With 2020 mercifully winding down and a virtualized version of CES about to ramp up, it’s a good time to look at the gadgets and software platforms that will matter most in the year ahead.

At this time last year, Multichannel News predicted relevance for 5G-capable smartphones and WiFi 6-compatible home network gateways, and of course, the obvious ramped-up competition for subscription streaming, all of which became manifest over the past 12 months. 

If we were truly prescient, we might have devoted a paragraph or two to remote conferencing software. But hindsight is 20/20.

So what will the big technology topics be this year? Here are five we think we’ll be covering quite a bit. 

The ‘Platform Wars’ will only intensify: We heard a lot about the so-called streaming wars in 2020, and how the inclusion of Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, Peacock and HBO Max were going to put competitive pressure on Netflix. 

It soon became apparent that the race for platform supremacy was just as intense, with all of the relevant subscription VOD, AVOD and vMVPD combatants relying on Roku, Amazon, Google, Apple and other over-the-top gatekeepers to reach their consumers. 

ALSO READ: Discovery Plus to Explore Challenging SVOD Biz with Lofty 70 Million Subscriber Goal

The competition among the streaming gatekeepers will only heat up in 2021. Roku has seen its market capitalization double in recent months to surpass $40 billion, and it’s now making more money selling advertising than hardware, Roku can now afford to turn its OTT gadgets into loss leaders at retail, selling them on the ultra-cheap (below $20) and further proliferating its leadership position in the connected-TV device world.

Hot on Roku’s heels, touting a similarly robust 40 million active users worldwide, Amazon will continue to integrate its Fire TV OS into almost every home control and automation device it sells, while also peddling inexpensive OTT gadgets such as HDMI streaming sticks.

The wild card will be the emergence of Google and its Android TV/Google TV OS. Google plans on investing heavily in 2021 to join Roku and Amazon at the table of serious global OTT device platform operators. 

“What makes Google such a dangerous entrant into the TV OS/device space is that they do not need to make money (at least today) on taking a cut of connected TV ad inventory or a share of new SVOD subscriptions,” LightShed Ventures general partner Rich Greenfield said in a recent analyst note. 

More OTT ‘carriage’ disputes:  With their growing clout, and decreased neutrality in terms of what gets streamed on their platforms, Roku and Amazon will certainly be involved in more distribution skirmishes in 2021.

Roku added HBO Max just last week, while Amazon Fire TV still doesn’t offer NBCU’s Peacock. Roku also just made the Spectrum TV app unavailable to its users, as it is still negotiating a new distribution deal with Charter Communications. 

Notably, Discovery didn’t specifically say it had deals with Roku, the No. 1 OTT platform, or No. 2 Amazon when it announced its new Discovery Plus SVOD Platform.  And with CBS All Access just as entrenched in the channels business of Roku and Amazon as HBO ever was, what are the chances that ViacomCBS will launch the broadened Paramount Plus with ubiquitous app support?

Expect big, surprising new smart TV partnerships: If you think gateway operators like Roku and Google wield a lot of power now, just wait until one of them reaches what Liberty Media chairman John Malone recently said is the magic number of subscribers to truly control the market — around 100 million active users. 

The key to achieving that benchmark is tie-ups with smart-TV makers. Roku, for example, emerged as the No. 1 OTT ecosystem in the U.S. thanks mainly to its highly successful marriage to China’s TCL, whose cheap 4KTVs have sold like gangbusters in the U.S. since 2017. Roku is now working with TCL to establish similar smart TV beachheads in Europe, but TCL is seeing other tech companies, evidence by a recent U.S. Android TV deal.

And there will be plenty of big smart-TV announcements in 2021. 

Comcast, for example, is looking to get its X1 platform into the smart-TV game with a potential collaboration with Walmart. And TiVo plans to leverage the established smart TV OEM business of its new parent company, Xperi, to put its Stream TV platform into sets starting in the latter half of 2021. 

4K/UHD will become ubiquitous:  Amid all the movement among platforms and service providers, emerging next-generation playback formats, such as 4K/UHD, HDR, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos will become more standard. 

ALSO READ: HBO Max Gets WarnerMedia’s Entire 2021 Film Slate Day and Date

Lost in all the hubbub about WarnerMedia releasing its entire 2021 theatrical slate day-and-date on HBO Max: All 17 of those movies will include each of the aforementioned technology features. 

To keep up, ops will invest in broadband: Controlling around 70% of the U.S. wireline internet service provider business entering 2020, cable operators were largely ready when the pandemic suddenly spiked broadband usage, with the amount of digital video sent over the internet — vocational and recreational — vastly increasing. 

Operators, who’d spent billions on DOCIS 3.1 upgrades, largely implemented tweaks and node splits that were part of the technology they already owned, and they kept up with demand. 

Analysts expect these companies to circle back to earlier planned broadband infrastructure upgrades in 2021, transitioning networks to software virtualization and distributed access architecture (DAA). Dell’Oro Group predicts that global spending on broadband access equipment will rebound by around 5% in 2021. 

Is 4K finally ready to achieve mass adoption in the U.S.?

As ultra-pricy 8K TV sets enter Best Buy showrooms, Leichtman Research Group (LRG) says 4K is finally ready to have its big moment.

“It is important to recall that after reaching 17% penetration in 2006, HDTV expanded to 69% of TV households in 2011,” LRG said in a research note. “Spurred by a continued decrease in the prices of 4K TVs, and the fact that the vast majority of current 4K owners are pleased with their sets, we are now likely entering a similar growth stage of the product life-cycle for 4K HDTV.

LRG noted that 48% of non-4K TV owners are interested in 4K and are planning to to get a new TV in the next year. And 41% of 4K TV owners say they’re very interested in getting another 4K set.

In its research note, LRG didn’t peg a U.S. penetration percentage figure for 4K sets. The Consumer Technology Association said penetration probably exceeded the 17% threshold back in 2017.

Notably, despite the proliferation of devices that enable TV watching—smart phones, tablets, notebook computers, etc.—LRG said the mean number of TVs per household has held steady at around 2.6 over the last five years.

And the refresh rate on TV’s is pretty rapid.

In surveys conducted annually by LRG over the last 15 years, more than 20% of respondents said they bought a new television in the previous year.

Now, U.S. consumers may be a little confused as to what 4K content is.

In LRG’s most recent survey on the subject, 40% of respondents said that Netflix is their primary source of 4K shows. However, among that group, only a third said they subscribe to Netflix’s premium tier, which is the only way to get 4K content from the SVOD service.

However, 59% of survey respondents strongly agreed that now matter what they’re watching, their 4K set made it look a lot better. 

SES Video and InDemand are teaming to offer a 4K feed of the first Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) set for June 2 at 9 p.m. from the Cheyenne Ice Events Center in Wyoming.

SES said the 4K event, produced by Multivision Media, will be available nationally to cable and IPTV service providers that are signed on for its pre-packaged 4K offering.

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Based on those partners, the following MVPDs would be eligible to provide the 4K feed of the bare-knuckle PPV card: Armstrong Utilities, Aureon Network Services, Dish Network, enTouch Systems, EPG Chattanooga, Foothills Communications, Guadalupe Valley (GVTC), Highlands Cable Group, Hotwire Communications, Jackson Energy Authority, KPU Telecommunications, Sjoberg’s Cable TV, Buckeye Broadband, Margaretville Telephony Company, Marquette Adams, Midco, Midwest Video Solutions, Oneida Cablevision, Service Electric Cable TV, Skitter Inc., Wherever TV, and WideOpenWest. Verizon Fios and Frontier Communications are also testing 4K TV with SES.

RELATED: SES Touts 4K Progress

SES didn’t announce which MVPDs are on board for tomorrow’s 4K offering, but noted that the 4K version of the event will be delivered on the SES Events channel, one in a lineup that is hosted on the SES Ultra HD platform. SES has used that channel to deliver other sporting events in 4K, including Bellator: Sonnen vs. Silva Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and select coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games from PyeongChang.

“The SES Events channel is readily available for live events to virtually every Pay TV operator across North America,” Steve Corda, VP of media platforms, SES Video in North America, said in a statement.

Brian Ricco, executive producer for MultiVision Media, told Multichannel News R. Thomas Umstead that all major cable distributors, as well as DirecTV and Dish Network, will offer the event. “This is not an underground event; this is going to be in big arenas featuring full-blown productions,” he told Umstead.

The BKFC’s first card, featuring 12 bouts, is retailing for $29.99. SES has been asked if the 4K version of the PPV event will be offered for the same price.

“Events like the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship are immersive building blocks toward an exciting future in Ultra HD television,” noted John Schultz, VP of broadcast operations for InDemand, which is co-owned by Comcast, Charter Communications, and Cox Communications.

Other channels in SES’s pre-packaged Ultra HD lineup include Fashion One 4K, NASA TV UHD, 4K Universe, Insight TV, C4K360, Funbox UHD, Travelxp 4K, Nature Relaxation 4K, The Country Network, UHD1, and the SES 4K channel (a developmental incubator for emerging content producers). 

For those of us headed to the annual International CES, which happens a scant four days after the New Year, the holiday season necessarily includes shaking the network to get a better look at what’s planned.

Here’s what we found under the tree.

Ultra HD/4K is the new 3D, which had been the new HD before the marketplace thud that hastened it out the door. The refrain this year, albeit not necessarily from the CE side: There’s more to better pictures and sound than “just” the television set.

This year, watch for UHD lingo studded with impressively nerdy terms like “high dynamic range” (see Jeff Baumgartner’s piece on page 15 for lots more on that), “color gamut” and “bit depth.”

All of those terms explain additional ways in which innovation is happening throughout the rest of the video ecosystem — think cameras, production gear and the technologies of storytelling. If you go, you’ll see it in the way colors look. Blacks look downright velvety, reds look royal, greens mossy. The picture overall is brighter. Much brighter.

(Talk to any hardcore video engineer — HDR and what’s happening with color and brightness is as “wow” as when standard definition video went high def.)

Wearables, coupled with a new-ish term — “cognitive computing” — described as “mobile devices that anticipate your actions based on who you are, who you’re with, and make decisions for you.” (Great.)

While it’s rare that the dazzle and pop of CES fare is directly relevant to this industry, wearables and cognitive computing do open a plausible stream of thought: What decisions could be made for us, that improve our media-centric life?

Note that it’s likely we’ll see more “smart clothing” this year. Already we’ve seen a blazer, designed for tourists in New York and Paris, and equipped with LED lights on the sleeves, and buzzers in the shoulder pads. The thinking: Stop looking at the blue dot on the screen! Your right arm will blink and buzz when you need to turn right.

Again. CES is CES.

Smart homes, smart cars, driverless cars, smart things — sensors will sustain in show floor glitz. Entire pavilions will be cordoned off to showcase the Internet of Things, always a source of weird and interesting gadgetry, but rarely directly relevant to whatever it is we’re calling the cable industry these days.

Regardless, there’s nothing quite like the International CES. This will be my 15th consecutive year as (trés dorky) guide for the Cable & Telecommuncations Association for Marketing’s tours, and while I generally dread it beforehand, I’m always glad about how it went at the end.

We’ll keep the highlights coming.

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis attranslation-please.comormultichannel.com/blog.

If you’re one of the few consumers out there who has the technical wherewithal to stream Netflix’s limited library of Ultra HD content, you’ll be paying a bit more for the privilege. And we're not just talking about the premium price for a 4K-capable TV set.

As HD Guru first reported, Netflix has raised the monthly nut for customers who want to stream content in that format, requiring those customers to pay $11.99 per month, which is the streaming giant’s current top-end tier.  Netflix told HD Guru that current customers who were paying for 4K content through the older $7.99 per month plan would be grandfathered into that original rate.  

Here’s how Netflix’s current streaming plans line up:

-$7.99 per month – watch on one screen at a time in standard definition.

-$8.99 per month – watch two screens at a time, with access to HD titles. Netflix raised the price on this tier by $1 in May, though customers who have had the service for a while can still get subscribe to this offering under the previous monthly rate of $7.99).

-$11.99 per month- watch on four screens at a time, with access to HD and Ultra HD titles.

Netflix launched a small Ultra HD library in April, offering season two of House of Cards in 4K and a small slate of nature documentaries from Moving Art. More recently, Netflix addedBreaking Bad and a number of movies, including Smurfs 2, Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, to its 4K streaming lineup.

Netflix told Variety that it the added cost of producing and acquiring 4K content prompted the increase and that it has positioned 4K as a premium offering.

Comcast is preparing to launch of a 4K VOD app that's expected to debut later this year on new Samsung 4K TVs, but hasn’t announced pricing or the titles that it will initially offer in the Ultra HD format.