Dubai:
Consumers are getting spoilt for choices in the battle for TV formats as manufacturers focus on a number of competing technologies and operating systems.
While Samsung is running its TVs on Tizen operating system and LG on its own upgraded WebOS, Panasonic has formed an alliance with Mozilla to bring Firefox OS while Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Philips have turned to Android TV.
Sharp, Hisense and Haier have already launched its Android TVs in the market.
Sony on Monday showcased its new Bravia 4K TV line-up running on Android operating system.
Tsuda Yukinobu, head of home entertainment division at Sony, said that even though the total TV market is declining, the share of 4K TV is increasing from 16 per cent of the total sales in last year to 26 per cent this year. He predicted it will attain 33 per cent of the total sales in 2016.
According to research firm Display Search, 16.3 million 4K TVs were sold in 2014 globally and that number will grow 301 per cent to 49.1 million sets in 2016.
Smart televisions produced by manufacturers are becoming the big screen of choice for customers to pair tablet and smartphone videos, apps to the TV wirelessly and for over-the-top-savvy customers.
Yukinobu said Android makes it easy to stream video, function as a gaming device and provide enhanced features such as Google Cast and voice search.
According to industry experts, HEVC is expected to become a broadly supported codec in the device world and Netflix and M-Go are pushing with HEVC codec. Google is pushing with VP9 codec for 4K YouTube videos that can compress the video files to half the size than the current H. 264 format.
