Advanced Television

Harmonic “more confident” about 4K in 2015

October 30, 2014

By Chris Forrester

Patrick Harshman, president/CEO at Harmonic, speaking to analysts following the company’s Q3/2014 results, said that Harmonic was increasingly seeing broadcasters “coming off” HD and finding ways of investing in Ultra HD/4K. “The past quarter we’ve grown incrementally more confident than Ultra HD 4K services will become real starting in 2015, and that these will be delivered through the option of HEVC compression.”

Harshman introduced Bart Spriester as Harmonic’s newly appointed SVP for its video business and had already made “tremendous strides” in improving business prospects and where its video division was reaching a “key inflexion point”.

Harmonic’s net revenue for Q3 was $108.1 million, in line with expectations. Net revenue was down from $122.9 million for Q3/2013, and from $109.6 million for Q2/2014. Harmonic’s video business was up $3.5 million sequentially, led by a rebound in its production and playout products. This was offset by an expected decrease in our cable edge business of $5.4 million which had a record quarter in the second quarter of the year,

Harshman said that “every single day brings one announcement about Smart TVs that are capable of supporting Ultra HD, we’re actively engaged in a number of HEVC trials. So I don’t want to overstate it for you, I think it’s an evolutionary recovery here but I think it is a recovery that will show demonstrable progress sequentially over the next three quarters. So yes, we can imagine and in fact, we’re hopeful to see growth in the first half of 2015.”

Categories: Articles, Business, Results, UHD, Ultra-HD/4K