Rogers, Bell step up activity in 4K

TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. on Monday told a group of about 15 invited journalists that it sees a bright future in 4K television, while BCE Inc. announced that it was making a 4K set-top box available to customers of its Fibe TV service. Rogers, last week, began its involvement of 4K broadcasting with an NBA basketball game between the Toronto Raptors and the Orlando Magic, which it said was the first NBA game ever broadcast in 4K. Next up is a 4K broadcast of the Toronto Maple Leafs versus the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday, which Rogers said will be the first NHL game ever shown in this picture quality. “We are absolutely convinced that 4K is the next big thing in video and television, and that’s why we are making this investment for 4K,” Dirk Woessner, president of consumer business unit at Rogers, said at the press event Monday in Toronto. “For us at Rogers, we said want to be at the forefront bringing this great video experience to our customers, therefore we made the investment in developing the 4K technology on our boxes and on our network.” Rogers will produce a total of 500 hours of content in the coming year, with 300 hours of sports content that includes all 81 home Toronto Blue Jays games and 20 NHL games this year, and 200 hours of other productions, Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet at Rogers said at Monday’s event. It was also noted by Rick Brace, president of Rogers Media, that Rogers’ focus for rolling out 4K content will mainly be sports. “We believe that sports really is, as a live broadcast, a live transmission, really is where you’re going to see the difference, and it’s where we’re going to be able to drive this entire project,” Brace said. “It’s modest now, on channel 999, but we’ll be building that as we go on.” Rogers announced in December that its NextBox 4K set-top-boxes were available to consumers at $12.95 per month. Moore indicated that Rogers might, in the foreseeable future, come up with a 4K channel that broadcasts sports around the clock. “It comes down to how much content we end up doing and what our negotiations are with our cable partners,” he said. “It’s one of our options. I wouldn’t put a time limit on it. I think if there is enough content, we’ll do whatever is right for both the business and for the viewers.” Rogers first announced its intentions in October to get involved in 4K broadcasting. Moore said the company has learned from U.K.- based BT Group PLC’s BT Sport, which was the first in the world to do 4K content broadcasting in a major way. “We took a group over to London in November to meet with the BT Sports people and we spent a lot of time with them,” Moore said. “They found that by doing 4K, they established themselves as leader in sports innovation in the country.” Moore said Rogers could be the company in Canada that sets the ground for deploying 4K content and establishing an overall consumer trend toward it. He said that, as of right now, the company has a few hundred 4K set-top boxes installed. “I wouldn’t say this year is the testing year; I’d say it’s the beginning of the evolution,” Moore said. “We’ve done some testing. We did some rehearsals at the Budweiser Centre in London, Ont. We’ve done some rehearsals at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, another one on Thursday . So when we hit the air on Saturday , I think we’ll be technically sound. “But over the next three months, six months, two years, it will evolve, just as HD did. I would think that in two years we would have full 4K production.” Meanwhile, Bell said in a press release Monday that its new 4K Whole Home PVR is available to Fibe customers in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec City for $599. It said it would be available to all other Fibe TV customers, as well as Bell Aliant's FibreOp TV customers in Atlantic Canada, in late February. The website for Bell said a one-time $75 "professional installation fee" applies for those who get its 4K box. Bell spokeswoman Caroline Audet said in an email that renting options for this box would be available in February, though she did not say for how much. Quebecor Inc.'s Videotron priced its 4K set-top box at $399 to purchase. Bell said its 4K box is the smallest available on the market and can store up to 150 hours of 4K content. It added that the 4K content it was making available included an NBA basketball game between the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics on Wednesday night on TSN. That, it said, will be followed by more Raptors games in 4K, as well as NHL hockey games involving the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators broadcast in this quality. Company officials from neither Bell nor Rogers on Monday would confirm if there are plans in the works to have 4K content from their own channels provided to each other’s broadcast-distribution operations. Bell and Rogers are co-operating on a co-owned venture called Dome Productions, a Toronto-based operation that specializes in providing equipment and services for 4K broadcasts. Moore said pushing live 4K broadcasts by Rogers at this time was based largely on how sales of 4K TV did during the Christmas period, and he acknowledged there are studies are out there that paint a mixed picture for the demand of 4K TV. “There are a lot of studies out there and you take those studies with a grain of salt because if we don’t lead the evolution, no one will latch on,” he said. “If there’s no content, no one will buy it. “The history with Rogers is that Ted bought an FM radio station, so he went out door-to-door and sold FM radio stations; it’s not unprecedented." — With reporting by Shruti Shekar at sshekar@thewirereport.ca and reporting and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Rogers, Bell step up activity in 4K

Broadcast | January 18, 2016

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