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Sinclair buys Tribune Media to create a larger TV empire
It didn't take long for the rumors to come true. Sinclair Broadcast Group has confirmed that it's acquiring Tribune Media for $3.9 billion. The deal is the largest in Sinclair's history, and will add Tribune's 42 American TV stations to Sinclair's 173 -- that's a lot of broadcasters under one banner. The deal also gives it the cable channel WGN America, the digital network Antenna TV and small stakes in both Food Network as well as the internet job site CareerBuilder. However, it's not just about the immediate media expansion that matters. According to Sinclair, it's also about a long-term technological play.
Test run paves the way for over-the-air 4K TV
You may not have to pony up for a streaming video service (or any service, for that matter) to get 4K video on your TV in the future. GatesAir, LG and Zenith have started field-testing Futurecast, a system that promises to drag over-the-air TV into the modern era. Thanks to HEVC video compression as well as boosts to overall throughput, the technology can stuff both 4K and two mobile broadcasts into a relatively small 6MHz frequency range. With enough bandwidth, you'd only need a set of rabbit ears to watch at least a few basic channels in Ultra HD.
