Netflix delivers 4K streams of House of Cards & some documentaries

Months after the premiere of hit original political drama House of Cards’ second season, Netflix has started offering subscribers the option of watching it via a 4K stream.

A 4K stream (which Netflix officially calls “Super HD“) refers to content that has a horizontal resolution of over 4,000 pixels, which is roughly twice that of 1080p, the current high-end HD format.

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Netflix first made a promise to offer 4K streaming through its service just over a year ago, and earlier this year it announced tons of partnerships with hardware manufacturers to make 4K streaming more widespread in the near future.

The company confirmed to Multichannel News that House of Cards is indeed among the first of its titles to gain 4K, as well as a handful of nature-focused documentaries. At this time we don’t know when the company plans to add additional 4K support for other titles, but we do know more 4K shows are coming.

Netflix chief exec. Reed Hastings previously said anyone with an Internet connection speed of at least 15Mbps should be able to play the 4K streaming video titles without interruption. (That means you need fast Internet, but not necessarily superfast Internet.)

Netflix isn’t the only one hoping to get a head start on 4K video streaming. Rival service Amazon Prime also shot some of its original programming with 4K cameras and presumably plans to offer the ultra HD quality streams for those titles in the near future.