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."

Comments

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old shit in high resolution! =D

Re:Great!

[nischal360]

Test

Re:Great!

[nischal360]

Agree

Re:Great!

[poetmatt]

for twice the cost and comes with twice the DRM, along with limited availability! enjoy!

Re:Great!

[CMYKjunkie]

Same old shit in high resolution! =D

ULTRA high resolution shit, good sir!!

Re:Great!

[Lord Lode]

Hopefully this will cause PC monitors to also get that resolution.

Since the current low resolution of PC monitors seems to be inspired by "HD" too.

Re:Great!

[cpu6502]

I suspect ultra-high resolution will fail like Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio failed. People have no desire to upgrade to a higher standard if they can't hear (or see) any difference. For 99% of the population an SACD or DVD-A sounds no better than a CD, or else the difference is trivial, so they ignore the new standard. I expect the same to happen with UHDTV.

Re:Great!

[timeOday]

Obviously you're not a sports fan, but it's a big market. A football game would definitely benefit from an 80" screen with this resolution - you've got 22 guys running every play.

Re:Great!

[Durrik]

There's a good link I usually pass out when people start to talk about noticing the difference between 720p and 1080p.

http://hd.engadget.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charted-viewing-distance-to-screen-size/

Now I don't know where the line for 4320p would be since the article is old, but if you look at the line for 1080p at a viewing distance of 5 feet you need a TV around 38 inches. For 1440p at the same distance you need a TV around 51 inches, a difference of 13 inches.

1080p is 2,073,600 pixels
1440p is 3,571,200 pixels
4320p is 33,177,600 pixels

1440 is 1.33... times bigger than 1080
3,571,200 is 1.72... times bigger than 2,073,600
4320 is 3 times bigger than 1440
33,177,600 is 9.29 times bigger than 3,571,200

Using simple linear approximation:
If you take just a 3 times bigger standard 1440p -> 4320p you need 29 more inches, or a TV that is 67 inches, or 3,571,200 -> 33,177,600 you need 70 more inches, or a TV that is 109 inches wide at 5 feet to get the full benefit of 4320p.

I don't know about you but sitting 5 feet away from 109 inches wouldn't work for me. 67 inches is doable, but that's still a huge TV to be only 5 feet away. I don't think you can follow all the action across the entire screen from that distance.

Re:Great!

[cayenne8]

Geez, and I thought todays resolution was bad enough...too many ass pimples to be seen on our pr0n stars now as it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't know how bad it will get in SHDTV...."Hey, nice pores"

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old shit in ultra high resolution! =D

FTFY

Re:Great!

[cayenne8]

I don't know about you but sitting 5 feet away from 109 inches wouldn't work for me. 67 inches is doable, but that's still a huge TV to be only 5 feet away. I don't think you can follow all the action across the entire screen from that distance.

I'm only about 5'-6' away from my 59" plasma...and it doesn't look anywhere too big to me, nor anyone that's watched it at my place.

For years before that, after Katrina, I was bouncing around quite a bit...and didn't feel like hauling a bit tv with me everywhere, so I got a HD (720p back then) projector...and I was watching about 100" plus pictures on the walls where I lived. That didn't seem too big either...no trouble watching it, and my viewing distance was likely only about 6'-8' tops....

Maybe I just have really good peripheral vision....that and I'm pretty myopic too....

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if it didn't suffer from overcompression. A couple of months ago I was watching a Canal+ HD broadcast of a Spanish League soccer game in the store (I have the Canal+ SD package at home). When the picture was still, you could see the texture of the grass, but whenever the picture was moving (which was most of the time), the grass turned into a flat green canvas and the players' jerseys were unnaturally flat orange. I mean, what's the point?

Back in the U.S. I used to have DirecTV's HD package. Most programs suffered from pixelation and ugly gray-shade zones. Again, overcompression spoiling the advantages of HD.

Re:Great!

[poofmeisterp]

Same old shit in high resolution! =D

They claim that makes it "new shit on a shiny shingle". Old 50's TV re-runs? Sweet! Look at it with the same underlying resolution, digitally altered to make it look awesome on my UHDTV! ;)
 
And dude... it even exceeds Moore's Law!

</snark>

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

...33,177,600 is 9.29 times bigger than 3,571,200

Using simple linear approximation:
If you take just a 3 times bigger standard 1440p -> 4320p you need 29 more inches, or a TV that is 67 inches, or 3,571,200 -> 33,177,600 you need 70 more inches, or a TV that is 109 inches wide at 5 feet to get the full benefit of 4320p.

I dun give a shit about anything that exceeds the amount in my bank account.

Re:Great!

[Teun]

Generally the cameraman will take a (very) different shot depending on the resolution and expected screen size the work is destined for.
Something recorded for a typical (SD) TV program would look odd on a big screen, even when the resolution would be right because it's shot with a relatively narrow view.
I suppose this UHDTV format will result in more immersion due to use of wider angle shots, the significant centre bit would have even greater detail while a good perifial view would now also be available at the same resolution providing you'd moved your eyes or head.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not enough resolution for my IMAX screen

Re:Great!

[freman]

My eyes can only see 480p without glasses...

Re:Great!

[turkeyfish]

That's why this technology will only be available in high tech countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. It's at least 5-10 years out for lesser tech countries such as the US that just don't have the bandwidth to support it.

Re:Great!

[timeOday]

Yes, last I heard, DirecTV has a lower bitrate than broadcast TV - and even there bitrate can be a problem. It really chugs at moments, like when they dropped confetti after the superbowl.

That said, a higher-resolution image should at worst look as good as a lower-resolution at the same bitrate, unless the compression algorithm is really dumb. And in low motion scenes the higher resolution one will look sharper.

Re:Great!

[toddestan]

Charts like that are bunk, in my opinion. They typically take the smallest thing the eye can resolve, and once a pixel is that small they call it good enough. However, with that logic turning on the subpixel rendering of fonts on most computer monitors would also be pointless, yet subpixeling rendering can make a huge difference. Obviously there is more to it than how small can the eye can supposedly resolve. Maybe they should take a few hints from the printing industry where even the PPI on the crappiest inkjets would be "retina" printers by PPI standards on LCDs.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I am wrong but pixel size has been dropping in some display (mobile phones), could they do the same in this format and thus get back to more tractable size TVs? I would rather not have such a monstrous TV.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but who's feet size are we talking about? That's why I hate imperial, it's so imprecise

Re:Great!

[Narcocide]

FYI 720p looks just fine to me at least up to 150" (that's as far of a throw I have managed to test) at similar viewing distances.

Re:Great!

[bingoUV]

With lower bitrate, some bits will not reach the tv. So tv will have to heavily interpolate, even with a good ccompression algorithm. Good compression algorithm cannot magically convert from hd signal with half the pixels missing into an sd signal.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think you can follow all the action across the entire screen from that distance."

And that is what "immersive" viewing is - why do you think IMAX is so "special" ?

useless aspect ratio

[KiloByte]

Sorry, 7680x4320 means a 16x9 aspect ratio, and a monitor by that proportion is useless for any actual work.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[R0UTE]

That's why it's a TV (Television) standard...

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Kinthelt]

To be completely fair, there is no mention of computer monitors anywhere in that article. You sure you read it?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for windows 9 they will have plenty of resolution to waste on their over simplified stupid UI

Re:useless aspect ratio

[MickyTheIdiot]

huh, wot? Academy radio monitors are about out for good...

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Miros]

What makes a 4:3 ratio so much better than a 16:9 ratio for your monitor?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[KiloByte]

It's about image format; since people move away from dedicated TVs at a rapid rate, forcing people to watch their movies on a narrow strip of a screen means they'll either end up with a display unsuitable for anything else, or will complain about black strips.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

TV standards and computer standards have common physical interfaces, but different sets of timings. Even on-the-wire, the timings of TV-land 1920x1080 and computer-land 1920x1080 are quite different, although the vast majority of computer monitors accept both standards.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[TheTrueScotsman]

I don't agree. As long as you have sufficient vertical resolution (1080 isn't enough, 1200 is ok, 1440 is great for me at the moment), then horizontal resolution is fine at either 16:9 or 16:10. In fact, at (say) 1200 vertical, 16:9 would give you a more useful monitor (won't ever exist, of course).

1920x1080 is, of course, an abomination for work and I think this is where the hatred of 16:9 comes from. Whereas 2560x1440 looks great from where I'm sitting.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Tridus]

The fact that real work is done with lots of text, and text goes from top to bottom far more frequently then scales off endlessly to the right?

We have these stupidly huge 16:9 monitors today that can't even display one page of a PDF without scrolling and yet 2/3 of the screen is sitting empty. It's a terrible aspect ratio for computers.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Colonel Korn]

What makes a 4:3 ratio so much better than a 16:9 ratio for your monitor?

I think that 16:10 is nice, through something in between 4:3 and 16:10 would be ideal. Much of the work I do involves source documents and a working document. Since most of those are formatted for the 8.5" x 11" written page, a 16:10.3 monitor is the right size to hold two. Given some additional space for menus, a taskbar, etc., I think that the idea ratio is about 16:10.5.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Skarecrow77]

you may have a point.

most people, myself included, complain because 1080 vertical lines of resolution is a regression from where we were headed in the mid-2000s. all of a sudden, circa 2009 or 2010, 1080 vertical lines of resolution was the maximum you could get, no matter what monitor size you purchased, unless you were willing to spend over $1000 on a monitor. It's like every panel manufactuer in existance decided to just quit. all of them were constantly increasing pixel density every few years and then they all quit. just... gave up. either that or moved to smartphones.

This new standard, while laughably high, at least gives me hope that pretty soon pixel densities on standard computer monitors might start going up again. 16x9 ratio monitors might indeed be "ok" if we had double the vertical resolution we have now.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Picass0]

Not useless for everyone, just you.

Even so - there are monitors that pivot from portrait to landscape. 16x9 is great for office work if you rotate it 90 degrees.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Miros]

Why not rotate your monitor to be portrait rather than landscape?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

They still make 4:3 (actually 5:4) monitors. It just costs more at the same display size.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[KiloByte]

Almost anything I deal with would be better viewed in a portrait orientation. Code generally shouldn't exceed 80 columns while having more lines on the screen is a nice thing to have. For ordinary text, centuries of typographic practice established the optimal width of a column of text at around 60 characters, on a narrow strip of a monitor this means either a small font size (and thus eyestrain) or having to scroll every a few lines. There's a reason it's hard to find a paper publication in landscape.

Too bad, while a 4:3 screen can be easily rotated into 3:4 (and is good enough even without rotation), 9:16 would be way over the other edge. That's why you can't buy a 16:9 pivot -- it'd be even more useless than 16:9 landscape is.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[nschubach]

So, why don't they make 1:1 monitors?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[dreamchaser]

Sorry, 7680x4320 means a 16x9 aspect ratio, and a monitor by that proportion is useless for any actual work.

I don't know about you, but I don't use my TV as a monitor, and I have a separate set of monitors for my computer work.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Jamu]

The problem is only the lack of vertical resolution. The horizontal resolution is almost certainly adequate on a wide-screen monitor. The complaint about aspect ratio is more a complaint about unused screen space. Something that is easily fixed on a wide-screen by displaying two pages side-by-side. Like in an opened book.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Skarecrow77]

I think the GP is referring to the fact that once we had a high resolution TV spec, pretty much all panel manufactuers decided that "what's good for TVs is good for computers" and no longer make any higher resolution than 1920x1080 unless you're willing to spend close to $1000 or more.

I see no reason to expect they'll do otherwise in the future, so any future TV resolution spec has immediate implications on future computer monitor resolutions.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

You use no windows? On a 7680x4320 screen?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Zocalo]

Well, OP didn't actually say which aspect ratio would be preferred, although I'd guess that more vertical real estate is extremely likely as I also find 16:9 to be somewhat awkward for working on. Despite widescreen monitors being commonplace, GUIs and applications still tend to be designed with a 4:3 ratio in mind, with menus and toolbars across the top, which on widescreen displays leaves a letterbox proportioned working area that just looks "wrong" to me. When word processing, even with two pages side by side, that means there's usually far too much space wasted horizontally, and if you prefer to have your documents one above the other then it's even worse. Full screen spreadsheets are more of a mixed bag depending on which direction the data primarily extends to; if you have a large vertically orientated spreadsheet the extra scrolling can soon add up. After that, it gets a little more application specific, depending on the layout of toolbars and so on, but generally I'd go with more vertical space than 16:9 for work every time.

Now for leisure apps, on the otherhand - viewing movies and playing first person perspective games - then the narrower aspect ratios make more sense to me as they provide a more cinematic experience and help cut down on distractions in your peripheral vision respectively. Since this standard is being driven by the cinema and broadcast industries, it's pretty obvious where their priorities are going to lie.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

I do plenty of real work that consists of lines of code/text/numbers and the plots that are generated at the same time. I've got one 16x9 and two 4x3 monitors on the same workstation and the 16x9 gets the most action.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but if you really care about screen real estate most video cards allow you to rotate your monitor 90 degrees. In fact, you can even buy stands that swivel to make this easier. It may not be a common configuration, but if you want it, you can do it.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[brainzach]

The 16:9 aspect ratio is better for multitasking since you can view two windows side by side.

It's usefulness is diminished when using a multi-monitor set up, but the majority of the market uses a single monitor.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[somersault]

16:9 is great for having windows side by side. And as someone else pointed out, if you prefer to see lots of text at once, why not get a HD display and rotate it 90 degrees? Then you basically have two and a half 1024x768 displays piled on top of each other. Basically a desktop publishing type setup.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[cawpin]

The fact that real work is done with lots of text

That's funny. My Solidworks models have no text at all on them and the drawings fit perfectly on a widescreen monitor.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[GodInHell]

WOOOSH

Woot, and excuse to buy a new TV.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[gorzek]

If you only had one eye, a 1:1 monitor would make a bit more sense.

But most people have two. An aspect ratio where the horizontal dimension is larger than the vertical dimension makes sense.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Freultwah]

I do real work with text, and a lot of it. I've written an unwholy amount of home assignments, translated about 15 books, maybe more, and I find 16:10 to be a very nice ratio for having two documents (source and output) side by side at all times. I've tried working with 4:3 and it's not really comfortable, so I've had to delegate the 22 inch CRT to secondary screen status.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[petermgreen]

They still make 4:3 (actually 5:4) monitors. It just costs more at the same display size.

Worse than that it costs more for less pixels of width and the same/less pixels of height to get the traditional aspect ratio monitor.

looking at a computer parts supplier I use frequently

1024x768: not for sale except on very expensive touchscreens.
1366x768: £61.39

1280x1024: £78.76
1920x1080: £64.28

1600x1200: £541.80
1920x1200: £203.28

This is why so many of us end up with 1920x1080 screens, it's not the nicest aspect ratio but it's FAR lower on a price per pixel scale than anything else.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[h4rr4r]

I do. Why would I not want to be able to use my nice big HDTV to look at webpages from the couch?

PROTIP: This also means you don't need hulu plus, nor the content owner to OK the item for viewing on a TV.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[ratbag]

Useless, eh? My 2560x1440 (16:9) and 1920x1200 (16:10) monitors covered in 80x48 character vim and log windows beg leave to differ. Your "actual work" differs from mine, so let's keep the generalisations down, okay?

Incidentally, a 364x106 character terminal window has also occasionally been useful for long-lined log analysis.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[petermgreen]

Agreed, people feel that 1080 pixels of vertical isn't really enough but find it hard to justify spending 3 times as much to go up to 1200 pixels (admittedly they do probablly get a higher quality monitor for that) or 3 times as much again to go up to 1440 pixels.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

Try rotating the screen of your laptop and still use the keyboard.
Didn't you get the memo that said that more laptps were sold last year then desktops?

disclaimer.
I have two dell 1920x1200 monitors both rotated 90deg in a custom housing on my desktop. 2400x1920 is very useful indeed.(5:4 ratio)
anthing long and thin is next to useless for proper IT work especially those apologies for displays that are used in many laptops these days (1466x768)

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

That's still much more superior than having to stack a 2x3 monitors or even larger clusters to get the screen res/space.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[residieu]

I like to have two or three terminal windows displayed side-by-side. Wider monitors help with that.

And most pdf readers have a zoom function, change the zoom until you see the whole page at once. I'm not sure how the unused space makes the monitor USELESS.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

All my real work (like this post) is done sitting on the John.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Tackhead]

So, why don't they make 1:1 monitors?

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.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[andyring]

Depends what you do, sheesh. Not everyone uses a computer the same way you do. I spend a big chunk of my time with spreadsheets and page layout in Adobe InDesign, and a wide monitor is exactly what suits me.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[gumpish]

You use no windows? On a 7680x4320 screen?

Must be running Windows 8 / GNOME 3.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[gumpish]

Thankfully there are alternatives. I ordered a Yamakasi Catleap off of eBay for $320, shipped from Korea. Arrived within a week with no dead or stuck pixels.

Earlier slashdot coverage.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[FireFury03]

The fact that real work is done with lots of text, and text goes from top to bottom far more frequently then scales off endlessly to the right?

When you get to a vaguely reasonable size of screen, text *doesn't* generally just go from top to bottom - it is usually arranged into many blocks, such as overlapping windows. Reading lines of text that stretch all the way from one side of a 21" monitor to the other is *hard*, even on a 4:3 screen, and this is exactly why broadsheet newspapers arrange text into columns.

Personally, for most of my work I find large wide screen monitors are nicer to work with than large 4:3 monitors.

With a widescreen monitor, you can also get 2 A4 pages side by side, but if you need to deal with strict top-to-bottom text then you can always rotate it to portrait orientation, in which case high aspect ratio screens are certainly much better than the old square ones.

We have these stupidly huge 16:9 monitors today that can't even display one page of a PDF without scrolling and yet 2/3 of the screen is sitting empty. It's a terrible aspect ratio for computers.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

That's why you can't buy a 16:9 pivot -- it'd be even more useless than 16:9 landscape is.

Really, I am typing this on a really nice Dell 16:9 pivoted to 9x16. In fact I have two of them side by side works great for my 50+ year old eyes. No need for reading glasses when I am working on the computer. An I can pivot them back when designing networks in Visio.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[sapphire wyvern]

I bought a similar model (Matrix Neo 2560x1440 IPS 27")

When the vendor says "not compatible with laptops", they're not kidding. I couldn't get it to work with my laptop with an nvidia Quattro 1000M card, even though the card supports the required resolution, even though I was using an ACTIVE DisplayPort to DUAL link DVI adapter. The computer just wouldn't detect the display. It worked fine with my personal laptop which has a real dual link DVI port, though.

In the end I just hooked the thing up to my secondary computer (a desktop with a real DVI port). It's a bloody good screen, but I wish I could use it with my preferred computer.

It's the only monitor I've used where I haven't wanted a second panel to accompany it. Maybe there is, eventually, such a thing as enough desktop space? I'm sure this is only a temporary state. :)

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Ever since TV and computer displays became essentially the same thing, the consumer market has dominated.

Recall, if you will, all the build-up to the "Grand Alliance" that gave us today's ATSC (HDTV) standard. There was politicing on Analog vs. Digital (kind of a no-brainer), on RF modulation (we lost out on that one, here, 8VSB was selected due to Qualcomm lobbying and the fact it interfered less with existing NTSC broadcasts... now that those broadcasts are gone, we still have the problem that the signal isn't worth a damn indoors). And on display resolution.

Hollywood, Inc. wanted a 2:1 aspect ration. The computer industry, savvy enough to understand the impact of millions of consumer displays at higher-than-existing PC resolutions, wanted something more boxy. 16:9 was the compromise widescreen aspect ratio.

The PC industry, naturally, went full steam ahead... at 16:10. Silly PC industry. This lasted for awhile, but ultimately, with all those consumer LCD panels out there, most cried "Uncle" and went 16:9. I have dual 1920x1200 16:10 monitors at home, though I see an upgrade to 2560x1440 in the very near future. At work, they've been 16:9 (dual) for my current and previous job. Hardly useless for real work (and that's more Electronics CAD than video these days, though I did EE-CAD, embedded software, web servers, photography, and video at my last job), and the difference is, if anything, more significant for video work (16:9 monitors don't leave any room for controls on the full-screen video panel, 'cept as an overlay) than "real" work like designing circuitry.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[gorzek]

This is also ignoring just how cheap those 16:9 screens are, compared with what you paid for a 4:3 CRT 15 years ago. They are able to be so cheap partly due to cheaper components, but also due to volume. If a monitor can work as both a TV and a computer display, that greatly expands its possible market, which means the manufacturer can sell more and defray more startup costs per unit. That translates into a lower price at the point of sale.

This is also why resolutions of more than 1080 lines cost more: there is simply a smaller market for them, and the fixed startup costs have to be paid over fewer units sold, otherwise no one could afford to make them.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problem working on 16:9 displays. If anything, it makes me work better since I can have more stuff visible at once.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[afidel]

HP ZR2740w, 27" 2560*1440 with integrated 90 degree swivel, ~$700, it's an LED backlit IPS panel.

That's way less than the 2,304 x 1,440 Sony GDM-FW900 we bought back in 2002 for one of our graphics people and I can guarantee you it's lighter! (that beast was 108 lbs)

Re:useless aspect ratio

[StuartHankins]

I have a monitor that does that (NEC MultiSync E222W). Got it specifically because I wanted to try pivoting it as you suggested. The problem I have when I rotate it is the viewing angle and non-uniform brightness. Without boosting its height even more than it already is (7" or so off my desk) and making it much more uneven from my laptop screen, I don't see how I can fix it. And my laptop is already elevated the same amount, so not much chance of getting even higher there.

Ignoring the non-uniform brightness and viewing angle issues, it's substantially more mouse movement with a screen pivoted. Yes, I suppose I can install some 3rd party software, but most of my work is spent remoting into servers and I can't set them up so they only work well in my environment.

tl;dr: Pivoted monitors sounds like a great idea, but not suitable for my usage pattern.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Nothing. A 1920x1200 monitor is better than a 1600x1200 monitor. Period. If you can't see a full page, your monitor is too low-resolution. Or your eyes are.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[StuartHankins]

I have this monitor http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop-monitors/e222w-bk , which is 16:10, and pivoted it's not a good experience for me. I commented elsewhere, so not to repeat myself let's just say a 4:3 pivot would be superior for me.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

You have discovered that laptops are useless for real work, not 16:9 displays. But as Windows 8 demonstrates, at least Microsoft believes that no one's doing real work, anyway.

If you absolutely must edit a document full-page and full-screen, a tilting monitor has always been the correct solution, going way back to the 4:3 days. For most real work, any given text document is going to be just one of any number of documents open at once (at this moment, I have OpenOffice Writer open on a document I'm reading, two web browsers with about five separate windows, a CAD program (Altium), Microsoft Access, a couple datasheets in Acrobat, a calculator, and a notes windows, open at the same time. I'd be happy with more height and more width, or more resolution, sure... room for even more stuff. But I have never found 16:9 to be inferior in this to 4:3.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

The 1920x1080 is using a television panel... the mass market makes that cheap. It's naturally the user's choice -- the unification with digital TV only added the options, it didn't eliminate any. And it drove down the prices on all monitors, even the higher end specialty type have dropped.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[jedidiah]

> Sorry, 7680x4320 means a 16x9 aspect ratio, and a monitor by that proportion is useless for any actual work.

1950 called. They want their curmudgeon back.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Windows 8's "new style" apps don't. So it's easy to imagine Microsoft deciding for us desktop users that programs on a 7680x4320 panel should also be full screen, just to make sure we don't get confused about the difference between that view and that of a 3.5", 800x600 smartphone screen. That'll be Windows 9 that phases out the "classic" windowed Windows. And Windows 10 that's sold, fire-sale style, to Oracle or IBM or someone looking to get into the OS business, as Microsoft goes down in flames. Or not... but it sure would feel good.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[jedidiah]

That mentality is basically assuming that you're treating your PC in 2012 as if it were an IBM 5150 in 1982.

There's this thing called windowing now.

Ironically they used to have these things called "full page monitors". If you were to put one of those on it's side, it would look suspiciously like a modern TV.

A 4:3 screen doesn't make any more sense for "just text" either.

It's just what you are used to and you are old and unable to adapt and are making up lame excuses for you own failings.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Doing real work, when I switched over to LCD five years ago, I could save the cost of both monitors in about two years of power saving, versus my fairly huge 19" CRTs... that's 8+ hours a day use, and yeah, it was my home office, so I was actually paying that bill. You might check the relative power consumption (and note, LCD-backlit monitors of today use less power than the CFL-sidelit LCDs of a few year ago) versus that big 22incher.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[AmiMoJo]

1080 lines is actually ideal for consumers. 1080p video displays perfectly without borders, including games consoles and YouTube videos. High volume pushed price down and most people don't need more than 1080 vertical pixels on anything up to a 24" monitor. Okay, it isn't a "retina" display, but subpixel rendering makes fonts look good and highly readable. Plus until Windows 7 came along DPI scaling wasn't that good in the most common OS.

There just wasn't much reason to go high, and apart from what is mostly marketing hype there still isn't. Even pro photographers don't care much because it is the content of the image and things like the exposure and colour balance they are mostly interested in, not individual pixels. Even for medical applications a doctor is more likely to just zoom in on the area of interest rather than press his face against the monitor or hold a magnifying glass up to it. Personally I would love more, but I realize I'm asking for something very specialist.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

That's why you can't buy a 16:9 pivot -- it'd be even more useless than 16:9 landscape is.

Apparently, I don't have the same restrictions you suggest. Took me five seconds to find one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824260054

The tall tower needed is probably one reason these aren't more popular, but it wouldn't be difficult to built a more robust swing mechanism that lifted and swung at the same time.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[cffrost]

If you only had one eye, a 1:1 monitor would make a bit more sense.

They should make those. Surely there's a marrrrket for monitors specially made for pirates.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sorry, 7680x4320 means a 16x9 aspect ratio, and a monitor by that proportion is useless for any actual work.

1950 called. They want their curmudgeon back.

If I was 1950 I think I'd rather have the monitor. And a computer and cables to go with it. You can keep the curmudgeon.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Pigeon451]

The fact that everyone makes 1920x1080 now brings down the price for everyone. There are some alternatives if you want higher resolution -- however they are more expensive because of lack of demand. I'd prefer a higher resolution monitor, but I'm happy enough with 1920x1080 that I don't want to spend the extra money for higher resolution.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Yes, different timings... 1920x1080/60p for video, 1920x1080/60p for computers, if you're talking about typical rates sent to LCD monitors. That's precisely why computer and television displays are unified. Sure, you can buy a "television" with a video processor to accept legacy video formats, and I have a set of computer monitors at home that also accept those. But being a digital display, there is one correct single resolution and rate for each monitor. And using a modern interface, DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort, the monitor tells the video card what it wants, and that's what it gets. In some cases, there's a negotiation... I can still plug a 2560x1440 digital monitor into a Blu-ray player, but they'll agree on 1920x1080, and the monitor will convert. But usually, these days, the PCs and TVs are sending the same signal, identical timings.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Hatta]

Not useless for everyone, just you.

Useless for work. Widescreen format is good for games and movies and not much else.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[AmiMoJo]

You can easily get 16:10 1920x1200 monitors for a fraction of that price, e.g. this Samsung one. That site alone lists 14 models with that resolution.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

1920x1200 has always been available. Still is. And while maybe a bit more pricey than 1920 x 1080, not outrageous. Here's the result of a 7sec search:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176346

Now, keep in mind where HD monitors came from. About 5-6 years ago, the first 1920x1200 monitors hit, and they ran in the $600 range. I bought my two 24" monitors around five years ago, thanks to a fairly unprecedented sale at NewEgg, so I could nab two Westinghouse 24" 1920x1200 MVA panel monitors for about $400 each.

The price floor dropped out because of the influx of cheap TV-type 1920x1080 panels. And yes, this may have driven the 1920x1200 panels back up a bit, but they've always been available, and far short of a grand.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Hatta]

This is also ignoring just how cheap those 16:9 screens are, compared with what you paid for a 4:3 CRT 15 years ago.

How cheap that 16:9 monitor is is irrelevant when that 15 year old 4:3 CRT is a sunk cost and still provides more horizontal resolution than the widescreen. You can go down to Goodwill today and buy a CRT with better resolution than "HD" for less than $5. That's fucking ridiculous.

This is also why resolutions of more than 1080 lines cost more: there is simply a smaller market for them

If we standardized on HDTV resolutions with 1600 lines, there would be just as much demand for them as there are 1080 lines. Then everyone would benefit from the economies of scale.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I wish this myth would die already.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

We have these stupidly huge 16:9 monitors today that can't even display one page of a PDF without scrolling and yet 2/3 of the screen is sitting empty. It's a terrible aspect ratio for computers.

Get a rotating screen.

I often have a browser and a few xterms open on a landscape screen, and email/code/PDF open on my portrait screen. Best of both worlds for particular tasks.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh, please. Do you really need to run every app full screen? Are you not using an OS that has resizable windows? While you're complaining about that PDF I have other windows sitting next to it that mean less time lost to hunting around for where files need to end up. I've had a *much* easier time with this since 4:3 went away. Your metric for 'usefulness' is absurd with modern desktop interfaces.

And yes, I do real work.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sharing the love, as I have been looking for a decent high-resolution monitor, without paying out the nose -

After spending many hours on the web researching this —apparently importing gray-market Korean IPS monitors are the rage for those in-the-know (check out: http://www.overclock.net/t/1215866/reviewed-400-2560x1440-ips-no-ag-90hz-achieva-shimian-qh270-and-catleap-q270)

Commenters from that thread also recommended this monitor: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0384780

I just ordered and received mine from Microcenter ($400+ a bit of shipping). It's great —27", 2560x1440, great color. Barebones, but works great when attached with a DisplayPort cable (ordered from Monoprice of course).

Hope it helps someone else.

Best regards,
J

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Kielistic]

I do quite a bit of real work in IDEs that cram lots of stuff on the left and right side of the text editor. High resolution wide screen monitors are great for real work. What real work are you talking about? Looking at webpages from the 90s?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[saider]

1920x1200 has always been available. Still is.

Try finding that resolution on a laptop display. I've got a laptop with 1200 lines on it now, and I am spoiled. The 1080 is only 120 lines less, but it is noticable for what I do (embedded programming). Hopefully they start pushing out 17" 1440 or 1800 line laptop displays. I think at that point, any more resolution would be pointless.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[rtfa-troll]

.... stupidly huge 16:9 monitors today that can't even display one page of a PDF without scrolling....

The aspect ratio is actually a symptom of the problem. These monitors are garbage because they have about 900 effective vertical pixels (after your stupid windowing system uses up the top and bottom) which isn't enough. Basically you need about 1000px vertical to have a readable A4 document. Anything more than that you just put into smoother / more beautiful representation. These new resolutions will be great because you will be able to put multiple whole A4 vertical pages beside each other.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Surt]

It's not even good for games. Game dev houses would prefer a squarer format.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[geekoid]

As a software developer, I have to disagree.
I love the wide screens. I assume by 'real work' you mean you edit 1 pdf at a time, otherwise you complaint is just whiny GOMLism.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[cayenne8]

It's about image format; since people move away from dedicated TVs at a rapid rate...

That's not the prevailing trend for most people, at least in the US. It is one that younger kids do...those likely starting out and no real job with disposible income.

But for those of us with established jobs, purchased homes...and even families, there is no move away from dedicated TV.

I don't know anyone that has any kind of real income, that sits in front of a computer desk watching their content on a crappy monitor.

Most people over the age of 30...are buying real tvs....I don't see that changing for awhile. Sure, they may stream a lot of stuff to them....but the central item in most living rooms in the US is a dedicated TV.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[cayenne8]

...though I see an upgrade to 2560x1440 in the very near future.

I've got a Dell U2711 at home...and it is GREAT. I'd highly recommend it...and if you shop around, you can get it for sub $900. I think I got mine at amazon.

I hear Samsung has recently come out with a good one too, but I've not researched it much.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[mcgrew]

I've written an unwholy amount of home assignments

Maybe if your screen was a different ratio you would have finished them?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[KiloByte]

What would you want a dedicated TV for? Neither me nor any of my friends (excluding older generation -- I'm 34) even owns a TV. It's also been years since I last watched a movie that didn't make me want the time back, so I simply stopped. Some of my friends still download and watch some series, but that's what, an hour or two per week.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[sjames]

Actually, I find my widescreen monitor to be quite useful for actual work. You never wanted to examine code side by side?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[sjames]

Perhaps a more useful format like HTML so it can reflow as needed?

You can look at code side by side, or see the code on one side and the output on the other. If you do network monitoring, you can fit extra gauges on a widescreen. The list goes on. If you don't have a use for widescreen, turn it 90 degrees and enjoy a nice tall portrait monitor, perfect for documents.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just great that neither you nor any of your two friends have a TV. You represent a very, very small subset of the population. An extremely large portion of the population still want/need TV's, and it's going to be that way for a long time. Quit trying to act like TV's are somehow stupid and outdated. kthxl8r

Re:useless aspect ratio

[vlueboy]

Pivot monitors area privilege for office environments and home consumers do not get them "standard" with their purchases. Let's illustrate: When normal determined buyers go into a cellphone store and see 19 "Android" phones and 1 "Windows 7" phone, the store has 3 outcomes:

1) Customer Buys the Windows phone. Normally from an informed decision.
2) Customer Buys Android and Misses the Windows phone altogether due to lower statistical chance (5% in a perfect world). Note that the Customer may have preferred Windows and bought it if he had noticed it, putting him in outcome #1.
3) Customer Buys the Android phone because it feels like the "normal" thing to do -- 19 other phones can't be wrong, and the odd one out is probably a lemon because it's not an iPhone.

You'll notice this analogy leaves little reason for the small and mid-size store owners to even stock that 5% chance phone that is a rare choice when they can store another phone with a higher acclaimed phone.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[tedgyz]

Well said. I have the same setup - dual 1920x1200 16:10 monitors and can't imagine doing my job on 16:9 screens. My corporate laptop is also 16:10 1680x1050. I can't stand my wife's 16:9 laptop.

Bottom line is you just have to pay more to get the "proper" resolution.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[vlueboy]

Wait a year or three for the Macbook retina display copy cats. One year to work out research, contracts, marketing and push out a few lemons (think of the whole non-existent $500 tablet market as soon as the iPad came out). Then another year for real options to pop up (Samsung Galaxy tabs in my analogy). Finally, one more year for price points to become reasonable.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[randy of the redwood]

/. is not representative of the typical consumer. While you may not watch TV, most do. Sports and other non-geek oriented broadcasts are still most accessible via cable / sat.

There was much bitching on twitter about the broadcast of the Olympics a) not in real time, and b) not streaming. The VAST majority of consumers didn't care. This was the most watched Olympics ever. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/olympic-viewing-figs.html) and (http://informitv.com/news/2012/08/20/olympicsproducerecord/). These viewers watch TV.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[IntlHarvester]

Recall, if you will, all the build-up to the "Grand Alliance" that gave us today's ATSC (HDTV) standard. There was politicing on ...

Not to mention that the consumer electronic people insisted on interlaced resolutions (1080i), that were practically obsolete by the time HDTV actually rolled out to the mass market.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Immerman]

Really? At small sizes perhaps, but I've been quite happy with my 40" monitor for a while now - it allows multiple simultaneously open windows side by side (or one over the other, or...) like having a seamless multi-monitor setup. And a higher resolution would be much appreciated. I'd still prefer a 16x10 aspect ratio though, if only because I think the ancients were right about the aesthetic appeal of the golden ratio - it occurs everywhere in nature and we've had a few (hundred) million years to learn to appreciate it.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[carnivore302]

I once heard we moved to 16:9 because it is closer to the golden ratio (1.618..). This ratio pops up everywhere where beauty and aesthetics are concerned.

If it is true then it makes sense that the movie industry opted for 16:10, which is even closer to the ratio.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Teun]

When I look around parts of Europe I notice an inverse relation between the size of the TV screen and the education of the owner.

Maybe it's due to space restraints but the concept of a dedicated TV room is over here quite rare.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure you order a properly conditioned cable or you won't get the right warmth or depth from the monitor.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[DocSavage64109]

If vertical space is important, why not just get a 2560x1600 30" screen?

Re:useless aspect ratio

[KiloByte]

At 40'' and with multiple windows, you effectively have a multi-monitor setup (in one piece of hardware), where the aspect ratio of individual screens doesn't matter.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[toddestan]

I hate them. Most of the time I would like to see more lines of code, and all the whitespace off to the side is useless. Okay, maybe a bit better for side-by-side comparisons, but in that situation they aren't quite wide enough. You can rotate them, but once again you end up with something that's not wide enough, and the cheap TN look terrible rotated anyway (and I can't control what I get issued at work - the screens are the cheapest crap they could find and they don't rotate anyway so the point is moot). Maybe if when they went widescreen they really went wide so you could get replace dual 4:3 screens with one screen and not lose resolution then I would have been okay with it. But instead we ended up with this awkward, useless screen ratio that's not quite wide enough on its own, completely ridiculous in a dual monitor configuration, and the vertical resolution still sucks.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[MukiMuki]

Buy one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-swivel-rotate-Monitor-CE-MT0M11-S1/dp/B004UBU3P2/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1345780015&sr=8-6&keywords=monitor+rotate

It'll solve so many problems you won't have words for it.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

That was the thing that struck me too. I don't watch TV at all, period, so I don't personally care what they do in that regard. But like you I've watched the resolution of monitors and laptops regress over the past few years. When I bought my last Thinkpad it was hard enough finding a machine without a glossy screen-- to find one with decent resolution (and not pay a thousand-dollar premium) was impossible. If this leads to better monitors then I'm all for it.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[Immerman]

That was exactly my point - do you really think anyone would be using a 7680x4320 resolution at 15" or 20" sizes? Even at 40" you'd be approaching the limits of the human visual system at arms length, and probably be beyond the point of distinguishing individual pixels.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Computer monitors, at least the cheap ones, are build from television pieces. So any news related to new TV formats directly impacts the kind of computer monitors that are going to be built. All of them. After all, you're not likely to be able to sell many 2560x1400 monitors for $1500 when TV panels deliver 3840x2160 for $250.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Well, the original specs permitted both 1080/60i and 1080/24p... but maintaining the logical ability to do interlaced video was really about about bandwidth. Kind of a shame... if they had based it all on AVC rather than MPEG-2, a higher 1080p format would have been possible. On the other hand, the broadcasters had enough trouble dealing with two format options... they really didn't need more to consumer them :-)

It's also telling that it was only the very first generation of HDTV, those CRT/CRT-projector based models, that actually did 1080i. Digital displays came into their own right pretty much in the second generation of HDTV (once you could swap a YPrPb input for HDMI or other digital interfaces), and the various digital displays can't actually display an interlaced video stream -- it's all upscaled to 1080p anyway.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Oh, please. Do you really need to run every app full screen? Are you not using an OS that has resizable windows?

Hey, that's not such a silly question. It seems that the folks in charge of Microsoft, Apple, and even Canonical these days are trying in various ways to do just that: release operating systems that don't support Windows. In "Windows" 8, Microsoft is calling the existing stuff "Legacy" or "Classic", and their new "Don't-Call-It-Metro" APIs and UI is now "Windows 8 Style Application". And they don't Window -- run it on that 8K screen, it's still a full screen application. Stupid, amazingly stupid. But not really a moot question, with this de-evolution in the works, and not just one place, but with multiple outbreaks throughout the industry.

Otherwise, I completely agree with your assertion... my PDFs or other "traditional" documents can go top to bottom, with plenty of room to reading, and plenty of space for other windows at the same time. Given that I have over 30 open at the moment, this is very much an increase in productivity over the single-window display.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[cayenne8]

What would you want a dedicated TV for?

Because a 59" plasma screen doesn't fit that well on my desk back in the office....and I tend to have friends over to watch things like college football...parties...you know? Sometimes the wives want to watch that while the guys are over playing my pinball and arcade machine...etc...

Re:useless aspect ratio

[cayenne8]

LOl...well, that was the top of my budget for a computer monitor at the time....saving to get a 2nd one....

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

A laptop is my last choice for a real work PC anyway (CAD, embedded software, video, photography, etc). Guess they're not terrible for web browsing, but I can't imagine anyone getting real work done on a single 17" screen. That's far more limiting than a difference in 120 lines. I do have a single 24" monitor in my home lab, due to size constraints, but it's not far from my main desktop and 2-3 screens (the third is mostly just for video work).

But I do think the "retina on a PC" meme is coming. After all, my cellphone's 4.6" screen is 1280x720... why limit a 17" screen to only 1920x1080? It is also correct, though, that operating systems need better scaling/sizing options to deal with more of a disjoint between screen resolution and viewing size than we currently have, before this really works well. Even Apple's "retina" MacBook is kind of a kludge, software-wise.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

Given that the same folks who built the display for Apple (Samsung, LG) are perfectly willing to sell similar displays to anyone else, I don't imagine it'll take a year. Falling prices, sure, the main reason companies will jump on this is the promise of higher margins. But at least there's a chance of falling prices -- the Mac version is going to always be way overpriced.

And ironically, just as laptops are getting a long-needed boost in resolution, Windows 8 is coming along and expecting everyone to run everything fullscreen, pretty much erasing any advantage. Well, hopefully, no vendors of "real" applications jump on that bandwagon to hell, and things get fixed in Windows 9.

Re:useless aspect ratio

[hazydave]

It's all relative... the 2560x1440 IPS monitor I just bought cost $100 less than either of my 1920x1200 MVA monitors from ~6 years ago. That's the positive effect of the TV-PC merger... you may not want a base level, TN-LCD at 1920x1080, but the fact of those monitors being so cheap (well under $200 if you shop around) drags the whole industry down in price.

screw that

[MickyTheIdiot]

I am going to wait for CSUHDTV

Crazy Super Ultra High Definition TV.

Re:screw that

[Idbar]

And in other news, Comcast and AT&T said they will charge sh** loads of money for that service as well, and they will cap it (if you exceed 10GFrames per mo, they will only deliver at 5fps).

Re:screw that

[nschubach]

I don't understand why they skipped Super HDTV ... anyone that grew up in the 80s knows that Super is before Ultra.

Re:screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obligatory - LHDTV "Ludicrous High definition TV"

Re:screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to wait for CSUHDTV

Crazy Super Ultra High Definition TV.

I'd prefer LDTV, Ludicrous Definition TV =).

Re:screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

No way!

Do you have any idea how much Comcast will charge for the bandwidth required for the electrons to go plaid?

Re:screw that

[hazydave]

That's nominally 3840 x 2160, aka, "4K".. you get it, or something like it, at the better movie theaters these days. There are already camcorders shipping that do this, and televisions coming Real Soon Now (http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/22/3259613/lg-84-inch-4k-tv-korea-release-north-america-europe-latin-asia). YouTube already supports 4K video. HDMI 1.4 does, too, at least up to 24p.

So if it's already real, it's hopefully not the subject of work on new standards. And the 4K stuff is coming on fast enough that it's all based on logical extensions to what already exists. TVs are smart enough to adapt to the input and reformat lower resolution video. Disc delivery doesn't matter as much as it used to, but just like 3D, if 4K is important in the home, a new Blu-ray profile will cover it (if you really want more storage, the existing BD-XL format might get employed).

Starting out worrying about 8K video now, these guys will have the time to think about much larger changes in the video infrastructure.

Re:screw that

[BubbaBeans]

It's obligatory - LHDTV "Ludicrous High definition TV"

They skipped Ludicrous and went strait to Plaid!

Re:screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

Ludicrous HDTV?! They've gone to plaid, *and* you can count each of the fibers.

Re:screw that

[sjames]

They must be truly asleep at the switch, double the framerate and they didn't call it 'turbo'.

Re:screw that

[Ksevio]

Well they could be going by the radio band style (though they skipped "Very High Def")

In which case, Ultra HD is first, but coming up we'll be getting:
Super HD,
Extremely HD,
and finally Tremendously HD

Re:screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

I lol'd way too much at this.

Re:screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

In the radio spectrum UHF is lower than SHF

I dont see the point, yet

[Anonymous Coward]

We can barely get 720p on most of our "HD" channels, and then the feed is compressed. Having a standard is nice for the future, but I think it is still too early. We need better video compressing standards before we make the switch. Besides blu-ray has not yet fully penetrated the market anyway.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Miros]

Or less channels - most of the linear channels out there are carrying nothing but pre-recorded content which could be delivered over IP rather than QAM in a much more satisfying experience for the average TV watcher. Ditch a couple dozen of those things and you can open up the spectrum for higher bandwidth video real quick.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shouldn't there be a standard? Maybe it will finally give these companies a kick in the ass when their customers move to another company that isn't two generations behind. It is also better than multiple companies inventing incompatible proprietary super-HD definitions.

And have you thought of the implications for porn???

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[oakgrove]

I dont see the point, yet

People buying the TVs subsidizing the economy of scale lowering the price of equally resolant computer monitors. And incidentally releasing us from the purgatory of 1920x1080 low dpi crap that is spun as high-end by CE marketing departments everywhere.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[lxs]

And have you thought of the implications for porn???

You mean shaving rashes, bad teeth and stretch marks seen with even more clarity?

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[omnichad]

That would be fine as long as something like CableCard existed for it so that you could bring your own device.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Miros]

New invention idea - "Dial-a-resolution" feature for your remote control! Not liking what you're seeing? Fuzz it up until the balance between reality and your imagination hits the sweet spot.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Miros]

Excellent point! The FCC has proposed a replacement for the CableCARD standard that would address this issue specifically (allvid)

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[omnichad]

Nice! Hopefully it doesn't let cable companies flag half the channels as never-copy. Does no good if you can't hook it up to or integrate into a DVR.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[modmans2ndcoming]

I say screw progressive frames if you are going to compress the signal... 1080i looks way better than compressed 720p and requires half the bandwidth to deliver than 1080p

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[RobertLTux]

and when this is all setup then the FCC should mandate that the cable companies fully support the installation and use of these devices.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Guspaz]

It never WON'T be "too early", because 8K resolutions are way beyond the point of diminishing returns. 2K resolutions (1920x1080) that we have presently on high-end media like Blu-Ray are indistinguishable from 4K resolutions on anything but enormous movie-theatre sized screens. Heck, even in a movie theatre, the difference between 2K and 4K isn't all that big (helps if you know which theatres have which kind of projectors at your local megaplex).

Now, I won't argue that there aren't some places that do need 8K. On an IMAX level, there's some benefit to have there. But how many of you have a full sized IMAX screen in your living room? Because the percentage of people who have a television large enough to justify anything more than 2K is virtually non-existent. On top of that, no matter how big your screen is, there's a point where there's no more detail there to resolve. Your film camera is only focused so precisely...

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[harrkev]

Since when is 1080 low-res for television. I do admit that 1080p is not good enough for a computer monitor (I run 2560 x 1600 at home and at work), but my televisions at home are all 720. I am middle-aged, so looking at a 50" screen at 8 feet, I doubt that I could even tell the difference between 1080 and 720.

Computer monitors are meant to display information, and you sit up close. A larger display with more information is a good thing, as you can easily shift your focus from one part of the screen to another.

A television, on the other hand, you sit back from. You do not really focus exclusively on one part of the display, but you tend to look at the whole thing. Now, a case COULD be made for a higher-resolution standard for home-theater fanatics who install a projector and a six-foot screen on the wall. WIth a setup like that, you probably COULD notice an appreciable increase in resolution. Those people (who probably have too much time and money on their hands), however, are a small minority of the television-watching public.

I just happen to think that a new "standard" that requires such a high-resolution display that nobody even knows how to build one yet is useless. By the time somebody figures out how to make one affordable (or even make one), the codecs will be antiquated.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Miros]

As they did with cableCARDs?

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[oakgrove]

Since when is 1080 low-res for television.

I should have been specific. I meant low-res for a computer. I could get similar resolution affordably 15 years ago. The reason affordable computer displays hover around 1080P is that is what all the plants are pumping out for TVs. When TVs get a good resolution bump, affordable computer monitors will too.

I just happen to think that a new "standard" that requires such a high-resolution display that nobody even knows how to build one yet is useless.

I admit to not being privy to the production intricacies of display panels but other than yield problems with so many more pixels to not be dead, what would be the show-stopper?

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[Miros]

It really depends on what it is that you are encoding. p will do a lot better if you have a lot of motion in the video.

Re:I dont see the point, yet

[vlueboy]

Good that you brought up cameras, because we already have media that is being under represented on our computer monitors: Consumer point and shoot camera resolutions... Our 800p and 1080p screens are ill-fit for 16Megapixel cameras. 2816 x 1584 is about 4 Megapixels at 16x9, and 4000 x 2248 is 9.0 MP. Still, we have to downconvert and produce jaggies.

There's a bunch of info on the confusion about how much is enough but I find that even a 21" desktop monitor is way underutilized to display my shots:

The biggest print you can make without losing sharpness as seen through a magnifier from a 4MP camera is 6 x 8" (15x20cm). From a sixteen MP camera likewise you could go to 12 x 16" (30x45cm), and still look at the print through a magnifier.

The OS has to scale down our images, resulting in jaggies even when I just use lower resolutions at 12MP. I wish the standard windows wallpaper system offered an anti-alias option.

But what for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, seriously, anything bigger than 1080p is not really visible for my usual viewing habits anyway (24'' monitor in ~ 1 meter distance, or projection with 3m diagonally in about 4m distance)

Re:But what for?

[FilmedInNoir]

Also as we get older, eyesight fails...
I think my HDTV is great! Like looking out a window... actually maybe I am looking out a window?

Re:But what for?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Maybe you should go outside.

Re:But what for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until you are 40 years old before you make that comment.

What about the encoding?

[Anonymous Coward]

And with the lousy encoding that people CBS use on their prime-time shows, we can now have super sharp square artifacting on the screen. How about they give us decent HD first?

Re:What about the encoding?

[omnichad]

The re-encoding is handled by the individual affiliate's tower. If they try to squeeze two or three subchannels into their 20Mbps feed, then quality suffers. Networks tend to balance the bandwidth more to the primary sub-channel at prime-time, while making it more equal during the day. Some just have lousy encoders and waste bandwidth.

Another piece of the puzzle.

[mister2au]

We have Bluray that can pump out 40 Mbps and a new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard coming that support 4K/60Hz video at around 40 Mbps

We also have a few 4K displays just starting to appear.

And now a UHDTV 4K video standard (as well as 8K).

So looking good for the new gen with broadcast, storage, encoding and display standards all sorted out .. bring it on !!!

Re:Another piece of the puzzle.

[Miros]

4k could end up getting skipped as a broadcast standard given how quickly 8k is growing up. It will be a lot easier to dedicate that much bandwidth to a single channel once we eliminate those which serve no useful purpose in the linear domain (those which carry only pre-recorded shows).

Re:Another piece of the puzzle.

[should_be_linear]

It doesn't make any sense at all. HDTV is already "retina" resolution, for distance (>=2m) between TV and you. Adding resolution will not be noticed by 99% users, but it will increase power consumption of TV chipset. For me, I am happy that cheap consumer 4K PC monitors will be great, because I am waching at it from short distance, as oppose to TV set.

Re:Another piece of the puzzle.

[Type44Q]

bring it on

Just as long as their 4K is actually 3840 pixels, thereby ensuring that content encoded in 720 (1280 horizontal) and 1080 (1920 horizontal) will upscale cleanly (pixel-for-pixel)...

The sooner the better

[oakgrove]

Expect to hear a lot of "but I just bought an HDTV" hand wringing but if you think about it, 1080P was barely if at all pushing the envelope when it went mainstream. I have CRTs that I bought second hand 10 years ago with 1600x1200 pixels and that is nothing special. This actually pushes display tech and pixel density forward and gets us close to the Hollywood OS ideal of photorealistic no-discernable pixel displays many of us have lusted after since seeing the main viewscreen on ST:TOS.

Re:The sooner the better

[Miros]

And most TV in the US is not even produced at 1080p, but rather 720p.

Re:The sooner the better

[Jeremy Erwin]

Some shows are broadcast at 720p, but recorded on either 35 mm or 1080p/24 HDCAM.
For Instance:

Bones

Re:The sooner the better

[Miros]

sure, some shows are, but most shows are not. Interestingly enough, recording something at 1080p and then down-converting it to 720 usually yields a superior product to shooting in 720 naively.

Re:The sooner the better

[Miros]

I should temper my statement a little. Live television is almost always produced at 720p rather than 1080. The penetration is higher in non-live production.

Re:The sooner the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like dithering 24 bit audio down to 16 (or something like that) producing superior results?

Re:The sooner the better

[Jeremy Erwin]

Perhaps it's your cable company that's to blame. Why have only one channel featuring crystal clear, pristine video when you can have five featuring an approximation of what was intended?

Re:The sooner the better

[Miros]

If that's what the customer wants! That will probably change soon though

Re:The sooner the better

[oakgrove]

Seems like they could at least do like the satellite radio people do and vary the signal based on what's being broadcast. The classical stations on XM are pristine while the rock stations...eh...not so much.

Re:The sooner the better

[Miros]

They already do to some extend. Sports for example usually require more bandwidth to deliver acceptably due to the higher amount of motion in the video.

Re:The sooner the better

[EdZ]

As long as they've finally done away with bloody interlacing I'll be happy. It was a neat trick in the 1930s, but should have been abandoned decades ago.

Jarring clarity

[Sponge Bath]

The crabs on porn stars will look like invading sci-fi monsters.

Re:Jarring clarity

[oakgrove]

And thusly a new sub-genre of fetish porn was born...

Re:Jarring clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are a regular fucking comedy trope. You should take that shit on the road.

Re:Jarring clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

You should upgrade the quality of porn you watch.

Re:Jarring clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to your encouragement, we will!

Re:Jarring clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

no no no, you're getting the cart before the horse. the new sub-genre is why they needed to develop the new standard

Re:Jarring clarity

[jeffhex]

and rule 34 shows up again... http://xkcd.com/305/

Way more than 2x

[Miros]

This is actually much more than 2x standard broadcasts in terms of resolution as far as the US market is concerned. In the US almost everything "HD" is 720 @ 60fps (or sometimes even 30!). This is 8k, which is 16x the resolution of 1080, and twice the frame rate.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 4K, not 8k. 7680 x 4320 is the equivalent of four 1920x1080 resolutions.

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

Unless I'm missing something, 8K is not 16x the resolution of 1080p. It's 4x the resolution, which results in it having 16x the number of pixels.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

You are missing something, it is 16x the resolution. 4k is 8x the resolution.

Re:Way more than 2x

[arthurh3535]

This is actually much more than 2x standard broadcasts in terms of resolution as far as the US market is concerned. In the US almost everything "HD" is 720 @ 60fps (or sometimes even 30!). This is 8k, which is 16x the resolution of 1080, and twice the frame rate.

Yes, but most 'real' High Definition that people watch on movies and cable/satellite is 1080i/p. Considering people haven't even starting buying QuadHD (2160p) TVs yet, ones that go up to 4320p are a bit out there.

Although with the prices of 32" 1080p TVs dropping so radically, I do expect QuadHD TVs to start to appear to keep up the base price.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

Ok so semantics perhaps. 16x the number of pixels - depends on how you want to describe "resolution." One common definition is the amount of detail that the image holds, in which case, 8k is 16x the resolution of 1080.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

Incorrect, 7680x4320 IS 8k, 4k is 3840x2160

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

is 8k and the equivalent of 4x 4ks, which are themselves the equivalent of 4x 1080s. It's confusing because both 4k and 8k are covered by the UHDT standard.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

It's highly unlikely that you are watching much of any 1080i/p content over your cable/satellite subscription in the US. Most of it is distributed as 720

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

Again, are you saying that 4k has 8 times the resolution, or 8 times as many pixels? There's a difference. If it's 8 times the resolution, then it has 8 times as many pixels per inch, which means the resolution would be 15,360 x 8,640.

I was under the impression (and the Wikipedia supports this) that 4k was roughly twice the resolution of 1080p, which would be around 3840x2160 which means it has 4 times the number of pixels. 8k is supposed to be twice the resolution of that, which is 4 times the resolution of 1080p, which is 7680 × 4320. That means it has 16 times the total number of pixels.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

None of these standards say anything in terms of pixels per inch - just number of pixels overall. "resolution" in this context can only mean the total number of pixels. 4k has 4x the number of pixels that 1080p has, and 8k has 16x the pixels.

Re:Way more than 2x

[flargleblarg]

It's 4x the resolution in each of the two dimensions (horizontal and vertical); it's 16x the resolution overall.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

Pixels per inch depends on the "resolution" of the display standard, and the size of the display. a 40" 1080p display and a 90" 1080p display have the same number of pixels, but wildly different pixel per inch values.

Re:Way more than 2x

[hazydave]

That's incorrect -- network-wise, only Fox and ABC broadcast in 720/60p. There is no 720/30p, that's not a legal ATSC format.

The choice of 720p was never very popular among most of the networks. It was pushed hard by ABC due to their ESPN division -- 720/60p really is better than 1080/60i for many sports. I've shot soccer video in 720/60p for the last eight years... it's definitely better, most of the time. You'll find ABC or FOX owned channels in 720/60p, along with a few sports-only satellite channels. Pretty much everything else is in 1080/60i, in the USA. Some satellite programming is available in 1080/24p as well, not sure about cable, but it does make sense.

All cable and satellite companies have the ability to reformat your video on the fly, as well as re-encode it, generally from MPEG-2 to AVC, at least on satellite. But that's specific to your cable system... that's not the way its broadcast.

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

So... what I understand by your statement is that it's 4 times the resolution, 16 times the pixel count, which is what I said.

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

Sometimes people informally use "resolution" interchangeably with "pixel count", but it's technically incorrect. Resolution is a measure of linear density, such as dots per inch or pixels per inch. When you're talking about comparing the resolution of 1080p vs. 4k, you would say that 4k is twice the resolution because in order to have 4k on the same sized screen, you would need twice as many pixels per inch.

In computer graphics, people sometimes talk about an image resolution as being the total number of horizontal and vertical pixels (again not a pixel count) because there is no absolute resolution of the image. The implication of giving the horizontal and vertical measures is, again, that if you represent the image as a given physical size (e.g. when you print it out), a greater number of pixels would mean a higher resolution. That is, a 640x480 image is twice the resolution of a 320x240 image. That's how it works.

Now I might not have bothered to correct you in the first place, except that you seemed to be correcting someone else, and the person you were correcting was actually more correct.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

As you've pointed out it really comes down to terminology.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

You're right, I meant 720/24p. The use of the word "broadcast" was also careless on my part in this situation.

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

Yes, it's an issue of correct use of technical terminology.

It would be sort of like if you said 8-bit color images have half the number of colors that 16-bit images have. It uses half the number of bits, yes, but that's actually not the same as having half the number of colors.

Re:Way more than 2x

[vlueboy]

Wow 32" 1080p ? I am not happy, but have seen the numbers improving. You must shop online because stores in my big city show 40" minimum and that is at 720p. I don't use the TV much, so 37" is enough, but never found an equal-sized replacement.

Anyway, it's sad that my cable box offers a max of 1080i instead of 1080p (in case I DO want to upgrade). Sadder still, people I know who aren't DVR owners just keep their 480p boxes on their 37" HD screens. Some others have no idea about what cables to use. Others still don't know that channel lineups require that you tune in to a new set of channels for HD content. It's all too confusing already, so I don't see 4K being brought in without tons of confusion.

Worse, 720p is still underutilized, though things have improved since analog shut down.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

That's a bit of a stretch. In this case even the upstream article introduced the concept as "TV with 16 times the resolution of HDTV." You are technically correct of course, but you have to acknowledge that the common use of the term and the technical use of the term "resolution" with regards to televisions have evidently diverged. 8-bit vs. 16-bit color having half the number of colors is just patently absurd.

Re:Way more than 2x

[Miros]

Perhaps this content from Wikipedia will help sort out any remaining confusion.

One use of the term “display resolution” applies to fixed-pixel-array displays such as plasma display panels (PDPs), liquid crystal displays (LCDs), digital light processing (DLP) projectors, or similar technologies, and is simply the physical number of columns and rows of pixels creating the display (e.g., 1920 × 1080). A consequence of having a fixed-grid display is that, for multi-format video inputs, all displays need a "scaling engine" (a digital video processor that includes a memory array) to match the incoming picture format to the display.

Note that the use of the word resolution here is a misnomer, though common. The term “display resolution” is usually used to mean pixel dimensions, the number of pixels in each dimension (e.g., 1920 × 1080), which does not tell anything about the resolution of the display on which the image is actually formed: resolution properly refers to the pixel density, the number of pixels per unit distance or area, not total number of pixels. In digital measurement, the display resolution would be given in pixels per inch. In analog measurement, if the screen is 10 inches high, then the horizontal resolution is measured across a square 10 inches wide. This is typically stated as "lines horizontal resolution, per picture height;"[1] for example, analog NTSC TVs can typically display about 340 lines of "per picture height" horizontal resolution from over-the-air sources, which is equivalent to about 440 total lines of actual picture information from left edge to right edge.[1]

source

Re:Way more than 2x

[flargleblarg]

It's 4 times the 1-dimensional resolution (in each of the two dimensions horizontal and vertical) and it's 16 times the 2-dimensional resolution. Yes, it's also 16 times the total pixel count.

"Resolution" is not inherently 1-dimensional. In fact, resolution is quite often a 2-dimensional quantity, e.g., 1920x1080 (note the multiplication of two 1-dimensional scalar quantities). Resolution of display screens is typically quoted as a 1-dimensional number because it is assumed that the horizontal and vertical resolutions are the same, but it is more accurate to state the resolution as the product of both.

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

In this case even the upstream article introduced the concept as "TV with 16 times the resolution of HDTV."

Then the author of the article doesn't know the meaning of the word "resolution" either.

The wikipedia article you cite in your next post only reinforces my point: if you ask what the resolution is of a 1080p display, someone might say, "it's 72 dpi" or they might say, "it's 1920x1080". However, they don't say, "it's 2,073,600".

To quote what you quoted:

Note that the use of the word resolution here is a misnomer... The term “display resolution” is usually used to mean pixel dimensions, the number of pixels in each dimension (e.g., 1920 × 1080), which does not tell anything about the resolution of the display on which the image is actually formed: resolution properly refers to the pixel density...

So "resolution" is really about pixel density, but sometimes, in common usage, may refer to *both* of the dimensions of a 2D display. If you double each of those dimensions, then you have doubled the resolution. Saying that doubling the resolution of each of the dimensions quadruples the total resolution is terminologically incorrect.

But this is a silly conversation. We're arguing about a factual matter that you've already looked up and quoted a passage that says I'm factually correct.

Re:Way more than 2x

[nine-times]

This is simply a matter of technical terminology. When a technology company says they have doubled the resolution of a screen, they're saying that each dimension has been doubled. They are not saying that the total pixel count has doubled.

"Resolution" is not inherently 1-dimensional.

In this context, yes it is. If you say that the resolution can be either pixel density or pixel count, then you would have to say that 8K is both 16 times the resolution and 4 times the resolution of 1080p at the same time, which means that a 4K display and an 8K display are both 4 times the resolution of 1080p in spite of having different specs. It makes no sense.

Most properly, "resolution" is discussing pixel density. As a function of this meaning, it's sometimes used to indicate the dimensions of a display, but that's because knowing that a display is a 21" 1080p display will tell you the pixel density. But the resolution is still a 1-dimensional measurement.

If you don't believe me, look it up. It's not a controversy. It's just an issue of correct usage of the terminology.

Re:Way more than 2x

[rk]

I will in general take a lower resolution p over a higher resolution i. Am I the only one that really gets bugged by interlace jitter on screens much above 40" in size? It makes my eyes water and eventually I get headaches... not crushing migraines, but just annoying little pains behind my eyes that are just strong enough to remind me they're there every 2-3 minutes or so.

Already past what eye can resolve

[muhula]

For 1080p screens, if you're sitting further than 2x the diagonal screen width, your eye can't resolve more detail on the screen even with more pixels. This is called the Lechner Distance. Does anyone actually sit that close? It's certainly not how far the average person sits from the screen.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Funny though that "REAL LIFE" is always more crisper then the content on TV's, regardless of what bullshit math you use. Obviously the human eye is capable if discerning more detail then what pixels on a screen can resolve. You might not be able to distinguish two pixels on the screen, but your eyes are more then capable of knowing there is a disconnect between what is supposed to be a continuous line joining those two pixels.

  I think there is room for improvement in screen resolutions however my objections are that most content providers are barely delivering acceptable 720p content.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[Miros]

Some providers are much better than others at not ruining the signals. You should switch!

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[Anonymous Coward]

For 1080p screens, if you're sitting further than 2x the diagonal screen width, your eye can't resolve more detail on the screen even with more pixels. This is called the Lechner Distance. Does anyone actually sit that close?

I have a 21.5" 1080p screen suspended over my bed, 23" from my eyes. I wanna replace it with a T221, but that will need a sturdier mount and a major upgrade to my nightstand PC, plus the refresh is a little slow for TV content.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[pikine]

Real life is crisper because of the dynamic range of the intensities of light. All the technical details of photography---ISO range, aperture, neutral density filter, etc.---are just clever ways to clamp down the dynamic range to get a reasonable approximation of real life. Even high dynamic range (HDR) photography is an approximation. It still has to be presented through a low dynamic range display. It just means HDR is using a different clamping function.

Consider that there are also people who are tetrachromatic who can see a color between red and green. Surely all computer and TV displays, being RGB, are always lacking a color for them. Imagine seeing the world through a broken display where one of the colors isn't working.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[ledow]

What you're talking about is little to do with resolution so much as colour gamut, accurate reproduction and (yes) true 3D.

Also your eye is pretty bad unless it's looking directly as something. Then that thing comes into focus because you focus on it. That can't happen with a screen showing already-chosen focus on something else. So no matter how you squint, your eyes can't get the background trees into focus when they pass over them (and thus it's not "real") - and they probably pass over them several times a second while you're watching content that you've never seen before.

What you're saying is that watching a flat box showing colour reproductions of pre-recorded 2D imagery isn't like "real-life". And it isn't. Because even the best colour elements in a TV can't replicate real-life (and some people can even perceive UV and not know it!), even the best 3D TV can't provide depth to the image sufficiently, even the best camera doesn't record everything in "focus-free" format so that you *CAN* focus on any part of the image you like, etc. etc. etc. In the same way that Stereo, 5.1, 7.2, or anything else you choose cannot accurately reproduce an arbitrary sound in an arbitrary location around your head.

The room for improvement is not in resolution. You honestly *cannot* resolve it at a decent distance with a pure datastream (companies badly compressing video? That's another issue entirely). Even though you *can* see the light of a candle in complete darkness from MILES away, you're not measuring the same things.

The best room for improvement would probably be proper "free-focus" imagery. Where you can put up an image and I can see EVERY pixel in pin-sharp detail whether it was one mile away from the camera or one inch (and not have to refocus my eyes, or to fool them sufficiently that they AUTOMATICALLY refocus themselves). Because that pixel element behind the actor's shoulder ISN'T REALLY six foot behind the one that represents his shoulder when it's displayed, so it will not look "real".

Until you have proper, full, 3D and such free-focus media, you won't get what you want. And we know how well 3D has gone down - just as well as it does every time it's "reinvented" for another generation.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[Twinbee]

How about for monitors? Don't you think it would be a good idea to unify TVs with monitors?

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[Miros]

It seems inevitable doesn't it? They are all just displays in the end, some are bigger, some are smaller, some have different aspect ratios, etc. What matters are the use cases.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[h4rr4r]

I do.

60" screen and am less than 10 feet away. What is the point of buying a nice HDTV then setting so far away you can't see it?

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[omnichad]

I don't think we want light-field television (non-polarized light picture allowing you to focus on foreground or background) any more than we want 360 degree panoramic TV (except maybe for live events). The director chooses what's in the frame and what's in-focus and it's a storytelling tool. I'd like a higher color gamut and greater dynamic range, though.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[Twinbee]

Yeah, it bugs me no end that they're marketed and sold as separate products. General efficiency would rocket if we could accept them as being one and the same. Especially now we have digital, there's little reason to do otherwise.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[garyebickford]

I think that leaves out the Niquist sampling theorem and the dynamic environment.

Even assuming the eye is a non-moving digital receiver, for the TV to exceed the eye's spatial frequency it has to provide 2X the spatial resolution in each direction.

But also, as was shown in the first 3D head-up display work at NASA Ames in the early 1990s, the eye's natural dithering combined with retinal and brain processing provides a virtual resolution that can be much higher - several times higher - than simple static pixels. Which is partly why 'nature' looks better. In the NASA experiment a pair of 128x128 pixel displays were built into a helmet that also had eye tracking. When the eye tracking and display were running at high enough resolutions (60 Hz+), the dithering of the eyes was picked up by the eye tracker and the 3D scene could be synthesized to match the new perspective. As a result a virtual resolution an order of magnitude greater was perceived than the rough 128 pixels.

The eye is constantly moving very slight amounts so that an edge between colors (for example) may be picked up by different cells (vertically and horizontally). Since cells are not aligned in vertical rows, this provides a virtual edge line that our brain extrapolates into our perception based on this constantly shifting view, resulting in perhaps (nobody knows AFAIK) five to ten times the apparent static resolution. It's the eye+brain's equivalent of subpixel rendering - call it subpixel perceiving.

Also the retinal cells are constantly switching on and off (firing and resting), shifting the view between adjacent retinal cells- anyone who has taken LSD has been aware of that as they see the 'squirming' of the image as it's picked up by different cells. Normally our brain filters that out but LSD turns off the filters, apparently.

So, bottom line, the Lechner Distance is not the final word. It assumes a static environment that does not exist, and ignores temporal characteristics in retina and brain processing of the image.

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

Hmm, that's all good and well (and well known), but current recommendations are based on *tests* with live human viewers. Not disections of the human eye and extrapolation, so any "virtual resolution" should already have been taken into account. No?

Re:Already past what eye can resolve

[garyebickford]

I think it depends greatly on usage. As we move more toward internet-based watching, resolution becomes more important - text requires better resolution than images of ripples on water, for example. It also depends on which viewers. Let's stipulate that the 'average' football fan doesn't really care whether the edges of the numbers on a jersey are crisp, as two 300 pound behemoths crash into each other at a combined speed of 30 miles per hour. But another viewer might very much like to see the details on the wings of a butterfly and be able to distinguish the species of flowers the butterfly is flying over, while also being able to see the entire broad view of the field. This is the reason why IMAX is better than normal movies - you get the detail _and_ you get the view that extends past your momentary field of vision, so you can and must move your head from side to side to take it all in.

I remember seeing (I think it was "Space Station 3D", at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC), which included clips from normal movie cameras of some of the earlier launches of the rocket. They looked like home movies compared to the IMAX segments - the rocket was grainy, and the entire shot only took up the center of the IMAX screen. I believe that IMAX had over 9 times as many pixels per area of the screen as the Cinema quality segments, and extended three times as far across the room.

I had the good fortune to see some extremely high quality prints produced by an award-winning nature photographer (I forget his name, unfortunately). His prints, typically about 3 feet by 4 feet, are printed at 1000 dpi (each image is several hundred megabytes). The original photos are taken with the highest resolution film available, on 8x10 view camera (like Ansel Adams), then digitally processed by the photographer with the best equipment, to get the utmost dynamic range and pixel resolution. The detail is amazing. You can look at a forest scene, then get very close, and on the farthest trees in the picture, if you look very, very close, you can see individual leaves or pine needles, at or beyond the limit of your eye. As a result, the picture looks like the real thing, not like a picture. (of course, it's not 3D).

I want both the width of screen that allows me to be embedded in the scene, and resolution sufficient that if I put my head a foot from the screen, I still can't distinguish individual pixels. Anything less is a compromise to short term technical constraints that should not drive our standards.

I see no reason to take these assessments that 'most people can't see any better than X from 10 feet away) as any excuse (not justfication - excuse!) for not producing images or videos that are better than that. What if I want to project a forest scene on an entire wall, and look for moths on the trees? Why should the resolution be limited to what an undeducated, squinty-eyed dork can pay attention to while stuffing chips in his mouth? Is it not better to ask, what's the best we can do _for the future_ when people might have more demands? We occasionally see clips from kinescopes - copies taken from a TV camera from the 1950s, that always look grainy, with poor resolution, etc. Do we want what we have now to look the same in 20 or 40 years? I would rather have the standards support something better than we can even technically do today, in order to meet the future head-on.

Oh good...

[wolrahnaes]

A new international television standard. How long until we in the US invent our own entirely incompatible system just so it can depend on patents owned by American companies?

ATSC versus DVB-T, CDMA2000/EvDO vs. GSM/UMTS, etc.

Re:Oh good...

[oakgrove]

Yeah, they can come up with whatever standard they want as long as handbrake and whatever I happen to be using as a settop box at the time supports the resolution without skipping frames. On a related note I wonder what the dollar amount of broadcast standard related patent royalties is rolled into the typical price of an HDTV vs. an equally resolution equipped computer monitor.

Re:Oh good...

[MickyTheIdiot]

NTSC: Never Twice the Same Color
SECAM: Something Essentially Contrary to the American Mode
PAL: not really

Re:Oh good...

[n5vb]

We've already got something like that with ATSC standards, at least in the RF modulation schemes -- broadcast used 8-VSB (time domain), and the alternatives considered were OFDM (frequency domain) and 256-QAM (phase domain). Well, the cable industry is using 256-QAM and broadcast is using 8-VSB, last I heard, and I think what edged 8-VSB ahead for broadcast was that it's not sensitive to the phase jitter in antique GEO satellite transponders. So with modulation, at least, yeah, we're already there. (The fortunate thing is that, unlike when NTSC rolled out, TV manufacturers aren't forced to design around just one demodulation standard, and it's not all that difficult to incorporate both 8-VSB and 256-QAM demodulation in modern receivers, even within a single demod chipset, so for the most part you never notice it.)

I suspect as standards get more and more complex, we'll start seeing a lot more of this kind of thing, and it will help rather than hurt, as the TV manufacturers design more and more agile multi-standard receivers that can handle anything the standards folks throw at them. Note that most if not all of them will also still display analog NTSC-M VSB-modulated signals just fine .. because there are still a lot of cable providers offering analog basic cable tiers ..

(<- still thinks the way NTSC-M avoided obsoleting the first-gen monochrome TV's was a cool hack, even if the chroma performance sucked most of the time)

Re:Oh good...

[fufufang]

China loves inventing its own standard, so it is harder for foreign companies to enter China.

Re:Oh good...

[kamapuaa]

Right, it's a huge problem with current televisions.

Re:Oh good...

[Randle_Revar]

CDMA2000/EvDO is going away at least.

Re:Oh good...

[wolrahnaes]

On a related note I wonder what the dollar amount of broadcast standard related patent royalties is rolled into the typical price of an HDTV vs. an equally resolution equipped computer monitor.

The only part I can find solid information on is the MPEG license, which is $2 per unit at this time (previously $4, then $2.50). Some claim the total cost can be up to $30 per unit, but that number is from a group fighting the licensing cost so take it with appropriate quantities of salt.

Cable Companies are the downfall

[Fool106]

I would love to see this into implementation so many years from now, but the problem is the cable companies. They don't want to upgrade their infrastructure so they compress their signal and current HDTV looks like crap on some channels. Until cable companies won't compress their signal then i'm not interested. I guess it's also fair to say that channels have to start delivering in HDTV as well too!

Re:Cable Companies are the downfall

[Miros]

The infrastructure is sufficient but right now the market is asking for more channels and more internet bandwidth rather than higher quality video channels. The networks can handle the traffic, it's just not what people seem to want yet.

Re:Cable Companies are the downfall

[BaronM]

I always get a bit of a kick over how much better the picture quality I get for free OTA is than the cable my friends pay for. Of course, they get far more channels, so there is a trade-off.

Re:Cable Companies are the downfall

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If anything, the release of zOMG Resolution++!!! new TV formats(and the accompanying marketing push by people who sell TVs) will probably make things worse.

Cable bandwidth isn't infinite, and upgrading it costs money that could be given to shareholders and management. The combination of bitrate and cleverness of encode/decode algorithm isn't something easily encapsulated into a marketing pitch. Resolution is.

If the demand is for 'better' resolution, they can just crank up the compression and deliver in the same bandwidth. It won't actually look much better; but the marketing for it won't technically be lying...

What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's next UbHD (uber higher definition)?

Also includes "4k" resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard also includes a smaller layout, which is 3840 by 2160 pixels.

So maybe I'll finally get a T221 replacement with higher refresh rates and modern video connections (i.e. not needing a stack of conversion hardware). Losing 240px of height is an acceptable tradeoff...

Wow

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Maybe cable companies might finally get FULL HD content to display on our Ultra HD TV's.

Another reason why cable companies need to be destroyed, because they don't even know how to provide state of the art, but feel inclined to comment on what the new standards should be.

About the only thing UltraHD is going to introduce is a new optical disk format because broadband and content providers are incapable of creating and delivering UltraHD content without massive compression and inferior audio.

Re:Wow

[Miros]

Most of them can provide you with full HD, but the content typically is not being produced at full HD anyway (for regular television) and people seem to be giddy for lots of channels and internet bandwidth so they trade off quality for quantity. When some channels get eliminated you will get both higher internet bandwidth and higher quality video.

Re:Wow

[oakgrove]

About the only thing UltraHD is going to introduce is a new optical disk format

And a new format war! Oh, and new and "improved" DRM. I can't wait to see who cracks it first. I'll get the popcorn ready.

Re:Wow

[deergomoo]

About the only thing UltraHD is going to introduce is a new optical disk format because broadband and content providers are incapable of creating and delivering UltraHD content without massive compression and inferior audio.

Eh, doubtful. BD-XL is a defined although currently unused standard which supports up to 128GB, they'll probably move onto that.

Anyone seeing the point of this?

[squiggleslash]

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.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Compaqt]

This. What exactly is it that you want to see with this much resolution?

The thin wires that hold props and whatnot in place for movies? Look, it's supposed to be a suspension of belief. That's what's required for a work of fiction. Too high of a resolution ruins the effect. Not to mention who wants to see every pore of every actor's face?

Even for documentaries: What's the point? Do you require this much resolution IRL? I'd venture to guess if you had an ultra-high resolution view of your pillow (including dust mites) you'd probably not be able to sleep.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Miros]

Higher resolution content will look better on your new 90"+ TV

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorta.

The difference between 720p material and 1080p, is noticeable. *IF* the original material is actually scanned out at 1080p. Most is just unconverted from 720p.

The only thing interesting is the increase in color resolution. Which is where the resolution will start to come into its own...

The thing is while many standards out there have excellent color response and contrast. The screens are not up to the job in many cases unless you dole out some serious cash.

I will not mind 720p dying a quick death. As many laptops out there are just using TV panels for their screens (as it is cheap to do). A good bump in res will be good for the rest of the industry using those same panels for other things.

Once you get past about 1200 dpi (most people are around 800dpi) you can not see the difference. But a 3-7 inch screen is not very interesting for watching a movie and hanging out on the couch.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[mister2au]

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.

Wow - you really need access to a better cinema then ... I can assure you 720p (from a good source) is miles behind a good digital cinema ...

I, for one, have a 85ft (110ft diagonal) 4K digital locally in addition to IMAX, film and 2K digital ... I was fortunate to see The Bourne Legacy recently in 4K digital and it was stunning compared to even 2K digital, let alone 1080p and 720p.

If i can have a high-tech $1,000 4K 80" screen in 5 years or high-value $500 1080p 50" screen in 5 years .. hmmm ... easy decision .. bring on the tech I say :-)

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[medv4380]

I can only imagine that it might help the image quality on say a football stadium sized screen. But then I wouldn't be able to see it all at once anyways so there really isn't a point in the tech.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

As for timing, I think people forget just how long HD was in the news as an upcoming standard and in the sales channel as gimmicky prosumer equipment before it ever became relevant to the mainstream (in the US at least). There were many years where the best image quality anybody would have at home was from some kind slightly enhanced analog HD connection from a DVD player to an HDTV set.

By the time a real marketing push was made for digital sources, the ATSC broadcast transition, and reasonably priced HDTV sets, we'd been reading blurbs about HD for about a decade!

I have a 1080p display and notice the differences between ATSC broadcast 720p, 1080i, and 1080i successfully deinterlaced to 1080p, particularly for well produced PBS documentaries. Some of them are nature porn with a nice mixture of static scenes, slow panning, and fast action where the detail really matters. With this kind of programming, the damage caused by overcompression on digital cable is very apparent compared to the ATSC broadcasts, yet I think we can still see compression artifacts on ATSC too. I'd love to see upgrades using better codecs than MPEG2...

I'd also like to see higher res displays but I won't be rushing to replace my 1080p set. I'd probably want to upgrade computer monitors first.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, usually I defend high-resolution screens by the increased clarity of text, especially subscripts and superscripts and mathematical formulas, as well as technical drawings, but those aren't exactly something you'd typically watch on a TV. Perhaps they intend to sell TVs for dual use as high-resolution monitors?

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[AmiMoJo]

I was lucky enough to see a demo of Ultra High Definition a few years back when NHK was developing it. I didn't think you could get much better than 1080p, but it was actually noticeably better. What people forget is that it isn't simply the resolution that is higher, the colour is better and the frame rate has been bumped to a native 120fps. Everything looked hyper realistic and natural. Not the same level of improvement going from SD to HD, but the frame rate alone was enough to really set it apart.

Having said that I was quite impressed by 4k and have not had an opportunity to compare 4k to Ultra HD. I'm kinda sceptical at how much improvement there would be over 4k/60p, but won't pass judgement until I have seen it. And of course it remains to be seen if 48 or 60 fps will take off for films.

What I really can't understand is people who say they can't see any difference between SD and HD. Even if their eyesight is bad and they can't see the extra resolution they should still be able to see that the colour is better. Well, unless they have set their TV to be deliberately really low contrast, and I know one guy who does. 720p to 1080p is going to be more subtle because it is just a resolution bump, so really it depends on the size of your TV and your distance from it. I used to think a 50" TV was ridiculous, this year I bought one for less than a good 32" CRT set cost a decade ago...

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that 35mm film has a theoretical resolution of 4k.
So 4k TV can show movies in "native" resolution, equal or better than in cinemas, and the format is suited for archival.

Of course the difference is negligible on a standard size TV, and a lot of recent films went through DI at 2k, so it's maybe overkill for most of us...

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[mister2au]

Do you require this much resolution IRL? I'd venture to guess if you had an ultra-high resolution view of your pillow (including dust mites) you'd probably not be able to sleep.

God yes ... human visual acuity is in the 100-500MP range depending on eye movement, field-of-view and interpolation assumptions. Even 8K video is only around 30MP in a static pattern.

But also remember your taste in 'reality' may not be everyone else's taste - you (and I) have probably been trained that low resolution, grainy film is 'suspension of belief' just as the in 50s/60s the dodgy film colours (technicolor?) were part of the suspension or in the 30s/40s/50s with black-and-white doing that job or in the 1910s/20s the sound issue.

like vinyl vs CD, people will adapt and wonder how they lived without it looking back in retrospect ... it called progress and we all need to adapt (me included!)

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 32" I can certainly see how you can't tell, you'd need ridiculously above average eyesight.

However, if you sit closer to the 50", yes, it is possible to tell, although it's certainly not ugly and not many people will sit 4 feet away from the TV for a good viewing experience.

Bust out a nice big projector (personally, I project a 130" anamorphic image with seats 8 feet and 12 feet away--and no, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg--the projector was $1000 and the screen was $200) and the pixels you get at 1080 make a visible difference.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the hell am I going to put a 90" TV? Maybe in the back yard?

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might try reading this:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/31/super-hi-vision-eyes-on/

In short, the BBC 8K trial of the Olympics was a different experience than regular broadcast coverage. You're sitting close to a large screen with very high resolution, like IMAX. Slow pans with wide shots and careful, infrequent cuts worked best. There were no graphics overlays. The result was that it didn't feel like watching a TV show, it felt like you were at the event. If you needed to check the scores, you didn't need a TV graphic to show it to you, you just looked at the scoreboard, like you would if you were really there.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

My lawn. You're on it.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[swb]

About two months ago I replaced a 42" 2003-vintage Sony LCD RP with a 70" Sharp LCD (1080p, 240hz).

As much as I admired the picture in store with HD content, I was a little concerned with picture quality on a much larger screen when using SD/DVD content. And I had always found that DVD content on the Sony was very good and not really distinguishable from HD content on the same set.

That being said, I have been blown away by the improvement in picture quality when watching Bluray discs. Much better than HD TV content (which always seems overcompressed or a cut-rate resolution) and way better than what I had been used to before.

Anyway, the bar was raised and now even good HD isn't quite as good as Bluray and I'd imagine that even on a similar or larger screen the detail improvement at 4k or 8k resolution would actually be noticable and easy to get used to.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could watch IMAX at 8000px IMAX film reso not the digital imax lite resolution.
Or you could do a cool video teleconference wall, which uses many cameras (think several HD cameras turned on their sides to capture a meeting).
Or scientific data visualization without needing to zoom just walk up to the screen.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Ed_1024]

"I was fortunate to see The Bourne Legacy recently in 4K digital and it was stunning compared to even 2K digital, let alone 1080p and 720p."

I watched a movie in 4K recently and all I could see after a while was the makeup on the actors' faces, the props and reflections of the camera and technicians that had been missed by post-processing. I can't even remember what it was about... Too much unnecessary detail!

I run a 720p projector at home with a good decoder and I don't feel a pressing need to go to 1080, let alone 4K or 8K. I can see why a "retina" display is good for photo editing or reading but for rapidly changing content I fail to see what the fuss is all about?

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Kjella]

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?

Well that depends on how big the TV is and how close to it you sit. From a couch 9 feet away a person with 20/20 vision can't fully see 1080p on a 65" TV, so no most people looking at regular TVs are already fine. If you have a "big screen" like LGs 84" TV, Sharp's 90" TV or a 100-120" projector on the same distance or sit closer, then you have at least partial benefit from 4K/2160p resolution. And this is not too close, many sites confuse the SMPTE/THX minimum limits for the last row but the best seats are in the middle of the cinema with considerably wider viewing angle. Actually 120" would probably be painfully close like the very first row of the cinema but still within the THX limits.

The case for 8K is much, much weaker. No person with 20/20 vision would ever sit close enough to see more than 4K. That said, 20/20 is only the cut-off for "normal vision" that doesn't need any treatment, most people see closer to 20/16 in their youth so it's not an average. But even with 20/16 vision watching a 110" screen from 9 feet away - about as close as you comfortably can - you're only on the 4K threshold. Most of the population will never in their whole life see any benefit from 8K. There are a few exceptional people with vision all the way down to 20/8 so if you want like the limits of human vision then 8K is that limit so I guess it makes some point - at least on the recording side.

It won't be worth using over the Internet today, but who knows what the future will bring? During my time online I've gone from a 2400 baud modem to a 60 Mbit fiber line - that's over four orders of magnitude. I'd not be surprised if I in 10-20 years from now have a gigabit line. Back around 2001 as Napster was taking off the doomsday prophets were saying the Internet would collapse from the MP3 traffic, today they're a drop in the bit bucket. Not so long ago it was YouTube. If people start watching UDTV over the Internet, we will adapt with faster speeds and better compression. How countries relatively perform is one thing but Internet is getting faster year over year all around the world.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Luyseyal]

like vinyl vs CD, people will adapt and wonder how they lived without it looking back in retrospect ... it called progress and we all need to adapt (me included!)

Or clamor for tape hiss. [shudder]
-l

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Misagon]

Very few movies these days are shot on 35 mm film these days. They are shot using digital cameras at 2K or 4K.
Editing, compositing, colour timing and visual effects have been done digitally for more than a decade, but more importantly: the cinemas are going all digital. It costs less and is considered more secure to ship a hard drive and send time-limited decryption keys over email than to print and ship a crate containing several big rolls of film.

Also, while 35 mm film has a theoretical limit of 4K, the quality is degraded with each copy, so the copy that is projected in a 35 mm cinema is considered to be near that of 2K anyway.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[Misagon]

The size of the display and the distance to the viewer are also significant.
I found this chart to be useful when comparing.

On my 32" 1080 TV at home, I can see the same channel in both SD and HD (1080), and I can just barely see the difference between them when sitting in the sofa, 6 feet away. When I saw this chart for the first time, I saw that I am just right between the green and the red line.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[hazydave]

You pretty much do need to grow TV size to make a higher resolution more practical. But that's happening, anyway. My parents' "big" TV was a 24" console. My "big" TV is a 71" DLP.

To _fully_ resolve 1080p on your 50" TV, you'd need to be viewing from no more than 6.5 feet away (the recommended THX distance is 5.6 feet, but that's about viewing angle, not resolution). Farther than that, and you will definitely start to diminish the return on the difference between 720p and 1080p. If you have average vision, of course (for distance, I'm 20/20 in one eye, 20/25 in the other, so I pretty much follow these recommendations successfully). You can go to nearly 10ft (9.75) and still fully resolve the 720p image.

The 1080p thing has been selling TVs, and the 4K or 8K thing may, eventually. And while there's nothing wrong with offering higher resolution, there are going to be plenty of folks who paid more for a higher resolution, yet never really see it.

Re:Anyone seeing the point of this?

[squiggleslash]

You pretty much do need to grow TV size to make a higher resolution more practical. But that's happening, anyway. My parents' "big" TV was a 24" console. My "big" TV is a 71" DLP.

Well, now, hold on a moment. While the trend towards larger TVs has been a welcome one (FWIW I grew up with a 14" B&W!) there are, too, diminishing returns with larger sizes. As TVs grow, so do the rooms that hold them (which, of course, they can't.) Something eventually has to give.

While my 50" may not be the largest TV out there, it's already wider than most of the furniture in the same room - only our couch and reclining loveseat is wider, from memory, and I have to say it would be awkward to find space for a bigger set. There'd also be the viewing distance issue - we'll have to move our furniture back or else suffer eye bleeding closeness.

I know we'll still go larger over time, but are we really likely to see a situation where most people have TVs over, say, 100"?

Get ready to buy Star Wars again

[Anonymous Coward]

(again)

Very disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure it's very nice, but these types of things are simply diverting time and resources away from what the true goal should be: sexbots. Anime themed sexbots, porn star themed sexbots, weird fetish sexbots -- sexbots.

Japan, why have you gone astray?

Too bad it's one step next to useless...

[h2okies]

due to market conditions and lack of infrastructure.

This will never see the light of day in the average home for 10+ years if not longer. People and broadcasters are still upgrading to 740p and 1080p(i) what makes anyone think this will come of anything?

Will John Q drop obscene money on televisions that will need to be the size of a wall to reveal all this new resolution and color palette? Sadly more than likely no one will care save for a few videophiles.

Re:Too bad it's one step next to useless...

[Anonymous Coward]

A better color gamut would make a 13" TV shine just as well as a 130" one.

My screen is about 7 feet wide, and would look better if the source and projector were better than 1080p.

The real hangup seems to be broadcast, which is mostly 720p, and often pixelated by over-compression.

Re:Too bad it's one step next to useless...

[cyclomedia]

I'd prefer the TV to actually be the wall so that I can watch any content at any size (full wall, or little box) or have a bunch of different stuff up, e.g. different angles on a motor race, with a timing/scoring grid too and a circuit map with trackers on. And a weather report of the same area. And Twitter.

Or watch IMAX films on it full-wall, but normal TV a sensible size.

And because it's electric paper style there'd be no black bars. And where there isn't a screen up it can show wallpaper that's actually wallpaper! Or framed family photos.

Then you can embed a clever array of cameras and have screens up that are actually mirrors. Or Skype your entire lounge with your parents, so they can watch the kids playing on the floor in front of them from the other side of the planet.

I want all of that NOW DAMMIT!

And people are going to watch this... how?

[Tridus]

Cable and Satellite can barely handle HD as it is right now due to bandwidth constraints. Unless this also comes with some miracle new encoding that can give us all this extra picture quality without increasing bitrates at all, it's not going to fly. Internet transfer caps make it totally unsuitable for streaming. Optical media isn't exactly the way of the future.

We're a *long* way off from this being available to home users in any kind of practical way.

Re:And people are going to watch this... how?

[dywolf]

I dont see the need for it myself...but the average consumer doesnt think about that, they just see "BIGGER NUMBERS ARE BETTER!". And so they buy these things. And its too much for the current pipelines coming into the houses....

and viola! Hardcore, cannot be ignored (like it is now) market pressure to upgrade cable/telco infrastructure and deliver more bandwidth! So for that reason, I support it.

Re:And people are going to watch this... how?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Ah, that's the brilliance of this new scheme!

Having a new output resolution that is exactly 4x the old one in each dimension will make upscaling without adding artifacts computationally trivial, allowing 'backwards compatibility' with older displays, and meaning that nobody has to dedicate any additional bandwidth! Sure, it'll look the same; but never mind that, you'll feel better watching it in TRUE-UBER-HD...

Re:And people are going to watch this... how?

[mister2au]

Certainly is work in that direction ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding ... That gets you a 50% reduction in bit rates over MPEG-4/AVC - which in turn is 50% reduction over MPEG-2 used in many most digital TV standards

So that's a 2-4x increase in efficiency + modulation improvements that are bound to happen = plenty of scope for 4K digital TV

8K is a bit more a stretch at the moment

Re:And people are going to watch this... how?

[j33px0r]

I agree that UHD will probably not be be a huge benefit for popular television viewing, e.g., sitcoms, action films, reality tv. However, some viewers may enjoy UHD systems if the interface allowed them to zoom in on specific locations in extreme detail, e.g., sporting events, nature films, etc.

I would imagine that, like many technologies that advance to extreme levels, there will be specialized uses, e.g., medical videos, nature films, security cams, or any other video in which the content or application might benefit from additional detail.

Re:And people are going to watch this... how?

[hazydave]

The average cable or satellite system does 30-60Mb/s per 6MHz analog TV slot... and that number has been increasing (going from 64QAM to 256QAM, etc). Satellites have relatively few analog slots, but they are evolving. Cable has a pretty crazy amount of bandwidth, but has to devote some of that to internet service. Fiber, on the other hand, uses frequency multiplexing to essentially overlay cable, voice, and internet on the same optical cable. So there's plenty of bandwidth for higher definition.

As well, work continues on more advanced compression algorithms. The limit is infrastructure and computing power -- it takes some years to build up industry-wide support for a given video CODEC (MPEG-2, AVC), so there's resistance to changing for something slightly better. And for any successful replacement, it'll be necessary to deliver encoders that can function on mobile cameras, decoders that can comfortably live on set top boxes, PCs, smartphones, etc.

And it doesn't necessarily have to happen all at once. I suspect they're going to 8K with the idea of a replacement broadcast system, in a large part because going to 4K would be too soon. We're already seeing 4K technology in televisions (LG has one shipping in Korea next month), camcorders (JVC released a $5,000 4K camera a few months back), etc.... all built on existing technology. 4K films might be delivered on Blu-ray or BD-XL discs, maybe with H.265 on standard Blu-ray, nothing too crazy... you'd need a new player, but that player could handle the older formats, scale to your particular display device, etc. The packaged disc would include both standard and 4K version, maybe something like what they're doing with 3D today. This wouldn't be something all that new, but rather, Yet Another Blu-ray Profile (with the standard software upgrade to the PS3... though in reality, I suspect the PS3 of being too weak to decode 4K and downscale to HD... more of a PS4 thing), etc.

Going to 8K, it might be a big bunch of new stuff. In any case, the consumer push to 4K has already started. Maybe it's just for videophiles, maybe not. Given the fall in prices on TVs, I could see a 4K television selling in a few years for about what I paid for my 71" DLP six years ago.

OK everybody!

[Dunbal]

Get ready to swap your TV's again! Remember it's all good for the economy. That way you can watch re-runs of Friends and Home Improvement in ultra ultra high resolution.

Re:OK everybody!

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect those were both shot on video, but we could see older stuff in better resolution. It was nice to see Hogan's Heroes and the original Star Trek in HD.

What was that sound?

[Squatting_Dog]

Oh, it was my internet connection screaming in fear of the next video streaming bandwith requirements!

On the bright side

[Hsien-Ko]

I'd love to have all these lines just so the CRT video shaders in the future will start to look more convincing simulating vintage computing better preserving a history of analog signals for the rest of us retrofetishists.

What about the computer screens?

[Picardo85]

Ok, so we have a Full HD standard at the moment which is pretty much the same quality as a better computer monitor from a generic brand. Why are the computer manufacturers lagging so far behind? Ok, Apple has launched their retina displays which do have a really good resolution but where's the rest of the industry? I myself have two laptops and they've both got pretty much the same resolution even though it's been six years between the times I bought them. IT-industry, get your heads out of your asses and start pushing out those really HD monitors already, this includes for both desktops and laptops!

Re:What about the computer screens?

[Miros]

Remember that computer monitors are typically much smaller than televisions. Making a 50" 1080p display is a lot easier than making an 8" display of the same resolution. There are companies out there who are making 4k consumer displays, none of them are very small.

Re:What about the computer screens?

[oakgrove]

Ok, Apple has launched their retina displays which do have a really good resolution but where's the rest of the industry?

Apple can get an actual economy of scale with a line of consumer laptops costing over 2 grand. Nobody else has been able to pull that off. Also, since Apple has direct control over their OS, they can customize it as needed for non-mainstream hardware like high dpi displays. Their competitors are stuck with whatever MS sells them.

Re:What about the computer screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually making a smaller display would have a higher yield same as for chips - less chance of getting contamination/defect (which are likely proportional to area) to ruin an entire display.

Re:What about the computer screens?

[Miros]

The issue is the number of pixels that you have to put into a given area of screen - that is what is more difficult.

Re:What about the computer screens?

[sjames]

So why are bigger computer displays (at the same resolution) more expensive than smaller ones?

Oh yes, come on high-DPI!

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a monitor that has a retinal-locked density at an average viewing distance. ("retina display")

Something with this resolution at such a high DPI would be fantastic for this.
Of course, the price to create such a monitor with such a resolution, and more to the point on new hardware such as OLED, is going to be extremely expensive.
So I guess that won't happen, just big ass wall-screens for the living room / media center.

Games would be fantastic on a display like that.

Re:Oh yes, come on high-DPI!

[Overzeetop]

Guess it depends on how close you like to sit from your TV. An 8k TV which is 20' (Completely filling a 9' tall x 18' long wall from floor to ceiling) viewed from 18 feet away - as large or larger than most living rooms - would be at the same "retina" level as the iPhone's retina screen.

But hey - progress is progress. If history holds, the US will decide that an interlaced format would be best for this new technology.

Just what we need!

[Dcnjoe60]

This is just what we need!

Instead of developing ultra-hd tv, they should be developing content that is actually worth watching.

Re:Just what we need!

[mister2au]

Sure - because the standards developers are the people who develop content?

Or should standards not develop because of content ... I know, let's not make good cars either because a lot of roads are crap ;-)

Re:Just what we need!

[Dcnjoe60]

Well there are two ways to look at this. Somebody can develop a standard and hope the content follows or Somebody can develop content that manufactures will follow.

Betamax was much better than VHS, that would be developing the standard first. The porn industry, however, developed content that favored VHS. So VHS won out.

Another example would be 3D TV. Without having 3D content to watch on them, they never took off. It doesn't matter how good the technology is, without content, it is worthless. If you build it, they will come, may work for a ball field in Iowa, but it doesn't usually work in the real world. Ironically, as of the end of 2011, there were only 3,500 blu-ray titles available, with sales of dvds outpacing blu-ray 4 to 1. HD isn't any good if there isn't content to drive its adoption.

FOUR times the resolution, not 16

[shking]

Resolution is measured in pixels per inch (or mm), not per square inch

Re:FOUR times the resolution, not 16

[mister2au]

Don't you love how the English language evolves such that resolution does not have a static meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed

16x the pixel is a perfectly fine interpretation of resolution ... 16x the pixel DENSITY (ie per square inch) was not discussed anywhere

Re:FOUR times the resolution, not 16

[Miros]

It depends on how you want to describe resolution. The standard does not dictate anything about how dense the pixels must be just how many of them there are. In this case, there are 16x as many pixels as there are in a 1080 signal.

Define

[nischal360]

Tv standard

Standard

[nischal360]

Tv stands

Talk about chewing through data caps

[Anonymous Coward]

At that resolution, you probably can stream video long enough to get through the credits before reaching capacity on some data plans. (I'm looking at you, AT&T)

the human eye

[Anonymous Coward]

Having been a gamer for almost a decade, we often try to push maximum FPS. From what I have read heard and witnessed over time is that the maximum frame rate the human eye can comprehend ranges from 60 to 80 fps (depends on the media and how fast that person’s optic nerve and brain can process the video stream.) I believe this is just a marketing gimmick to lure the less knowledgeable into wasting money.

Re:the human eye

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd honestly prefer the marketing gimmick; but one common use case for 120Hz or higher is allowing crappy shutter-shades 3D: if you are handing each eye only every other frame, to get the 3d effect, you need twice the framerate in order to achieve the same perceived framerate.(Luckily, cheap LCDs are ready to let us down and just smear things together anyway...)

Experienced system in operation during Olympics

[chicane]

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.

Finally!

[desman]

It seemed like all the manufactures of relatively cheap monitors were standardizing on the less dense HDTV to the detriment of programmers and all others who like lots of screen real estate. Now, hopefully, they will slowly standardize on the new "ultra" density and all will be right with the world.

Why? Why ? Why?

[tekrat]

Seriously, what is the point, when every "provider" compresses the signal to the point that you already have pixellated TV, with blocky regions of color in "HD".

Consider any scene on TV in a smoke-filled room, where the actors are sitting around a table, and the light shines down from above, a blue spotlight.

Now, back in the days of NTSC, there would be a smooth graduation from the light to dark, a million shades of blue, making the whole thing appear to be smooth and natural.

Under HDTV and signal compression, I can actually count the number of digital graduations between the light and the dark, and each step in graduation has a hard edge, so you can pause the image and see the artifacts.It looks WORSE than Plain Old TV.

So, what is the point? TV isn't going to look better as we increase definition, it's going to look worse. And this is because cable/satellite providers are trying to squeeze in 1000 channels of HD, so we can watch the baking channel in HD, Or see Snooki's nose hair. Really. It's freaking pointless when TV itself is a wasteland.

Re:Why? Why ? Why?

[Kokuyo]

You still watch that crap? My condolences. I'd offer you a hug, because you could really use one, I think.

Re:Why? Why ? Why?

[mister2au]

Pointless for you perhaps ... and by the sound of the complaints you'd be US-based I'd guess

ITU is not a US organisation !

Other parts of the world value quality over quantity moreso than the US and have decent quality digital TV ... we don't have to put up the lowest common denominator issue where everyone wants everything for next-to-no-cost and the aficionados get dragged down ...

Re:Why? Why ? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is breaking the chicken and egg cycle of display manufactures not making better displays because there's no content for the higher resolution and content providers no making higher resolution content because there aren't any displays for the higher content, by establishing a standard that consumers can ask for.

Great

[residieu]

Now throw out those old TVs in crappy old 3D HD and buy NEW TVs in UltraHD!! And now that cable companies have started giving out HD programming for free, rather than charge extra they get the option to charge for UltraHD content instead. Great for everyone!

Oh, and if you sit at home and look at your TV screen with a microscope, I guess you can see a little more detail now.

Re:Great

[mister2au]

Yep - because EVERYONE had the exact same preference/requirements as you ...

No-one could possibly be replacing broken HDTV or buying their first HDTV in the next 5-10 years.

No-one could possibly be using a display size where 1080p is sub-optimal.

No-one could possibly want to enlarge part of a 4K signal on a lower resolution display and still have detail.

No-one could possibly want to have higher resolution for the extra $5 of hardware it will cost to decode.

Gotta sell more TV's

[supertall]

Just like Gillette keeps adding blades. Mach 12 microwave-beam powered razor with gene-therapy enabled goo strips anyone?

Cheaper DVDs! Yippie!

[Anonymous Coward]

On the plus side
* DVD resolution movies are clear.
* DVD hardware should become cheaper.
* DVD media should become cheaper.
* Higher resolution will force larger bandwidth for video, disk and networking. That is a win for everyone.
* Computer monitors will finally start increasing vertical resolution again. I miss the 1900x1440 and x1600 monitors from 2005.

Broadcast HD is a little nicer, but it isn't worth $50 more. I'm torn about ATSC OTA. There are many more OTA channels, but they are becoming like early cableTV - more crap. Locally, 50% are religious, so I think the bar is much too low to get a TV license.

In this house, we don't want to spend money on DRM in hardware. We simply will not support DRM from companies. When breaking Bluray DRM is as easy and free as DVD DRM, that's when we'll consider buying a device. Not before.

Say goodbye to real people

[Shivetya]

I remember when local news went HD, boy did the make up crews suddenly change tactics. A lot of TV personalities, if not people in general, look great at lower resolutions, but HD hides nothing.

Money. Same as the rush to HD- it is stimulus!

[bussdriver]

Nobody remembers seeing CSPAN with all those small government Republicans arguing for the HD transition and how it would boost the economy by making everybody buy new TVs. Then the Dems complaining poor people wouldn't be able to ruin their lives watching TV anymore.

HD standard was stupid too. They could have waited and timed it with mpeg 4 instead of the larger mpeg 2. At least then we'd be using H.263 for broadcast and they could send better error correction because digital error losses are MUCH WORSE than the tiny bit of static analog had. Actually, I've watched things where half the signal was probably lost to static and it still worked well enough - in analog. The format lacks proper audio track support. Don't get me started on the idiotic ratings system - in digital you should be able to bleep and blur out things frame by frame with additional data tracks. A whole industry could be created to provide such services to people privately.

We had to rush in HD because the big media were fearful internet TV would take over and the only thing they had going for them was resolution and their bandwidth advantage. NO! Don't use MP4 we are developing cable boxes to do that! NO! Don't send out a useful TV program guide then we can't sell them program listings. NO! Don't specify a fully universal standard so we can have cable-ready TVs (as usual, it'll be decades before the FCC makes cable signals standard.) The only BIG fight was about the silly broadcast copyright flag because: NO! don't allow modern replacements for VCRs (which the industry tried to kill as well. they delayed TVRs in the USA for years.) Netflix rose to power on demand not because of HD -- if the HD standard was delayed internet TV would be bigger now... and TVs now are getting "smart" we might have had a huge leap forward if we had waited instead of adopting it early. Broadcast TV might be dead (I wish) and instead we may have had that bandwidth used for true broadcast internet protocols - so then you can stream more than just crap local TV over that bandwidth... there are so many game changing things that could be done with that huge amount of premium bandwidth and it could have been retained by the FCC with companies paying for temporary data packet transmission instead of near-permanent frequency monopolies. In MOST areas of the USA the TV bandwidth goes unused - it could be giving us true cell phone broadband.

Re:Money. Same as the rush to HD- it is stimulus!

[Anonymous Coward]

no mod points today, but good post

Re:Money. Same as the rush to HD- it is stimulus!

[hazydave]

In MOST areas of the USA the TV bandwidth goes unused - it could be giving us true cell phone broadband.

So-called "white space" radio is a real thing... using any of that unused TV spectrum for ISM-style wireless. And in fact, the FCC recently relaxed the rules a bit, which were written to make things very difficult on radio designers (I was, in fact, designing a radio a few years back for white space compatibility, but the company nixed that feature, not as being undoable, just too expensive for a small company).

But work has continued. There's a spec for a standard waveform now (802.22), and lots of companies making chips. Curiously, this targets exactly the kind of thing you're talking about -- Wireless Regional Area Networks. Given that my only option in internet right now is satellite, I'm really anxious to see this meet reality.

So much for interstitial broadband internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compression and bandwidth usage aren't addressed yet, TFA says, but you can bet the latter will be significant. About what was freed up converting from analog to digital in the first place, prolly. Broadcasters are going to be scrambling to beg, borrow, or steal spectrum to do UHDTV, and competing with the Cable Guy, the MAFIAA, and Deathstar redux to see who can lock up the most public domain. Gee, who'da thunk it. I smell a 30-year plan or two in there somewhere, anyway.

Maybe this has something to with the sudden interest in giving DHS an override on your WiFi router? They're going to shuffle Public Safety and/or utilities over to the unlicensed GSM bands?

May be time for public-spirited wireless hackers to start liasing with local law enforcement, if you catch my drift. When they're not building out mesh networks, inter-city links, and peering backhaul.

Re:So much for interstitial broadband internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

ISM, not GSM. Haven't had coffee yet, and was looking at GSM phone that won't take a CDMA PIN for some reason, or something. Never heard of PIN by baseband tech before, but we'll see.

TV is obsolete

[Thud457]

TV?

Isn't that what old people used to watch CBS on before hulu/netflix/amazon/youtube/bittorrent/hbo to go/showtime anytime/Oprah24 ...

By the time this standard is implemented, we'll all be streaming video directly into our eyeballs from our iPhone Vs while riding around in our self-driving google cars. Who cares what format the data is in when you're just going to slap it in one of a dozen windows and project it on the back of the seat in front of you?

Re:TV is obsolete

[Gilmoure]

You mean the EyePhone.

Re:TV is obsolete

[cayenne8]

Isn't that what old people used to watch CBS on before hulu/netflix/amazon/youtube/bittorrent/hbo to go/showtime anytime/Oprah24 ...

Well, no...some of us, appreciate high quality audio and video. I like to watch good movies at home, in the highest quality format I can get.

I also like to hear it in the best fashion....there still is a market for us...high end audio and video, isn't dead.

I find that my friends don't seem to mind it either...they are always up to come watch movies/events at my place...or just jam to some good tunes for a good party.

Re:TV is obsolete

[hazydave]

Windows? Don't you know that Apple and Microsoft are getting rid of those? It's all full screen in the future (yuk)!

Branding

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we beat Apple to the punch and call this the pupil display or something equally retarded?

Motion Sickness?

[mchawi]

I have read about these off and on for a few years, but a few years ago they said this standard wasn't really taking root because at these resolutions people were experiencing motion sickness when viewing the images. I wonder if they have been able to do anything to alleviate that in the newer televisions or if that is still going to be an issue.

Not a single tentacle-related comment?

[InvisibleClergy]

This is from Japan you guys. I was betting on a tentacle-related comment within the first three top-level comments. Thanks for losing me twenty bucks.

Re:Not a single tentacle-related comment?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean something like this? (warning: extremely unsafe for work)

Damn!

[sycodon]

And I just bought my first new TV in 15 years...55" 1080p.

I knew I should have waited longer!

Re:Damn!

[tattood]

I'll wait a couple more years for the Super Ultra High Definition TV (SUHDTV) sets to come out.

Re:Damn!

[Master Moose]

I think you should hold off untill they bring out the 3d model

ITU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the heck is ITU and what makes them think they have the authority to approve something?

I already approved Super High Definition.

FUCK ALL OF YOU WHO THINK THIS IS NICE

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give a fuck about this. Good movie experience originates mostly from good sound quality. DVD and Bluray have already achieved this. Only reason they are pushing this crap to the consumer is because it will require newer hardware, so every stupid retard american will upgrade his equipment. Studios can make money by selling movies you already have on DVD, on those new, expensive Rontgen-ray disks (let's pretend there will be "decent" anti-piracy laws by then which censor the entire fucking shitload of interwebz). Existing Bluray players become e-waste. But everybody is happy cause they got the latest shit. GOD BLESS THE ECONOMY.

Cables only

[Anonymous Coward]

Not "Cable Only" but "Cables only". The current over the air HDTV broadcast has a compressed bandwidth (both Reed-Soloman and Trellis Encoding), of 32 Megabits per second (with forward error correction). Broadcasting over the air is really not any different than pushing it over a cable. The 32 Mb/s consumes a bandwidth of 6 MegaHertz. Assuming no higher lossless compression rates available (and really, why bother using lossy compression if you are trying for higher definition - there is not point in bothering), then you will need 16 times the bandwidth (either RF bandwidth or bandwidth over a cable line). So 16*6=96 MegaHertz of bandwidth to handle 512 Megabits per second. My DSL router won't do that. I don't think a cable modem will do that. My biggest TV is 24 inch. HDTV still looks good on a 42 inch tv. How big would the TV have to be to get the big picture: 168 inches? A "TV" that big isn't a TV, it's a theatre screen. Also, 'more colors', does that mean subdividing the colors we currently have, or does it mean actually increasing the color gamut?

480p is enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a 27" widescreen computer LCD as my TV. I find that 480p is more than enough, I'm watching movies and TV shows here, I'm not trying to read fonts in 8px size.

As a bonus, my ethernet needs are low, my storage needs are also low (about 550 MB average for a movie in H.264).

Don't enter the upgrade race. Once your needs are satisfied, let the others waste money to keep themselves in the rat race.

It's not a standard if you keep it a secret.

[TechyImmigrant]

>Japan's public broadcasting station, and another at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

It's not a standard if you keep it a secret.

Re:top of my budget for a computer monitor

[DocSavage64109]

I felt the same way until I realized how much time I spend looking at my computer screen and realized $1,000 isn't all that much.

I'm kind of over incremental upgrades

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

I don't really need to see TV in any higher resolution. Really it's just an incremental spec bump so Sony can release a new TV that everyone is supposed to buy, then they can release a new media standard which everyone is supposed to buy, then Sony makes a gobfuck of money and I die a little bit more inside.