One of the topics I discussed in a webinar here last month on the rise of 4K Ultra HD and the role of mobile was how efforts to bring 4K content to new Ultra HD TV sets were pulling other useful technologies into to the TV and over-the-top ecosystems behind them. Interest in sending 4K over the top, for instance, is helping to accelerate the deployment of the H.265 and VP-9 compression formats, which will have the ancillary effect of relieving some of the bandwidth congestion confronting even ordinary HD video.

OTT content providers like Netflix and Google are also leveraging CE makers’ interest in having enough 4K content available to help sell UHD displays to establish new beachheads in the living room. In Google’s case, it persuaded CE companies and system chips makers to bake support for its VP-9 codec directly into the hardware, seeding a generation of devices capable of natively decoding VP-9 content (e.g. YouTube) without the need of a set-top box or third-party platform provider to handle the decoding chores and giving Google its own pipeline directly to the big-screen TV.

I’ll be discussing some of those same issues at the Your Next TV conference June 24 during CE Week in New York. Also on my panel will be Vishnu Rao of Sharp, Matthew Durgin of LG Electronics and Barbara Kraus of Parks Associates.