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Sony FMP-X5 brings 4K streaming to early adopters

Sony has announced the Sony FMP-X5, a media streaming box that will allow European early 4K adopters to stream Ultra High Definition content to their expensive TV sets.

There’s a bit of an issue with the current 4K streaming standard, HEVC (H.265). It doesn’t work on early 4K TV sets, some of which retailed for upwards of £20,000.

The Sony FMP-X5 promises to fix that, for the princely sum of £350 / €399.  The device hooks up to a 4K TV over HDMI, and enables the streaming of HEVC content.

Sony is targeting the FMP-X5 at 4K Bravia sets sold in 2012 and 2013, including the KDL-84X9005, KD-65X9005A, and KD-55X9005A.

All of which sounds great, until you consider that only Netflix is offering 4K streaming content right now. Even then, the only program that has received the UHD treatment at the time of writing is House of Cards.

More content will be arriving shortly, but we suspect that it will be a while until £350 seems like money well spent here. But then again, the people who need this box once purchased an unproven TV standard for £20,000, so it’s probably not that much of an issue.

With no storage options, users will need a pretty good broadband connection if they’re to enjoy the 4K content that the Sony FMP-X5 enables. Netflix specifies a connection of at least 20Mbps.

The Sony FMP-X5 will be available across Europe from August.

Read More: Best 4K TVs 2014

Via: TechRadar

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