Fears that Internet routers and switches will melt under an onslaught of 8K-enabled cord cutters can be put aside for a few years, according to projections released by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). But the number of U.S. households with 4K screens will continue to grow rapidly, and that will be problematic enough for broadband service providers: 25 Mbps download speeds will be the minimum needed to serve the typical U.S. home.
8K is a big screen technology. According to Steve Koenig, CTA’s vice president of research, those sets are in the 70-inch and up range, which is more limited market – not everybody wants something that big in the living room (although the same could have been said about 40-inch to 50-inch screens a few years ago). He projects half a million 8K screen shipped into the U.S. market in 2020, which is a drop in the bucket, particularly considering that many, if not most, of those will be used for commercial and industrial applications.
On the other hand, CTA’s projections show 4K sets hitting a steady state shipment rate in the upper 20 million annual unit range for the next three years, climbing to 32 million by 2023. Using the same, back of the envelope calculations that I used a couple of years ago, that means that about half of U.S. homes have 4K screens now, and that share will climb to at least three quarters by the end of 2021. We’re to the point where 4K resolution is the market standard, and it’ll soon be almost as hard to buy anything less as it is to find a black and white TV set now.
4K video needs a steady 15 Mbps stream to function in real time, and to have a fighting chance of getting that bit rate consistently requires service specced at 25 Mbps download speeds or better. That’s the minimum set for rural homes by the federal agriculture department, and it’s the FCC’s de facto minimum as well.
California’s pitiful 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up standard has to change too.