In the large-panel driver-integrated circuit (IC) business of chip maker Himax Technologies, “TV applications will be the main growth area, partially offsetting in the softness of those for notebooks and monitors,” CEO Jordan Wu said Thursday on an earnings call of his outlook on Q2 operations. “The forces behind growth in the TV application include our market share gains with several customers, sales of 4K TV tracking better than the first quarter, and display manufacturing capacity expansion in China. We are confident that our large-panel driver-IC business will generate double-digit growth this year.” With the move into large panels for 4K, the driver and the “timing controller” components “are becoming a lot more technically challenging,” Wu said in Q&A. “So you are limiting a lot of competitors in the marketplace. So there are actually only a very, very small handful of players at the moment.” Wu treats that as “a very good sign for us,” he said.

Comcast will launch an Ultra HD set-top later this year as it brings its Xfinity in UHD catalog to the X1 platform, the company said in a Wednesday news release. The Xi4 will deliver UHD content “directly to the television, enabling X1 customers to enjoy unlimited virtual 4K linear channels by creating personalized playlists from the Xfinity in UHD library,” Comcast said. It will follow that next year with the launch of a high-dynamic-range Xi5 set-top, Comcast said. Comcast representatives didn’t comment whether the Xi5 set-top will support an open HDR standard such as that being espoused by the UHD Alliance or a proprietary standard such as Dolby Vision. The Xi5 high-dynamic-range set-top will provide “increased color, contrast and brightness,” Comcast said. The deployment of Xfinity in UHD for the X1 platform will mean “our customers can easily and seamlessly enjoy some of the best 4K programming available today as part of their subscription with no additional equipment or costs,” Comcast Cable General Manager-Video Service Matt Strauss said. Comcast said it also plans to add hundreds of additional films and shows to its Xfinity in UHD catalog, including IMAX films and content from Starz, SyFy and USA. At the INTX cable show in Chicago, the operator demo'd other enhancements as it's trying to improve customer service (see 1505060012).

Nationwide Marketing Group, which announced (see 1504220029) an alliance with the Home Technology Specialists of America last month, signed its first distribution deal with a major TV brand in 42 years, the companies said Tuesday. JVC TVs, including HD and 4K Ultra HD models, will be available to Nationwide’s dealer base of 3,800 vendors, they said. Tom Hickman, Nationwide senior vice president-electronics, called for a “long and prosperous relationship" between it and JVC parent company Amtran.

Asus began shipping the ZenBook Pro UX501 notebook PC ($1,799) with a 15.6-inch 4K UHD display. Pixel density is 282 pixels per inch and viewing angle 178 degrees, said Asus. The 0.81-inch-thick PC uses the Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M graphics processor and comes with 16 GB of RAM, said the company. The 4.5-pound ZenBook has a six-hour battery life, Bang & Olufsen ICEpower SonicMaster Premium audio and three USB 2.0 connectors.

For Broadcom, HEVC decoder chips in 4K TVs and set-tops are “an opportunity that will probably become more significant next year,” CEO Scott McGregor said during Q&A of a Tuesday earnings call. “But the key thing about that is that if you want to win a design today, you really have to have leading products with HEVC and 4K,” he said. “All the designs and decisions being made on what platforms and architectures are all based on your strength in that space, and Broadcom was the first there and early in that technology and so that's enabled us to win a lot of the next generation,” he said. “So those designs -- a lot of them are already won and you'll start to see those roll out over the course of time.” HEVC-based 4K is an opportunity that’s “certainly good for us” because it brings the potential for higher average selling prices and the chance “to win some customers we didn't have before,” McGregor said. “Especially outside of the United States, it's an opportunity for share gains. We talked about that as a driver for us in the past to get geographical share gain there, and certainly the 4K transition has accelerated that.” Q1 revenue in Broadcom’s connectivity business soared 13 percent on strong consumer adoption of new high-end smartphones and growing penetration of new technologies such as 802.11ac, McGregor said. Broadcom also is seeing “significant customer interest” in its latest 5G Wi-Fi BCM4359 chip that offers “industry-first” real simultaneous dual band (RSDB) support, McGregor said. “This technology is expected to ship later this year and allows a smartphone or tablet to transfer data across two bands at the same time, enabling new applications and increasing the performance of existing applications,” he said. Broadcom unveiled the BCM4359 in early March, saying that by enabling RSDB support, the BCM4359 is able to connect to the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands simultaneously, “improving the throughput and latency when using multiple applications at the same time, particularly video streaming and gaming.” Broadcom also is seeing “a lot of activity” in the IoT market, McGregor said. During Q1, it shipped a large number of development kits for “prototyping” IoT products, he said. Broadcom continues to “garner new design wins in a broad set of verticals” for IoT, “ranging across automotive, medical devices, healthcare, life goods and home automation,” he said.

SES is partnering with broadcast and TV “technology innovators,” including Sony, at this week’s NAB Show to build a “full end-to-end” Ultra HD transmission system and deliver three days of “live and linear” Ultra HD broadcasts to a cable system on the floor of the show, it said in a Monday announcement. Sony is contributing content and Bravia 4K TVs to the project, SES said. Other partners include Harmonic, PacSat, Sinclair, Superior Satellite Systems and TelVue, it said. PacSat is providing uplink services from a truck parked next to an SES Ultra HD studio at the front entrance of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall, it said. “A mix of pre-produced content, feature coverage of events throughout Las Vegas, and live interviews with Hollywood and television celebrities and executives will be broadcast in Ultra HD to a fully operational cable system in the SES NAB booth” in South Hall, it said. NAB attendees “will be able to watch the live Ultra HD broadcasts” when they visit the SES, Harmonic and Sony booths, it said.

Technicolor teamed with Sinclair to successfully demonstrate the world's first live broadcast transmission of Ultra HD with high dynamic range using technologies that have been proposed for ATSC 3.0, the companies said Thursday in a joint statement. The series of broadcasts, integrated into Sinclair's experimental OFDM transmission system and transmitted under real-world conditions outside a lab, delivered "high-quality" HDR content broadcast at HD and 4K/UHD resolutions in a single-layer with backward-compatible standard dynamic range, they said. Both HDR and legacy devices, including fixed-position TVs and mobile devices, “were all able to receive and display the broadcast signal,” they said. "We're building a path toward new broadcast TV services that are appropriate for UHD and HDR," said Vince Pizzica, Technicolor senior executive vice president-corporate development and technology. "We're excited to reach the first milestone in our testing of real-world, challenging environments. This latest series of over-the-air tests confirms that Technicolor's HDR video solutions support broadcast at HD and 4K resolutions, as well as for standard dynamic range and mobile devices, presenting a whole new world of opportunities for broadcasters." Technicolor is a founding member of the UHD Alliance, which advocates open HDR standards, as is Dolby Labs, which has its proprietary Dolby Vision HDR system. Sinclair has advocated speedy deployment of a next-gen broadcast system, even if it’s a proprietary Sinclair system it thinks can reach market faster than ATSC 3.0 (see 1405080082).

A "range" of authoring tools for next-gen Ultra HD Blu-ray will be on display at next week's NAB Show, Blu-ray Disc Association spokeswoman Heather Gioco said in a Thursday email to reporters. Ultra HD is expected to dominate "much of the conversation" at NAB, just as it did at CES, she said. "The creation and distribution of Ultra HD content will be a critical driver to consumer adoption of the UHD format. To that end, with the licensing of Ultra HD Blu-ray on schedule to begin this summer, the BDA is also working closely with industry leaders in the authoring, testing, certification and replication industries to develop the tools and processes needed to ensure interoperability between players and software and to facilitate the development of a robust ecosystem to support the launch of Ultra HD Blu-ray." LG and Samsung are among the suppliers that have said they plan to introduce Ultra HD Blu-ray players in time for 2015's holiday selling season, assuming licensing of the new format begins on schedule by the summer (see 1409170023).

LG is and always has been a founding member of the UHD Alliance, LG spokesman John Taylor told us Wednesday. LG also holds a seat on the alliance's board, Taylor said. But Sharp was "incorrectly labeled a founding member" when the alliance was announced at CES, Jim Sanduski, president of Sharp Electronics Marketing Co. of America, emailed us Tuesday. "We are today, however, a member and a participant in the UHD Alliance," Sanduski said. Both companies were missing from a list of members in the alliance's call for contributors issued Tuesday (see 1504070054). There remained no mention of LG or Sharp at the alliance's website Wednesday afternoon. Victor Matsuda, vice president in Sony America’s Visual Entertainment Project Office and vice chairman of the alliance, declined comment on the membership status of individual companies. But the alliance has received queries and membership applications from “dozens” of companies since CES, and is processing those applications “as fast as we can,” Matsuda told us Wednesday. However, no companies other than the 10 listed in the alliance’s Tuesday announcement or posted at the group’s website are “official members,” he told us. Matsuda chairs the alliance's Promotions Working Group and in that role also serves as the group's official spokesman, he told us.

The founding members of the UHD Alliance, the formation of which was announced at CES, issued a call Tuesday for contributing members to join the group and help “advance a new and differentiated entertainment experience for Ultra HD including high dynamic range, wide color gamut, high frame rate and advanced audio.” Founding members are DirecTV, Disney, Dolby Labs, Fox, Netflix, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Technicolor and Warner. Though LG and Sharp were listed among the founding members when the alliance was announced at CES (see 1501050023), neither was listed in Tuesday’s announcement, nor appears on the member roster at the alliance’s website. LG and Sharp representatives didn’t comment. The alliance’s goal “is to ensure these technologies, coupled with performance metrics, will deliver a premium entertainment experience throughout the Ultra HD ecosystem from content creation to consumer enjoyment,” the group said in a statement: “In addition to working discussions around technical specifications and certification details, the UHD Alliance will help develop industry-standard branding so that consumers can clearly identify certified premium UHD content and devices offered in the marketplace." Hanno Basse, chief technology officer at Fox Films, has been named the alliance’s first president, and Victor Matsuda, the Sony executive who has chaired the Blu-ray Disc Association’s global promotions committee, is its spokesman. The alliance also has formed working groups for promotions, certifications and technical specifications, its website says. “The belief at Technicolor is that no one company can build the infrastructure for future storytelling experiences alone, so an open, collaborative framework is essential to mobilizing innovation and promoting integration by the entire value chain," said Vince Pizzica, Technicolor senior executive vice president-corporate development and technology, in a statement. "Welcoming new members into the UHD Alliance is an important first step as we work across the ecosystem on open standards for the next generation of entertainment experiences that ensure the industry can move forward together.”