Where to find Ultra HD content?

Leisure

What content for an Ultra HD TV?

Ultra HD TVs are becoming the market standard, with lower prices and better picture quality. A screen in Ultra HD (3840x2160 pixels) offers an image definition 4 times higher than that of a Full HD screen (1920x1080 pixels), or 8 million points instead of 2 million. That is to say if the level of detail is much higher! But if a UHD TV brings more details with full HD content upscaled, it is still with movies, series and games produced in Ultra HD that it could reveals its full potential. So what content to watch? Should we invest more? Are there channels in Ultra HD? Here are some of the answers!

UHD television under certain conditions

Regarding your favorite TV channels, the answer is often always the same: programs offered natively in Ultra HD are very rare. However, there are some, although it is usually conditional. To access it, you need a good connection to the Internet (the fiber is a safe bet) and to subscribe to an operator who offers access to Ultra HD content. In France, Orange has the most, thanks to partnerships with TF1, Canal + or M6. For these three channels, most programs offered in Ultra HD are sports competitions. Moreover, big news this year: the Olympic Winter Games are fully filmed in Ultra HD by the Olympic Broadcasting Service, which offers its images in most countries of the world ... including France. This trend is thus prevailing!

 

Other channels, including Arte, sometimes offer cultural programs, such as shows or concerts, in Ultra HD. With regards to Free, we can note the possibility of accessing the “4K Festival” channel through a Mini 4K Freebox and a fiber connection. Again, these are cultural programs, such as concerts, ballets or magic shows, for example.

 

It will be understood that, on television, not too much UHD content is already available ... but it is making progress, and it will certainly improve in the coming years! Fortunately, there are other ways to be entertained in Ultra HD.

Netflix and Amazon Prime, your safe sources

 

By switching to subscription-based video-on-demand services, you can be assured of access to juicy Ultra HD catalogs, all at a monthly affordable price. For Netflix, you will have to pay 13.99 euros per month to have the 4K for compatible content. For Amazon Prime Video, it will cost you 3.99 euros per month, but there is less Ultra HD content on the latter.

 

Netflix chose to shoot all its original content in Ultra HD several years ago. All Marvel series are available in 4K, as are Stranger Things, Sens8, Black Mirror, Orange is the New Black, 13 Reasons Why ... there are literally thousands of hours of Ultra HD content on Netflix, and several hundred also offer HDR. Amazon's side, again, most of the original series are Ultra HD: American Gods, The Man in the High Castle, Bosh, Mozart in the Jungle or the car show The Grand Tour.

 

So that's a lot of content to watch in Ultra HD! The only condition to access it is to have a sufficiently solid connection (not necessarily the fiber, a good ADSL connection can suffice). If you use the Netflix application directly available on your TV, it will automatically recognize the Ultra HD screen. It's the same for the PS4 Pro or the Xbox One S or X. However, to use Amazon Prime, you must go through a PS4, since the application is not yet available on all TVs, but it should be very soon!

Blu-ray Ultra HD, a rich offer

 

If you prefer to have your movies and shows on physical media at home, you can go for an Ultra HD Blu-ray player and UHD Blu-ray discs. An inexpensive way is to go for a Microsoft Xbox One S console that can also be used to play video games, too, of course. The catalog is already quite rich today: all blockbusters are released in Blu-ray Ultra HD, usually bundled with a standard Blu-ray. For thirty euros, you get the film in Ultra High Definition, to play back, therefore, on a compatible player. And all UHD Blu-ray movies support HDR, so you get the best picture quality available on the market today.

 

This year, Star Wars will be released in Blu-ray Ultra HD for the first time, but we can find many other very good movies in this format. We can mention Mad Max: Fury Road, Wonder Woman, Ghostbusters, The Planet of the Monkeys, King Kong, Alone on Mars, The Revenant ...

 

And on the TV Series side? The choice is weaker today. Only the first season of Westworld was eligible for this UHD treatment. But we can hope that the offer is expanding rapidly with prestige series like Game of Thrones. There is therefore already plenty of UHD content available today, to enable you to wait for even more!

 

Play in Ultra HD

 

Playing in Ultra HD has become very simple, just have a console of the latest generation, the Sony PS4 Pro or the Xbox One X from Microsoft, knowing that the Xbox One S is only upscaling games in Full HD. The biggest games now come out in Ultra HD and the details of the rendering makes it possible to get closer to the TV which guarantees a much higher immersion, and a fully new gaming experience. To give just one example, the Forza 7 set for the Xbox can let you imagine you would sit in racing cars as if you were really there driving them.

 

You now have a little idea of ​​the current offer in Ultra HD. Keep in mind that it's always evolving: Ultra-HD TVs (link to Thomson Ultra HD TV) are becoming the norm, and content distributors are adapting, to our delight! At Thomson, it is already tomorrow with a very rich offer of Ultra HD and HDR TVs that guarantee exceptional image quality.