Enter The 2160p HDTV

Dr. Eggman writes "The Consumer Electronics Show is kicking it in high gear as Westinghouse shows off its 2160p or "Quad" HDTV. While enthusiasts pine for new 1080p monitors Westinghouse has stated that the Quad HDTVs, like the 52" on display, "does not really target the consumer market, but high-end industrial applications.""

Comments

How about

[DJ.Flecktarn]

High end industrial pr0n?

Re:How about

[ettlz]

"High-end industrial"? What, for those with a CNC machine fetish?

I believe

[maroberts]

I shall make a case for my living room viewing to be a "high end industrial application" :-)

Re:I believe

[Jugalator]

Save your money for a UHDV living room. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHDV

Super Hi-Vision's main specifications:

        * Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels (16:9) (approximately 33 megapixels)
        * Frame rate: 60 frame/s.
        * Audio: 22.2 channels
                    o 9 -- above ear level
                    o 10 -- ear level
                    o 3 -- below ear level
                    o 2 -- low frequency effects
        * Bandwidth: 21 GHz frequency band
                    o 600 MHz, 500~6600 Mbit/s bandwidth

Hot damn!

Re:I believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring me an edit window of at least 30 secs

I give you....the Preview button

How to feed it ?

[Rastignac]

What can one use to feed this beast ? Where to find very-very-HD contents ? (And what about the huge bandwidth and the huge storage needed ?).

Re:How to feed it ?

[AxminsterLeuven]

What can one use to feed this beast ? Where to find very-very-HD contents ? Hook up four DVD players, with each disc containing a quarter of the movie's image. Then lign up your remotes on the coffee table and use the index and middle fingers of both your hands to press play.

Re:How to feed it ?

[iamdrscience]

They say it's not really a consumer device, so I would assume, if you had any use for a display like this, you would also be generating whatever content it would be displaying. The use that comes to my mind most easily would be people editing films. If you're working with a very high-def version of a movie that will eventually be transferred to film or projected with a very high-def digital projector, then it would be nice to see what the film is really going to look like with the definition those formats will have.

Another thing though is that media always lags behind the hardware to utilize it.

What he really means to say

[Bacon Bits]

"[D]oes not really target the consumer market, but high-end industrial applications." Translation: "It's damn expensive right now, and we can't produce enough of them at consumer prices to make a profit."

Re:What he really means to say

[TheRealFixer]

It's not price that's going to prevent this from coming to the consumer market. Plasma 4 years ago was around $30,000 for the larger units, but the prices dropped pretty fast. The real issue for consumer adoption is bandwidth. Cable and satellite providers have enough trouble delivering decent-quality 1080i. And over the air broadcasts? Forget about it. The ATSC standard is 19Mbits with MPEG-2 compression. There's no way you're fitting 2160p in 19Mbits with MPEG-2 and have a picture that looks better than a 1990's era AVI. So unless a brand new broadcast standard is developed and adopted, that's not happening. Cable and satellite have the advantage of being able to go to MPEG-4. But even with that, DirecTV cripples their HD by dropping the 1920x1080 picture down to 1440x1080 so they can fit more content.

Re:What he really means to say

[Kjella]

But even with that, DirecTV cripples their HD by dropping the 1920x1080 picture down to 1440x1080 so they can fit more content.

Check out the following WP quotes:

"HDV 1080i uses a pixel resolution of 1440×1080, but when displayed is scaled to an aspect ratio of 1920×1080 = (1440 × 1.33)×1080."

"HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is a HD version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440x1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes."

"DVCPRO HD downsamples native 720p/1080i signals to a lower resolution. 720p is downsampled from 1280x720 to 960x720, and 1080i is downsampled from 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 for 59.94i and 1440x1080 for 50i."

Unless you have some extremely fancy gear, you're not doing more than 1440x1080 anyway. But hey, it's nice to think you're getting 1920x1080 footage.

Re:What he really means to say

[TheRealFixer]

Your information is a little dated, and bit misleading. The Sony HDV 1080i is a consumer product, not a professional one. The Sony HDCAM is 10 years old. The newer HDCAM SR does full 1920x1080. And as I understand it, DVCPRO100 was intended more as an entry-level professional HD tape for news crews and the like, who aren't as concerned about full resolution picture as much as convenience and portability. Almost all modern professional equipment does 1920x1080. Most of what you see on stations like DiscoveryHD and INHD, not to mention film transfers like those on HDNet, are all done in full 1080i these days.

for high-end industrial applications

[Thansal]

Yah.

right.

Who wants to predict howlong it will take for those old fashion 1080P sets to become outdated, and that you really must have one of tese new 2160p sets if you want to even THINK of keeping up with the jonses.

As a quick note. I am actualy finaly ditching the first, and only, TV I ever had (making it around 14 yrs old now I think), a 20" CRT that had some sorta funky colour burns on the sides...
I am replacing it with:
My boss' old 20" CRT that works!

PS3 drivable?

[mgabrys_sf]

There was a lot made of the early specs of the PS3, one of them being it was capable of driving not one - but two 1080p displays in tandem. The potential of this being used in real-life led to it being dropped (so the story goes). If the PS3 was truely capable of driving two 1080p's wouldn't it be possible to drive a single 2160?

I recall that many early 30 inch progessive display cards used two cards in tandem to spit the screen into two vertical halves. If the PS3 video system has the omph, could it be similarly done?

Don't know how BIG the display would have to be to be ideal either. I recall that 1080p is barely perceptible with anything under 37-40 inches. I can only imagine the optimal size you'd need to see the advantages of Quad HDTV.

Re:PS3 drivable?

[joshetc]

No, 2160p is essentially four 1080p displays. Hence them calling it "Quad HDTV"

Four shows at once?

[adenied]

I know this is anathema to the Slashdot crowd, but I wonder if one could use this to watch four sporting events at once like sports bars do with big projection screens. There's enough HD feeds on most systems to make this look pretty nice. ESPN, ESPNHD, the various broadcast networks, FSNHD, NFL Network HD, INHD special events, etc. Just switch the audio feed around as needed.

Also would be cool when they do ESPN Full Circle where you get the same game but with different camera priorities on ESPNHD, ESPN2HD, ESPNEWS, and ESPNU. That's a sports geek's dream! Talk about sensory overload.

Re:Great!!

[Schemat1c]

I know of only 3 in the 60 some homes that I am friends with... I have never had a home as a friend and you have 60. How does one become friends with a home?

Re:Great!!

[bazorg]

Fire up your web browser, drag "home" onto "favourites".