And so begins the era of Ultra High Definition Television

The next era of HD TV has been given an official marketing moniker – Ultra High Definition Television, or UHDTV.

The technology has until now been going by the ‘4K’ moniker, owing to the fact that it supports resolution of either 3840×2160 or 4096×2160.

UHDTV boasts four times the resolution of the current 1080p HD standard (1920×1080).

For future TV sets to be able to carry the UHDTV branding they must support a minimum resolution of 3840 x 2160 and have at least one input capable of natively displaying a 4K resolution signal.

UHDTV screens are obviously both rare and insanely expensive at the moment. Which isn’t really a huge problem as finding UHDTV source material is nearly impossible.

But this, of course, will change. Many Hollywood films are already being filmed in UHDTV and Sony recently demoed a version of Gran Turismo 5 running at the resolution.

What the industry will be most anxious about, however, will be whether or not the public will be keener to adopt the new technology than they were 3D, which is nearing dead in the water” status.