of the challenges was separating the emotion from the facts,” says university spokesman Dave Kielmeyer. “It was a painful process but it was a good process.”
Back in Lima, nonprofit religious broadcaster WTLW could get an almost unthinkable amount of cash from the auction. The station, with 12 full-time workers and an annual budget of $1.3 million, hired consultants to help it reach a decision to enter the auction. It prefers to stay broadcasting but hasn’t ruled out going off the air, says station President Kevin Bowers.
WTLW operates out of an old airport, a relic of the days when the city was served by commercial flights. Its programming tends to be family oriented, ranging from local sports and Christian-oriented shows, alongside reruns of The Donna Reed Show and The Beverly Hillbillies. The station’s sports editors work out of the old waiting room and the studio was once the airplane hanger.
The station gets a third of its donations from over-the-air viewers and 12% of households in the viewing area depend on antennas. That has made the station sensitive to cutting off viewers, but it says it plans to use proceeds from the auction to invest in ways to deliver its programming other than on cable and satellite systems.
“We aren’t blind to changing technology,” says Mr. Bowers. “How people view is changing.” The station, he says, is looking into wireless streaming and over-the-top options that would allow people to continue watching its offerings. “Even older viewers have an expectation of video on demand.”Weighing options
For Mr. Block, the issue is whether the final bids will be high enough to relinquish the airwaves above Lima. With four affiliates going over the air, he could free up some bandwidth by downgrading to standard definition from high definition for some of the over-the-air signals.
Mr. Block expresses frustration that a station’s market share or community role won’t factor into the amount of money being ultimately paid by the government. Struggling or failing stations could get the same bids as more successful channels. “Some of these people did nothing but run bad stations,” he says.
An FCC spokesman says the bid prices strictly reflect the licenses’ value in the auction.
Block Communications first arrived in Lima in 1972, when it bought local station WLIO for about $1.5 million. In 2008, it reached a deal to buy the other affiliates in the city, which were being broadcast at lower power, for $2.3 million.
WLIO has always broadcast from the same small brick building, which resembles a ranch house, and could blend into the surrounding residential neighborhood except for the 34 satellite dishes on the lawn. During the 1969 Moon landing, it provided a live video feed to U.S. networks from Neil Armstrong’s parents’ house in nearby Wapakoneta, Ohio.
One possible solution for some broadcasters may be a channel-sharing agreement, which would let a station sell its spectrum in the auction and share a signal with another local broadcaster.
Mr. Block acknowledges he owns excess spectrum in Lima and that his business may vanish with the opening bids.
“I’d rather not have to deal with this,” he says. “I suppose the day after we get the check I might think differently.”
Television makers like Sony, Samsung Electronics and Panasonic will be working overtime this week to sell you on so-called ultra high-definition 4K television.
My advice: Wait at least another year or two before buying it — the hype and the TV sets themselves.
Keep that bottom line in mind as you hear more about 4K TV, named for the high-definition resolution display. Plenty of announcements about the technology are expected this week at International CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas that is one of the tech industry’s largest tradeshows. The high-definition televisions will be a featured attraction at the four-day event, alongside virtual reality devices, drones and new smartphones.
4K TVs began surfacing about three years ago. To decode the marketing jargon: 4K is the successor to 1080p, the current high-definition resolution found on modern TV sets. The term 4K, also called Ultra HD, refers to screens with two times the vertical resolution and twice the horizontal resolution of current high-definition TVs.
The 4K resolution and other new TV technologies “take a television screen picture much closer to the capabilities of the human visual system,” said Neil Hunt, Netflix’s chief product officer, in an interview. “They are big steps forward in delivering better quality.”
But after interviewing several technology companies and testing a premium Samsung 4K TV for more than a week, I was less than convinced that 2016 would be a good year to buy one of the sets. Televisions with the 4K feature remain expensive, ranging from $1,000 to tens of thousands of dollars. More important, the content available in the new 4K video resolution is sparse. And while images encoded in 4K do look better than normal high-definition ones, the differences aren’t jaw-dropping.
Consider the available catalog of 4K content. Netflix has just 25 programs to watch in Ultra HD, including its original TV shows like “Jessica Jones” and “Daredevil.” Amazon has a bit more — hundreds of titles are in 4K, but many of them are older movies (like “Jerry Maguire”) that you may have little desire to watch again. Amazon’s original series, like “Transparent” and “The Man in the High Castle,” are also in 4K. Both Netflix and Amazon said they expect all the original content that they produce this year to be available in 4K.
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Still, even with more 4K content coming, the higher resolution may not be worth it. In my tests, I compared Samsung’s flagship 4K television, the JS9500, which costs $4,500, side by side with my three-year-old Panasonic 1080p plasma TV. On the 4K version of “Jerry Maguire,” I could see some details that were lost in the 1080p version, such as Cuba Gooding Jr.’s pores, along with some details in the shadows of his face and horizontal lines on a television screen showing a football game. In other words, not breathtaking.
More profound differences could be seen in newer content that was produced with 4K in mind, like Amazon’s TV series “Mozart in the Jungle.” The colors in that show looked especially vibrant and vivid, and the picture was noticeably clearer in 4K than in 1080p. Amazon declined to make an executive available for comment on its 4K offerings.
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What makes “Mozart in the Jungle” look exceptional is a new color technology called H.D.R., or high dynamic range. This software feature enhances the contrast and color profile of a picture. In bright colors, you will see brighter highlights; in dark colors, you will see more details. In my side-by-side comparisons, 4K content with high dynamic range was noticeably superior to 1080p content, whereas 4K content without high dynamic range had a negligible difference in picture quality compared with 1080p.
Yet only a small number of 4K televisions include high dynamic range, and only a sliver of 4K content so far is encoded with the richer color profile. Amazon started offering 4K content with high dynamic range last year, and Netflix plans to begin offering titles supporting the feature this year, starting with its show “Marco Polo.” Those two features combined — 4K and high dynamic range — will probably be the gamechanger for television. But that is still coming later rather than sooner.
Right now, there isn’t much to watch in 4K on cable TV. Comcast in 2014 began offering its first 4K-capable streaming app, and this year the cable provider will release a new box, the Xi6, that also supports high dynamic range. Despite these efforts, a Comcast spokesman said the total number of shows and movies produced in 4K is “still pretty small.”
A telltale sign that it’s too early to buy a fancy television is you still won’t be able to enjoy arguably the biggest show on television in ultra high definition: “Game of Thrones.” Jeff Cusson, a spokesman for HBO, which airs the show, said the company had “no plans at this time” to begin supporting 4K content. So fans who were hoping to gaze at the pores of characters like Daenerys Targaryen this year are out of luck. Other popular HBO shows like “Girls,” “Silicon Valley” and the “The Leftovers” will not be offered in 4K either.
Over all, sales of 4K TVs are picking up, which should incentivize content providers to make more shows and movies in Ultra HD. Amazon said that in 2015, sales of 4K televisions tripled compared with the previous year, though it declined to reveal underlying sales numbers. Samsung, the No. 1 TV manufacturer, said it hoped that 60 percent of its TV sales in the United States this year would be 4K televisions, up from 30 percent last year. IHS, a research firm, predicts that 34 percent of American households will have big-screen 4K TVs by 2019, up from about 10 percent this year.
“4K adoption has been phenomenally quick,” said Dave Das, a Samsung executive, in an interview. “Adoption has been as fast, or faster, than when we launched 1080p.”
Samsung estimates that altogether there are now 800 titles to watch in Ultra HD. Mr. Das said Samsung this quarter will begin selling its first 4K-capable Blu-ray players, which will give consumers another avenue for obtaining 4K content other than streaming.
At CES, all the big TV manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, will be highlighting their 4K televisions. Many new sets this year will include high dynamic range. Samsung on Tuesday will highlight its next flagship TV, the KS9500, which it says will deliver the most realistic color range it has ever offered. Roku, the TV streaming device maker, said on Monday that it was working with TV manufacturers to introduce 60 Ultra HD television sets including Roku’s software this year.
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And there is new branding for 4K television sets, too. The TVs that include high dynamic range will be called Ultra HD Premium. The Consumer Technology Association, a trade group that represents the electronics industry, said on Monday that the new specification would help consumers understand the differences between various Ultra HD technologies and navigate the growing marketplace.
Beware: The sets will take a bite out of your wallet. Well-reviewed TV sets, like Vizio’s M60-C3 or Samsung’s JU7100, cost $1,000 to $1,600. Because the software included on television sets is typically terrible, you will probably also want to buy a 4K-capable media player, like the Roku 4 streaming box ($130). If you’re streaming content, you may also want to make sure your Internet connection is fast enough: You’ll need roughly 20 megabits a second to consistently stream content in 4K resolution, according to Amazon and Netflix.
If you’re happy with your current high-definition TV, do yourself a favor and wait at least a year or two before buying an Ultra HD television. By then, there should be plenty more 4K content to watch. Plus TV prices drop rapidly as their features become more commoditized — if you buy a 4K television set today, a TV with the same features will probably cost less than $1,000 in 2017 or 2018.
