Televisual enthusiasts and wealthy gadget hounds rejoice. Netflix has revealed it plans to begin streaming its House of Cards original series in UltraHD resolution within the “next year or two.”
Neil Hunt, the company’s chief product officer, said most of the Kevin Spacey political drama was shot in the new future-thinking format.
He said that Netflix hopes to have the raw 4K footage in its hands later this year and says the company will begin streaming it to those few customers with the super-expensive sets as soon as possible.
“Our own original House of Cards was shot in 4K,” Hunt told The Verge
“It’s being mastered in full HD, but the raw footage, or a good chunk of it, was shot in 4K, and we hope to have some House of Cards 4K encodes later this year.”
Naturally, there won’t be too many viewers able to take advantage of the extra resolution, which boasts four times as many pixels as current HD content, due to the crippling expense of first-gen Ultra HD televisions.
Hunt told The Verge that 4K content “will likely be streamed first before anywhere else” (i.e. broadcast, disc), but that presents another problem beyond the expense of the screens. How on earth are those without super-fast broadband going to be able to manage such massive files?
The David Fincher-directed political drama starring Kevin Spacey has been a critical success for the streaming giant since the entire series became available to subscribers back in January.
The on-demand company is hoping to become an original content provider to match the likes of HBO and Showtime in the United States and Sky and ITV in the UK.
Later this year the company will begin exclusively streaming the long-awaited fourth series of Arrested Development, which it produced.
Via The Verge
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
