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Sources Say ITU Has Approved Ultra-High Definition TV Standard
Qedward writes with this excerpt from Techworld: "A new television format that has 16 times the resolution of current High Definition TV has been approved by an international standards body, Japanese sources said earlier today. UHDTV, or Ultra High Definition Television, allows for programming and broadcasts at resolutions of up to 7680 by 4320, along with frame refresh rates of up to 120Hz, double that of most current HDTV broadcasts. The format also calls for a broader palette of colours that can be displayed on screen. The video format was approved earlier this month by member nations of the International Telecommunication Union, a standards and regulatory body agency of the United Nations, according to an official at NHK, Japan's public broadcasting station, and another at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Both spoke on condition of anonymity."
We have a couple of 720p (not 1080p, 720p) TVs in our house, a 32" LCD, and a 50" plasma (hey, 720p plasma's cheap.)
How decent is 720p? Well, both TVs appear to be about the same quality as, or often a little higher than, watching a friggin' movie at the cinema, if the source is decent and relatively free of artifacts.
I think, for the most part, we're talking diminishing returns at this point adding pixels. So I'm a little baffled by this announcement. Is it real? Is there a serious market for TV for people with super exceptional eyesight? Is video compression technology really going to improve so much over the next ten years that this'll be worth using - especially over the Internet, which, let's be honest, is where everything's going at the moment.
I'm glad to see innovation, but I'm just finding it hard to believe that this improvement is significantly useful: arguably, like Blu-ray, it might actually hold back HD, rather than help it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The BBC and NHK collaborated to demonstrate this system during the olympics , broadcasting to 3 sites in UK , 2 in US and 2 in Japan.
Further detail See http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2012/08/the-olympics-in-super-hi-visio.shtml
The opening/closing ceremony were broadcast live whereas during the rest of the week a daily hour long highlights package covering the opening ceremony and specific events package was compiled and broadcast on a daily basis.
I was fortunate enough to experience the system at Bradford Museum of the Moving Image on a 15 metre square screen and a couple of megawatts of sound..
With reputedly only 3 cameras in the world camera angles were somewhat limited, the opening ceremony coverage placed you in the heart of the stadium as if you were an audience member showing off the wide field of vision offered. I found the 22 channels of sound to be somewhat overwhelming in volume which I judged to be a bit of a cheap trick to impress. As with initial experience of Hidef the enhanced resolution can lead one to examine detail towards the edge of the field of vision. I was slightly disappointed that there was some blockiness at the edge. This may be due to focussing issues, focus is performed away from the camera.
All in all I found it quite comparable to the Imax experience excepting lack of 3d.
Once upon a time (ca. 1989-1990), they did. NCD (Network Computing Devices) made a series of X Terminals based on both the 68000 and some of the early MIPS CPUs. One model (the NCD16) featured a 16" square monochrome CRT, at 1024x1024 resolution, and a 1:1 aspect ratio. The Computer History Museum also has an NCD16 in its collection.