Rumour: New Xbox One & PS4 with 4K support

The PS4 and Xbox One may be getting 4K support this year, according to a fairly credible rumour coming from Netflix and Forbes.

The popularity of 4K TVs is exploding, if this year’s showing at CES is anything to go by. The biggest roadblock, though, is content. Very few devices actually support 4K natively, and even fewer services are streaming it.

Netflix believes that both consoles will be undergoing some sort of hardware revision to enable ultra high resolution video. Whether this means a software update or an entirely new model has yet to be determined. Forbes reached out to both Microsoft and Sony, but got the usual denials.

Sony had promised at the PS4’s unveiling that it would have UHD video support sometime in the near future. Both consoles currently use the older HDMI 1.4 standard, which limits 4K video to 30fps. Which means choppier visuals and flickering. That could be problematic when up-scaling some games. Newer hardware will most likely feature HDMI 2.0 ports, which can display 4K content at a full 60fps.

Right now, this is just a rumour, but two year hardware refreshes are the norm these days. What remains to be seen is how both companies will handle 4K video on he millions of consoles already sold.

Image by Aij, via Wikipedia