Netflix wants to get a leg up on its rivals by becoming one of the first major providers of 4K video streaming, allowing subscribers to stream 4K video to their TVs, when they want it, where they want it. It aims to launch the Ultra HD service as soon as next year, and to get the ball rolling on Netflix 4K video streaming, it has quietly added a few titles containing test footage to its catalog.
The titles started appearing earlier this week, as many as seven have reportedly been added to the catalog. Test footage is being used to check 4K video streaming performance under different conditions. These titles have apparently been added for internal testing, as subscribers don’t seem to have the option to play these 4K videos just yet. In a recent earnings call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the company hopes to become “one of the big suppliers of 4K next year.” Its aim to get to that position isn’t a secret, just this year at CES, Netflix partnered with Samsung to showcase its Ultra HD streaming. It can’t be said for sure if Netflix will really be able to roll out 4K video streaming option to its subscribers by next year, but it does plan on starting with “at least some movies,” obviously not everything in its catalog will be instantly upgraded to 4K resolution. Perhaps we might get to see Ultra HD become available in some form in 2014 after all.