It wasn't finances that prevented the NP-1's release.
They should have had that NP-1 out on the shelves
It was the combination of several factors:
1) They couldn't really deliver quality 4K at <10mbps. That was never anything but a lie for the trade shows. It succeeded in getting real people's attention, but that attention quickly waned when it was obviously just a ploy.
2) NP-1 can't run HEVC. It's old tech. The tech in the new TVs is much better.
3) NP-1 is ridiculously expensive. Someone is supposed to spend nearly half the cost of a Vizio P-Series Smart UHD TV on their little box, just so they can watch Ultraflix' lousy movies? It can't even run Netflix 4K!
Lastly, the reason that makes it even less likely now that they'll release NP-1 is that they'd have to maintain and cache their entire library in both H.264 and HEVC. The H.264 version (that is, the one compatible with NP-1) would be even larger than the HEVC version because it's a less sophisticated codec. The cache is very expensive to purchase space on, so why spend that money more than twice?
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