Sony 4K Fee-Based Video Streaming Service Set for Fall, As Company Irons Out Details of Plan
Sony officially bowed its $4,999 and $6,999 55-inch and 65-inch 4K Ultra HD LED-lit LCD TVs (CED March 20 p3), which were to go on display in six Sony Store locations Monday. The stores are in New York, Century City, Calif., Costa Mesa, Calif., Houston, Las Vegas and Palo Alto, Calif., and will demonstrate native 4K resolution as well as upscaled 4K content, Sony said. The XBR-55X900A (55-inch) and XBR-65X900A (65-inch) will be generally available for order online and at retail on April 21, the company said.Sony also announced pricing for its new 4K media player, the FMP-X1 ($699), that will ship this summer. The player will be bundled with 10 4K titles and 4K video shorts and will also be able to stream 4K content from Sony’s video distribution service, announced at CES, with titles from Sony and other studios, the company said. The player’s bundled titles include Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Karate Kid (2010), Salt, Taxi Driver, That’s My Boy, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Other Guys and Total Recall (2012), Sony said. Although the company said the service would be available this summer at its CES news conference, it now says the service will launch in the fall. A company spokesman told us the service hasn’t been delayed but that the company is “ironing out the details."
The current 4K media server that Sony included with sales of the $24,999 84-inch 4K TV is not compatible with the video server, but owners of that player can exchange their server for the FMP-X1, Sony said. It wasn’t clear whether existing 4K media player owners would have to pay the $699 for the exchange.
Response to the smaller, lower-priced Ultra HD TVs has been mixed at retail. Specialty dealers we spoke to last week at the Home Technology Specialists of America conference said they could have gotten more than the $7,000 price of the 65-inch 4K set. Joseph Akhtarzad, president of Just One Touch Video & Audio Center, Santa Monica, Calif., told us he already has a “big list” of customers waiting for both sets. Brian Hudkins, president of Gramophone in Timonium, Md., told us the store could sell the 65-inch for more than $7,000, which he called “a little low.”
Some dealers questioned whether the smaller size 4K TVs could effectively sell the higher-priced technology, which they said was only clearly demonstrable at much larger screen sizes. One dealer believes the cut-throat pricing competition has devalued flat-panel TVs to a point where only a revolutionary technology such as “really thin” OLED or a TV that’s part of a wall will energize the category again. “Flat panel is on the way down,” said David Berman, vice president and general manager of Stereo East, outside of Dallas. His store is focusing on 4K projectors instead, where the impact of 4K resolution can easily be perceived at 100-inch-plus screen sizes, he said.
One east coast retailer told us last month that he expects prices for 4K flat panels to heat up in the second half of this year. “The 65-inch may be the better seller because for customers looking to step into that technology, 4K is more noticeable in the larger panels,” he said. The retailer was “very optimistic” about margin on the 65-inch set.