Netflix To Stream House Of Cards In 4K To LG Smart TVs

Today at CES, LG brought Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on stage to announce that buyers of its ultra high resolution 4K televisions will have some content to watch that actually takes advantage of their screens: Hastings announced that House of Cards, which was filmed and mastered in 4K, will be streaming at that resolution in real-time starting this year.

Netflix has previously announced that it would be able to do 4K streaming this year, but LG gets to be its pioneering partner with this arrangement, and Hastings noted during the keynote that Netflix has worked with LG throughout the years on breaking new ground with streaming home media devices. First there were smart Blu-ray players, then they baked it into the TV, and now there’s the opportunity to leapfrog broadcast media with 4K content.

All that 4K streaming will definitely eat into bandwidth, however, which means that you’ll need a strong plan to take on the additional load, but at least people will have something to watch on those expensive new gadgets. To support 4K, Netflix uses HEVC (H.265) streaming at about 15Mbps. Hastings also praised the native web integration with webOS, which forms the basis for LG’s new smart TV platform, as a great way to get all the content we’re now used to on the Internet into the home in the best way possible.