A day after the UHD Alliance announced the expansion of its Ultra HD Premium certification logo program to include Ultra HD Blu-ray players (see 1604120017), Panasonic’s U.K. subsidiary said the company’s DMP-UB900 Ultra HD Blu-ray player got that certification. That means the DMP-UB900 “has met the rigorous testing protocol set out by the UHD Alliance for Ultra HD Blu-ray players,” the subsidiary said in a Wednesday announcement. The DMP-UB900 will be available to buy in U.K. stores beginning this week, and Panasonic is giving away copies of the Warner titles Mad Max: Fury Road and San Andreas to the first takers, it said. “Blu-ray consistently delivered the best picture and sound performance for the HD age,” the company said. “Now Ultra HD Blu-ray is going to do the same thing for the 4K HDR age.” Panasonic representatives didn’t comment Wednesday on U.S. availability of the DMP-UB900. The company said at CES only that “specific pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.”

Akamai is the first to bring live 4K to consumers, said Chris Nicholson, senior public relations manager, in a Tuesday blog post. While there have been many 4K-related announcements of over-the-top demonstrations at the NAB Show, “Akamai has already evolved the live/linear 4K workflow from controlled demonstrations to real-world, public, consumer distribution,” Nicholson said. “Live 4K has the potential to reach the market more quickly online as opposed to traditional methods like satellite, IPTV or cable. That's a pretty big deal.” At its NAB Show booth, Akamai will demonstrate “a complete live 4K workflow in production, from camera to consumption, streaming over the public Internet -- no small feat in a giant convention center,” he said. “You'll be able to see firsthand the steps that we're taking to make this a reality.” Much like the role live sports played in HD’s “uptake,” live sports “are again proving to be a key driver for 4K adoption,” he said. “Akamai recently helped deliver the first publicly available live 4K streaming of a major sporting event. It's yet one more step in the right direction to making this game-changing technology available on a mass consumption basis.”

Ultra HD Blu-ray players can now qualify to bear the UHD Alliance's Ultra HD Premium logo under an expanded certification program announced Tuesday. The Ultra HD Premium logo, unveiled at CES (see 1601030003), is designed to help consumers identify TVs, content, content services and playback devices that comply with performance metrics for resolution, high dynamic range, peak luminance, black levels and wide color gamut, said UHDA. Thirty TVs have been certified with the Ultra HD Premium logo, with more expected throughout the year, it said. UHDA President Hanno Basse called certification of Ultra HD Blu-ray players a “natural first expansion” of the Ultra HD Premium logo since the Ultra HD Blu-ray format was built “with premium performance in mind,” and a growing number of Ultra HD Blu-ray titles are being released with the Ultra HD Premium logo.

Netflix's Ultra HD content is now available through Dish Network's Hopper 3 DVR, with its 4K support, decoding and outputting capabilities, Dish said in a news release Friday. The Hopper 3 also supports 4K programming from Mance Media, Sony and The Orchard, Dish said. The Netflix app was integrated into Hopper 3's universal search feature earlier this year (see 1602010019).

Canon will use the NAB Show to showcase its full line of professional 4K and HD imaging equipment for movie and TV production, video content creation and still photography, the company said in a Wednesday announcement. Canon also will showcase a 4K projector with high dynamic range, the company said. Canon also will bring its “8K Ride Experience” to the NAB Show, it said. Introduced in September in New York, the 8K Ride Experience “projects video on large screens surrounding viewers to give them a unique sense of movement while sitting or standing still,” it said. At the show, Canon also will showcase working-prototype 8K cameras and lenses, with the imagery shown on Canon 8K displays, it said. Also on display will be a prototype 4K projector capable of covering up to 100 percent of the DCI color space, Canon said.

Tektronix will use the NAB Show to demonstrate the industry's first “end-to-end” H.265 test solutions that will enable broadcasters, cable operators and other service providers to make a more “seamless transition” to 4K, the supplier of video quality monitoring solutions said in a Monday announcement. “Delivering 4K content to the home represents a challenging transition.” Operators need to be sure that the encoders they are using are doing the job correctly, that the content meets regulatory requirements and that the quality of experience is the best it can be for the end customer, it said. The NAB Show exhibit floor opens April 18 for a four-day run.

SES will team with ARTE, the European culture channel, to broadcast the Le Corsaire ballet Saturday live in Ultra HD from the Vienna State Opera, the companies said in a Tuesday announcement. The show will be beamed via the Astra satellite at 19.2 degrees east to Ultra HD screens equipped with H.265 decoders, they said. SES Platform Services will manage the live-encoding and satellite uplink, they said. “Broadcasting in Ultra HD is becoming increasingly relevant for broadcasters,” said SES.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment set for Monday the debut of its 4K Ultra HD movie streaming service, Ultra, for owners of qualified Sony Ultra HD TVs, it said in a Tuesday announcement. Ultra, which Sony announced at CES, will offer a variety of movies for purchase and playback in 4K Ultra HD, with many including high dynamic range, it said. Films available on Ultra for $30 each will include new releases like Concussion, The Night Before and The Walk, and library titles such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Ghostbusters, it said. Consumers who buy eligible Sony 4K TVs with Ultra this summer will receive four free movies when they sign up for the service, it said.

Hisense was a notable addition -- and its premium Sharp TV brand a notable no-show -- at the Luxury Technology Show in New York Wednesday. Hisense’s appearance at a luxury tech event signals the company is “now playing in that market,” Chris Ford, national marketing manager, told us. Hisense demo'd its curved 65-inch 65H10C 4K Ultra HD TV at the event to show the company offers more than a “40-inch Roku TV for a kid’s dorm,” Ford said. Features of the $2,499 TV include 3D, which Ford called a “nice to have feature” for the money, Hisense’s ULED dynamic backlight control technology, a quantum dot display and upscaling from any source that’s “close to 4K.” On why Hisense is pushing Hisense to the luxury U.S. market rather than the more familiar Sharp brand, Ford said, “Hisense is going to be the lead brand” for the company, after its buy of Sharp’s TV business last summer (see 1508030046). Sharp technology -- including AquoDimming and its quantum dot technology -- is key to Hisense’s advancement, Ford said, but the company doesn’t want its reputation as a TV brand to come across as Sharp. “It’s Hisense," he said, "and it’s the real deal."

Quebec’s largest cable provider Videotron launched what its supplier Alticast is calling Canada’s “first availability” of a 4K Ultra HD set-top “on a commercial basis throughout a cable system operator's entire service footprint.” Alticast is supplying the set-top box’s middleware and user-interface “enablement,” it said in a Wednesday announcement. The “tremendous promise” that Ultra HD “holds for our customers can only be realized by true commitment on the part of the entire industry," said Pierre Roy, Videotron vice president-engineering R&D. Rogers Cable, Canada’s largest cable provider, has claimed several 4K firsts, such as its beaming in January of the first-ever live NBA and NHL games in 4K to customers with a NextBox 4K set-top (see 1601140002). For Rogers, those broadcasts began "a big year of content for our customers who will be able to access over 500 hours of live sports, movies and shows in 4K, including all 81 Toronto Blue Jays home games on Sportsnet," spokesman Andrew Garas emailed us Wednesday. As for the implication in the Alticast-Videotron announcement that not all cable customers in the Rogers Canadian “service footprint” have access to the 4K NextBox set-top, Garas said: "Currently, Rogers 4K TV is available to our entire Ontario cable footprint."