Up to 4M NextGenTV Sets to Be in Homes This Year, Says Pearl TV's Schelle
About a million NextGenTV sets have been sold to date since inception, with an installed base of up to 4 million possible by year-end, Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle told Consumer Electronics Daily Monday. “This really is the year of awareness” for NextGen TV, she said.
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The top three TV makers in the premium space -- LG, Samsung and Sony -- have led the NextGenTV charge, but another major TV brand is due to hit the market this year, said Schelle. NextGenTV tuner chips are built into nine LG 4K and 8K TVs starting at $1,999 for the 55-inch OLED55G1PUA; 18 Samsung mid-high-end 4K and 8K QLED TVs 50- ($1,399)-85 inches ($11,999); and 26 Sony models, starting at $649 ($599 at Best Buy Monday) for the 43-inch KD43X80J.
Twenty-eight markets are on air with NextGenTV: Austin; Buffalo; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas-Fort Worth; Denver; Detroit, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan; Las Vegas; Mobile; Nashville; Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, Virginia; Oklahoma City; Pensacola, Florida; Phoenix; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; Raleigh-Durham; Salt Lake City; Seattle; Springfield, Massachusetts; St. Petersburg, Tallahassee and Tampa, Florida; and Syracuse. Six new markets will come online this summer in Charlotte, Atlanta, Sacramento, Washington, D.C., Orlando and Baltimore, said Schelle.
COVID-19 set back the rollout of NextGenTV, which was slated to have about 30 markets up by year-end 2020; it ended up with 20, said Schelle. “We couldn’t get to TV stations” due to the pandemic after TV makers had announced compatible TVs at CES. On how many early adopters know they have the next-gen technology in the sets they bought, Schelle said, “This is the year that I think they’ll realize they have it.” Metadata will indicate NextGen TV on the appropriate HDMI input, she said.
Despite shifting consumer viewing habits away from pay-TV to over-the-top streaming, Schelle said live TV viewing “is still very much in play,” noting that 93% of Super Bowl viewers in February watched the game live. The standard was developed with the recognition that consumers want live and on-demand TV experiences and the ability to interact with real-time content from live sports, events and news, she said. A popular capability built into ATSC 3.0 is the ability to target audiences with emergency information about weather or news alerts, she said; viewers can click on an alert to get more information.
Pearl TV tested an ad campaign with the NextGen TV logo in six markets over the holiday season, and consumers responded positively to upgradeability and Dolby AC-4 features including consistent loudness and dialogue enhancement, Schelle said. Interactive features were also listed as differentiators for consumers. Sixty percent of participants said they would buy a NextGenTV model if they were going to buy a new TV, she said. Pearl TV believes consumers are still spending on home entertainment as a continuation of COVID-19 lockdown trends. The delta for upgrading to NextGen is narrower than the upgrade path from analog to HDTV, which should also drive sales, she said.
On when second-tier TV makers will roll out NextGenTV sets, Schelle wouldn’t give a date but noted that brands “similar to” Vizio, Hisense and TCL will be coming in soon. “Eventually, it will be hard not to buy a TV set with NextGen,” she said, pegging that time frame as three years off. Consumers with five-year-old and newer smart TVs can receive NextGenTV broadcasts via a tuner and antenna, she noted. SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun NextGen TV tuner was selling for $199 at Amazon Monday.