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The Trouble With 4K TV
An anonymous reader sends this quote from an article about the difficulties in bringing so-called '4K resolution' video — 3840x2160 — to consumers.
"Though 4K resolutions represent the next step in high-definition video, standards for the format have yet to emerge and no one’s really figured out how to distribute video, with its massive file footprint, efficiently and cost effectively. How exactly does one distribute files that can run to hundreds of gigabytes? ... Given that uncompressed 4K footage has a bit-rate of about 600MB/s, and even the fastest solid-state drives operate at only about 500MB/s, compression isn’t merely likely, it’s necessary. ... Kotsaftis says manufacturers will probably begin shipping and promoting larger TVs. 'In coming years, 50-inch or 55-inch screens will have become the sort of standard that 40-inch TVs are now. To exploit 4K, you need a larger form factor. You’re just not going to notice enough of a difference on smaller screens.' The same quality/convenience argument leads him to believe that physical media for 4K content will struggle to gain traction among consumers. '4K implies going back to physical media. Even over the Internet, it’s going to require massive files and, given the choice, most people would happily settle for a 720p or 1080p file anyway.'"
cable and sat don't have the bandwidth for it and that's on the broadcast side.
Maybe 1-2 channels but most cable systems are loaded with sd channels and old mpeg2 HD boxes.
Sat has moved to all mepg 4 HD but stills has lots of SD boxes out there as well.
I prefer it, in fact.... it's far easier to account for than bits stored on a disk drive I can't possibly see without an electron microscope.
The biggest grievance I have with 4k is that the devices are too bloody costly.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The same thing happened when the first 1080P screens came out. The market will adapt, there's no problem here.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
640K ought to be enough for anybody
.. the cable companies would compress the signal as they presently do with "HDTV" to the point that it looks like crap. They have ruined the HDTV quality with this compression and I can only imagine how much they would ruin 4k TV content. The best HDTV experience I have ever had was pulling HDTV signals from the Over The Air broadcasts. The first time I saw this (after spending so much time watching compressed HDTV on Comcast) I couldn't believe how great it looked. If you don't believe me, give it a try. The OTA HDTV signals blow Comcast's HDTV signals out of the water with crispness and detail.
Hopefully the means of getting this type of signal dramatically improves so that compression is not needed and we can watch 4k the way it was meant to be..
I still have a 1 DVD out at a time along with Netflix streaming because it's better than $5 iTunes rentals for recent stuff (and I can rip DVDs for anything I want to keep), so staying with discs for a while longer is no big deal to me. It is a shame we can get the infrastructure's bandwidth up at a better pace, though.
H2.65 codec was finalized for 2013 release just in time for 4k resolution. Half the file size...
A lot of hi-def production looks terrible now-a-days because it's too real, it looks like actors standing on a set, and I think this is only going to exacerbate the problem further. I wish things like this would get shit canned before all the money wasted on marketing, and tricking consumers into "needing" this crap.
Also... god help Netflix if this takes off, because their bandwidth usage is gonna be even more terrifying.
Put movies on cartriges. By the time 4K is ready to become a standard it will make more sense to use solid state drives than optical. They should focus on making flash memory faster and distribute films on jump drives. Kingston has a 1TB key drive in the lab now.
I can live with upscaled DVDs / blu-rays. It'll be worth it having something that bad ass and it would mostly function as a second monitor if I could afford one.
Since when has that stopped people?
People listen to multichannel audio mixed down to stereo all the time because practically nobody has a surround system.
People watch their DVDs connected to their 1080p display via composite and marvel at the improved picture.
So if a new format comes along that most people won't really be able to take any advantage of, I don't see any reason it won't do at least as well as multichannel audio and HD. It's all about cost and convenience. Features and quality are irrelevant.
"Given that uncompressed 4K footage has a bit-rate of about 600MB/s, and even the fastest solid-state drives operate at only about 500MB/s, "
We compress it.
"In coming years, 50-inch or 55-inch screens will have become the sort of standard that 40-inch TVs are now. To exploit 4K, you need a larger form factor. You’re just not going to notice enough of a difference on smaller screens."
Thats a load of crap really. First of all, all "theres no benefit" arugments are based on how close you sit to the screen, how big the screen is and how good your eyes are. There is no real catch all solution to this. Secondly "won't notice enough of a difference" isn't good enough. We should always aim for no discernible difference. Why? Because we can.
Much of the bandwidth/media etc claims are rubbish. 4k has (approximately) 4 time the pixels of standard full HD, so at most a given
format will increase by 4 times, HOWEVER, most lossy compression methods (for example AVC/MPEG4) on real footage scale better
than linear with pixel count, as detail becomes more repeated at higher resolutions, so a more likely estimate for such formats is
2 times, which is not crazy (blueray for example can already delivery that for many movies if needed). newer compression methods are
coming on line that can deliver close to double the compression for equivalent quality, meaning we end up back to normal HD data sizes.
Is it needed? thats a whole different story, with the size of living rooms/available and comfortable wall space for screen, etc it is pretty
marginal, but trying to use raw uncompressed bitrates as a scare tactic is rubbish.
Their raw figures are of course not even right as they seem to be assuming 444/12bit storage, which would be rather rare in real life, 422 10 bit
would be MUCH more common, and most workflows would actually use comrpessed storage (as they do now for HD.).
The real problem is that the resolution is exactly double that of 1920x1080. This means scaling up or down will work very well and people won't be able to tell the difference between this and 1080p. You know, because all the 720 TVs are actually 1366x768 which means images have to be smeared to shit, making 1080 TV look so much better (even with OTA 720 shows). And yes, I'm claiming industry-wide effort to make 1080 appear visibly better than 720. Or perhaps the 1080 sets will start to be 1152 to make 4K look better than regular HD even with 1080 content.
“Even over the Internet, it’s going to require massive files” While this is true, the speed of the Internet connection makes a huge difference. Unfortunately for the US population, the market is divided among a couple of companies and the slow speeds are offered at bank-robbery prices (e.g. 25/3Mbps for $50). Many countries in Europe get a faster and cheaper connection (e.g. 75/50Mbps for $10) and that changes how people watch TV. With TVs that can play MPEGs directly off some network connected HDD and a laptop that can download any torrents to that HDD, the experience of watching a show is often:
1. Find a torrent on a laptop and click on it to start downloading.
2. Wait a couple of minutes.
3. Navigate TV to the specific file on HDD and start watching.
It is amazing how much the experience changes for the better with faster connection speeds and more reasonable laws on downloading/uploading the content.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
As failure rates of electronics decrease, sets last longer and longer. This seems like just another sales ploy to force us all to buy new TV sets. 3D hasn't been widely received with popularity, so maybe the proles will buy into needing even higher definition!
In coming years, 50-inch or 55-inch screens will have become the sort of standard that 40-inch TVs are now. To exploit 4K, you need a larger form factor. Youâ(TM)re just not going to notice enough of a difference on smaller screens.' The same quality/convenience argument leads him to believe that physical media for 4K content will struggle to gain traction among consumers.
I don't get how this person has the foresight to note all these things, but totally gloss over the fact that for many (I may even say most) living rooms, any TV above 46"-47" is simply too large. I will never have a 4K TV in my living room because there is simply nowhere to put a TV that is 55"... it doesn't matter if the manufacturer is selling it, heck it doesn't matter if it is FREE, I have nowhere to put the damn thing. 46" is already way bigger than needed.
4K is so 2007, I have seen 8K broadcast streets (all equipment needed to acquire, store, transmit, compress, scale, playback and display) for years as shown at the international broadcasting conference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision_television
Before anyone comes up with, "but the eyes cannot resolve that kind of details", YOU ARE WRONG!
8K is not even a little comparable to HDTV.
I have also seen 4K being displayed, often scanned from 35mm prints, I doesn't have much impact beyond 2K. But this may be due that this is not captured on a digital camera and the grain (effective resolution) of 35 mm is worse than pixels at 4K. The 8K footage I've seen was captured on a 8K digital camera.
Also 300 fps video is freaking amazing, this was a demo from the BBC, your eyes can track fast moving objects and therefor focus on it razer sharp like when you track a moving object in the real-world. Finally we can actually watch Hollywood action sequences which as 24 fps is just a blurry mess of motion blur, or a vomit inducing slideshow.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of Betamax tapes. Analog of course.
If they do crank these out, 4K computer monitors should come down in price. I don't care what happens to the TV market as long as that happens.
I have absolutely no issue with physical media. Sure, streaming is convenient. But I can tell you, that physical media saved me from absolute boredom during severe snowstorms, where my only power source was an extension cord, an inverter, and my laptop. For flying, physical media (whether thumb drive or DVD) is a necessity. And for driving, I do not want to be bound by a physical internet connection to enjoy a TV show/movie that I have purchased. I still get DVD's by mail form Netflix, because my monthly subscription pays for itself every time I watch a movie that I would have otherwise seen in theater (theater movie night for 2 runs about $30). Sure, it's not hip or cool. But I still get to watch what I want to.
sudo make me a sandwich
all the comments here hating on it, gtf off my slashdot you fkin hipsters and get back to reddit or digg where you came from, you have no idea what a geek or nerd is
with some of the atitudes iam reading here we would still be stuck with giant 27" glass boxes and nintendos
real geeks and nerds lap up tech like this, to 8k, 16k and beyond i say !, cant wait for the economies of scale to kick in and get those prices down
The MPAA must be downright giddy about it. It's the first technical detail I've heard in years that could actually hinder piracy.
I'm just pleased that manufactures are finally discovering resolutions higher than 1080p (1920x1080). I understand economies of scale and whatnot peg PC display resolutions to HD video resolutions, but FFS "high def" 1080p was a state of the art res a good 20 years ago. If anything, there's been a steady backslide. in '06 I picked up a not-fancy-all-fancy consumer line dell laptop with a 15" 1920x1200 display. Fantastic, sharp, high res little thing. Now dell doesn't sell anything like that. (Maybe they do on high-end or business line computers, but certainly noting near that on the current consumer line)
So can we now get some reasonably priced 3840x2160 monitors? Please? Pretty please?
The important point is that at last, there'll be computer screens with non-stupid resolutions again! They took my 1920x1200 away, and though I would prefer 3840x2400, I can live with 3840x2160.
At least resolutions are going up again.
Remember when Blu Ray came out and a number of people were claiming they couldn't see much difference.
Well this time it will actually be true for almost everyone.
Most people don't even have their TV's close enough to visually discern 1080p.
This kind of TV resolution is irrelevant in a normal home setup.
ssd raid and lto6 tapes ftw
Pity that submitter/editor did not research further into the topic.
There are already standards (JPEG2000 DCI) that allow to compress 4K stream from about 5Gbit/s to 250 Mbit/s, which is much more manageable. There is at least one commercial vendor (intoPIX) that makes such hardware de/compressors.
If you want to stretch your imagination - start thinking about 3D movies in 4K, which is quite an obvious step. This is 12 Gbit/s uncompressed, but 500 Mbit/s in normal transmission.
Oh, by the way - 8K is already being worked on. And 8K 3D (48Gbit/s uncompressed)...
If 2K is good enough for theaters (and it is), who is it that wants 4K for their living room?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
The only people that are going to care about uncompressed size are those that make movies and movie theaters (I'm assuming theaters use uncompressed files, but I honestly don't know.) And a move-maker or theater won't have any problem with it; a simple drive array is just fine to cope with the bandwidth demands.
Just as few (any?) consumers ever get their hands on uncompressed 1080p, so it will be with 4K.
Unless I did the math wrong, it's only triple the size... hardly an insurmountable problem; not even an order of magnitude.
I'm working the Samsung booth at CES this year and I worked it last year. When I saw the engineers (last year) assembling the 4k demo sets, I asked where the content was coming from. The answer was a half-rack of servers behind the wall filled with powerful machines and lots of disks. Clearly not practical for consumers.
This year, the 4k sets are being driven by slightly smaller computers, presumably with compression. Samsung is demoing their compression technology (HEVC) VS h.264. I'm sure the manufacturers know that with the sorry state of networks, 4K video is not possible without more advanced compression algorithms to reduce data rates.
Watching TV just ain't right since they did away with interesting programs. I really don't give a rat's ass about resolution since movie channels repeat everything I've seen and channels like History and Discovery no longer show history or real science/engineering programs. That's my Gripe Of The Month.
mfwright@batnet.com
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) did a study to evaluate the subjective video quality of HEVC at resolutions higher than HDTV. The study was done with three videos with resolutions of 3840Ã--1744 at 24 fps, 3840Ã--2048 at 30 fps, and 3840Ã--2160 at 30 fps. The five second video sequences showed people on a street, traffic, and a scene from the open source computer animated movie Sintel. The video sequences were encoded at five different bitrates using the HM-6.1.1 HEVC encoder and the JM-18.3 H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoder. The subjective bit rate reductions were determined based on subjective assessment using mean opinion score values. The study compared HEVC MP with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC HP and showed that for HEVC MP the average bitrate reduction based on PSNR was 44.4% while the average bitrate reduction based on subjective video quality was 66.5%.
High Efficiency Video Coding
Do 4 times the pixels need 4 times the bandwidth? I would think larger blocks of solid colors, simple gradients, etc. would compress much at a much higher ratio than smaller ones. Or do they still encode the same size of pixel blocks as the old standards?
As for digital artifacts, I find that applying a very light noise filter (artificial 'film grain') conceals obvious banding, blockyness, etc. improving perceived (but not actual) quality.
Then there is no reason to upgrade to 4K. Does there not come a point where you no longer really need to upgrade but what you have is simply good enough? I think television has reached that point.
High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265) is about to become the next video compression standard. It was developed for high resolution video such as 4K.
So a repeat of the argument against HDTV. It took the media companies 10 years to catch up, and the same will happen again. Early adopters get what they deserve.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I remember seeing articles about the use of holographic storage medium with 500 GB potential http://www.crn.com/news/storage/217200230/ge-unveils-500-gb-holographic-disc-storage-technology.htm . Don't know if it will ever come around, but it would be a possible physical media source (assuming that the read speeds were fast enough)
In the future there will be TVs so HD that you will be able to see human cells.
Just kidding. Eventually they will get to a realistic limit.
No amount of additional pixels or sound quality can make up for bad writing, bad acting, or having M Night Shyamalan as a director.
I have my PC connected to a 57" plasma 1080p HDTV. I love Steam, and I tried to play games on the TV using steam before big picture. I could not read the text unless I was 5' away, and that was primarily because it was massively pixelated.
This format would help deliver sharper text for my HTPC. I would love it.
While I look forward to 4k, the size increase of the media isn't just going to affect how TV works, it's going to inevitably affect home monitors that graphic artists use, which in turn is going to force image hosting sites to really ramp up the maximum allowed GET/POST file sizes, which in our current internet, is going to result in servers that are a walk in the part to DDoS/abuse by filling HD's, overflowing buffers easier, increasing IDS/IPS load to parse terrabyes of data from single attacks etc. It's going to be brutal until we start getting much better tools in our admin toolkit to deal with the increase in bandwidth that will accompany 4k TV and content.
Though 1080p resolutions represent the next step in high-definition video, standards for the format have yet to emerge and no one’s really figured out how to distribute video, with its massive file footprint, efficiently and cost effectively. How exactly does one distribute files that can run to hundreds of megabytes? ... Given that uncompressed 1080p footage has a bit-rate of about 75MB/s, and even the fastest hard drives operate at only about 35MB/s, compression isn’t merely likely, it’s necessary. ... Kotsaftis says manufacturers will probably begin shipping and promoting larger TVs. 'In coming years, 32-inch or 36-inch screens will have become the sort of standard that 28-inch TVs are now. To exploit 1080p, you need a larger form factor. You’re just not going to notice enough of a difference on smaller screens.' The same quality/convenience argument leads him to believe that physical media for 1080p content will struggle to gain traction among consumers. '1080p implies going back to physical media. Even over the Internet, it’s going to require massive files and, given the choice, most people would happily settle for a 480p file anyway.'"
TLDR; old man doesn't like change.
Okay, that's just me being a little bit facetious. But honestly, this part:
Given that uncompressed 4K footage has a bit-rate of about 600MB/s, and even the fastest solid-state drives operate at only about 500MB/s, compression isn’t merely likely, it’s necessary.
...is just stupid. Why would anyone think uncompressed was ever even under consideration?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I feel like we're having the same kind of pixel-measuring issues as we get with still cameras. There comes a point where adding pixels doesn't improve the picture, but low-cost displays and sensors limit color depth and reproduction.
I know that Sharp has its fancy 4-color screen, but to my knowledge the existing data formats generally don't take full advantage of it. Rather than adding pixels, wouldn't it be better to promote screens with better dynamic range and color depth?
I do see a distinct difference between Blu-Ray and DVD images, but I can't see the advantages in going much further. The full HD looks pretty damn sharp already. But I think we can all still tell the difference between print color range and video color range, and adding pixels won't fix that.
I used to work for a small Texas company you've probably never heard of (Enron). Their Broadband Services division had, under their employ, some of the brightest minds in networking and video distribution for that era (unfortunately, the same cannot be said of their executive management).
In any event, here's why I like 4K--and related plans by a premier provider of 4K camera equipment (Red) to utilize their new Odemax acquisition to distribute it. (I also suspect that the ideas being employed by Red and Odemax are things that can be replicated in whole or substantial part by others.)
1) I really hate macroblocking: it looks ugly. Depending on the quality of TV and BluRay player, the macroblocking (and other artifacting) is better or worse--but it's still there even with well-produced BluRay disks. Even with relatively small screens (e.g., 42"), it looks like there could be some really nice gains in artifact reduction.
2) One more novel idea the architects at Enron Broadband employed was to build their own content distribution network, complete with Enron-provided fiber connectivity and servers placed at ISPs. These "head-end" servers at ISPs would reduce the host's peering costs and improve performance.
3) At least in metro areas where Odemax has a presence, the ISP's backbone capabilities will be less of an issue--and I suspect their WAN capacity is substantially more capable. 20 mbit/sec within an ISP's own network seems much more feasible (be it xDSL, DOCSIS, etc.).
While they figure out the storage and transfer requirements, does my video card have enough bandwidth to render and display that resolution? I suspect it has the bandwidth but not the processing power.
Bingo! Be sure to answer any 4K survey with "Yes, I will definitely buy one".
Place nail here >+
who cares about video. i want my 32 inch 4k monitor right now damnit.
I really don't get where some of these remarks are coming from. There are 4k videos on Youtube right now you can watch from home... If you can stream 4k content from Youtube through the interwebs it can be done.
Youtube 4k resolution and a few videos pop up. Make sure you select 'original' as resolution when you watch them. They'll suck the life out of slower computers though.
Does anyone else remember 2009, when Red supposedly demoed their RedRay codec, promising 4K video in an 10Mbps stream? http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/25/red-blows-away-small-room-of-videophiles-with-4k-red-ray-footage/
I haven't been following it much since then, but it looks like the RedRay is actually finally available. Anyone have any hands on experience with it?
What these 4k TVs would be immediatelly useful for is to allow families to watch up to four 1080p video channels simultaneously. The wife, husband, and 2.5 kids can all watch their favorite channels at the same time on a single large 4k screen. Of course these TVs should include a remote control for each tuner, and some way to distribute 4 independent audio outputs, maybe via bluetooth or something similar.
This concept is to allow all content to be cache so close to the consumer as possible.
And with close I mean at your home. (It's quiet silly to download a movie twice if the content has not be changed since last time you watched it).
This is a concept for all static content.
It's late right now, so I'm going to bed... In the mean time visit http://tlmc.fredan.se for more information about this.
I have an working solution of how to achieve this concept now. (It does not, as my intention was, be able to get in in the next release of PowerDNS at this moment. I will however publish all the source code for this in a week.)
"You’re just not going to notice enough of a difference on smaller screens."
Yeah, tell Apple and its retina display that there's no difference. Reality distortion at work here.
giant incredibly clear tv's.... why not use this technology to finally develop glasses that finally have a clear picture? Remeber back in the day when VR was all the rage and there were games that utilized stereoscopic glasses? Well the picture quality was absolute garbage due to the incredible pixelation of the image. With such high resolution, stereoscopic images could finally be presented cleanly and with some degree of realism. Imagine the gaming implications not to mention having a 3d computer desktop and working environment.
FTA:
To exploit 4K, you need a larger form factor. You’re just not going to notice enough of a difference on smaller screens.'
Unless you're only 24 inches away from it, like I am from my monitor.
I would very much appreciate upgrading my 30 inch monitor from 2560x1600 to 3840x2160. That would upgrade me from 100 DPI to 150 DPI.
Why do mobile screens get 300 DPI, but us desktop users don't even have a chance to get half of that? I'll bet I'm sitting almost as close to my monitor as someone who's watching video on a 300 DPI tablet (like the Nexus 10).
4K is 4 times as big as 1080P (the 'P' is a misnomer) in pixels. A well compressed 1080P film runs to around 12GB (Blurays are NEVER well compressed). H264 AVC gives linear scaling at worst for pixel numbers. Therefore, a 4K film can easily be held in 50ish GB- not exactly a bank breaking filesize, especially in the near future.
It gets better. The replacement for H264 AVC targets larger image sizes, and is much better than a linear improvement. One can expect the new codec to require only 2.5 - 3 times more storage than the H264 1080P version.
The problem with 4K is NOT storage (as explained above) or processing (the cheapest ARM SoC part commonly used in bottom end tablets, the Allwinner A10, already decodes 4K video in H264). No, the problem with 4K, like 3D or HFR (high frame rate) is whether it gives the consumer anything they actually care about, especially if it increases costs.
Outside of premium cable services in select parts of select nations, so called 1080P video streams are atrocious- with massive amounts of blocks and artificial softening of much of the picture- all in the name of keeping the bandwidth as low as possible.
It gets worse. TV providers use rotten, inefficient, massively expensive, dedicated hardware encoders to compress the video, rather that the state of the art solution- x264 running on PC like systems. As a result, most video from cable and satellite is sub-optimally encoded by a factor of 3 or worse. The reason for this is historic. TV companies traditional use equipment from companies that have been ripping them off with substandard rubbish since the 1960s (or earlier). Unfortunately, new recruits are trained on such garbage at uni or college during their training, so once employed they wish to work on the proprietary hardware they are familiar with (the 'no-one gets fired for buying IBM' factor).
It gets worse. As a result of the effect detailed above, many TV broadcasters are still using the appalling MPEG2 CODEC that their equipment suppliers invested so heavily in. MPEG2 gives rotten picture quality in insanely large file sizes.
It gets worse. A significant proportion of viewers cannot tell the difference between excellent quality low def material UPSCALED to hi def, and native hidef video. At standard TV viewing distances, the apparent difference between 1080P and 4K will not be obvious to maybe the majority of viewers.
It gets worse. Unlovable 3D is now competing with unlovable HFR (high frame rate) which is competing with 4K. How many permutations do these 3 'enhancements' provide, if consumer equipment only supports 1 or 2 of these new features.
It gets worse. People want bigger TVs (at a reasonable cost), not smaller TVs with a higher definition. However. combining 4K with a bigger screen will be unthinkably expensive for at least the next 6-10 years.
We already have 4K in the cinema (a massive drop in quality compared with the 70MM film common in the early 1980s). Having only 1080P at home is useful for the film studios, because the home experience, by definition, is worse than the cinema experience. Boosting the cinemas to 8K would be a complete waste of time, given the screen size, and mechanical qualities of the projector. HFR and 3D is already possible on mid range home equipment sold today. 4K is really the only exclusive it makes sense holding onto in the cinema.
in 1999, I had a 21" with 1600 x 1200. It's 2013 and my 24" is 1920 x 1080.
Remember (if you are old enough) people telling you that "Most people are perfectly happy with VHS"? This DVD thing will never take off, and no one wants 16:9 screens, either.
"Most people are perfectly happy with DVD". This Bluray thing will never take off. No one wants to buy a new TV to watch HD.
Now it's: "Most people are perfectly happy with 1080p or 720p HD". Yeah, no one will buy 4k.
Sure.
BTW: I'd be rather interested in getting a 4k screen to play games on. My existing 30" 2560x1600 is looking a bit low-res...
4K (and 8K) video will become viable once H.265 starts becoming available on chips:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding
Performance is supposedly doubled: if you have a 1080p/"2K" video, with H.265 it will take half the space and bandwidth compared to H.264. Of course on the flip side, if you don't mind using the same space/pipe as we're using now, you can get double the resolution (i.e., 4K).
Everyone knows every technology leap in video was driven by porn - VHS tapes, streaming medai online, compression, DVDs... All they need to do is put the porn industry on it and presto, problem solved.
The basic problem with Ultra-HD is that nobody can see it. You'd have to be sitting so close to the screen to appreciate the difference (from "normal" HD) that your eyes couldn't see the whole screen. Add on to that. that the data stream would be so highly compressed to fit into the available bandwidth that the only difference would be the resolution of the artifacts. What you have is the video equivalent of an audio bandwidth extending into the 100's of kHz. great for any dogs listening, or eagles watching your TV, but utterly pointless for humans, unless their motivation is so immature that they feel the need to have something impractically better than the guy next door's, no matter what the cost - or usefulness.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sure, we'd need radically more efficient compression algorithms to fit 4x the pixels into the same bandwidth (though a move to ala-carte purchasing might eliminate a lot of crap no one watches and free up more bandwidth)
However, you don't need a better signal for a better TV to be worth it - just look at the enormous improvement in quality that good video up-scaling brings to DVDs. Or for analog upscaling there's the smooth filmlike beauty of the Cine-view (or whatever it was called) rear-projection TVs that used precisely curved micro-mirror arrays to gracefully eliminate visible pixel boundaries.
As for the article's claim that the increased resolution would only be useful for bigger TVs, I'd beg to differ. Sure, if you sit 10-20 feet away you're not going to notice much difference, but not everyone does that. People in small houses, gamers who like to sit close to the screen, and those of us who use our TVs as extra-large computer monitors would all benefit from considerably more pixels per inch.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The use of a TV does not stop at video playback. When browsing the web on your big screen or playing video games you're looking at content generated in real time, not limited to bandwidth. Here's where 4K will offer the most benefit. Though I imagine any kind of decent upscaling won't hurt for lower res video either.
So I am damn glad I can finally get a larger res for a really large screen.
Panasonic is demoing one such 70 inch TV now, and my first thought was "So what? Even if I buy it, there is no source of content." My current TV is used exclusively as a TV monitor, but even if I set it up to receive ChinaDigi (digital) broadcast, they wouldn't be "4k" resolution. Neither would BS (Dish) or CS (Cable) TV.
As far as I know, standard Blu-Ray disks don't have that kind of resolution, and DVDs certainly don't.
It would be easy enough to store a higher resolution video on a blue-ray disk as a data file and just make it shorter if need be, but how would you make this video? Even if you made it somehow, that only solves the home/in-house video problem.
Also, some people don't seem to realize that resolution isn't everything. I usually watch DVDs because they are more than high enough resolution (things are moving on the screen anyway!) Some 1080p BS channels I have seen look terrible, on the other hand, because they use some low bit-rate mpeg4 or something and show all kinds of compression artifacts. If you quadruple the resolution and spend lots of money on new hardware to support this all the way through, and the transmission is only possible with *more* compression, then the results might not be what you expect.
Also, at this point, I think it makes sense just to piggy-back TV onto the internet rather than having a dedicated network. As the internet gets faster, things like Hulu will become even more common-place and it will be much easier to increase resolution, improve compression, etc.
We have a pretty small house. We have a 32" SD television set in the living room. When that set dies, we'll spring for a HD set. Most likely another 32 inch set as we don't really have the space for anything bigger. At that size, there won't be any noticeable difference between HD and 4K. About the only advantage 4K TVs would give me would be the inevitable price drop that HD TVs would experience. Other than that, I don't really see the benefit to "super duper HD" beyond the manufacturers trying to get customers to upgrade perfectly good equipment.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The more interesting step to me would be 1920x2160 panels for 1080P passive 3D. Right now passive 3D polarizes alternate lines so at 1080P it is more like 1920x540 per eye. Which probably is perceived by the brain like 1920x700 or something like that. If no one makes a 1920x2160 panel I presume it could be done with a 4K panel.
When my living room resembles an IMAX theatre then I'll care..until then 4k might as well be a 40 blade spishak razor.
Heck DVDs are still out-selling blueray by 3-4x after all these years. Nobody cares about higher rez when the only tangable difference is cost.
Hmm.. looks like I need to clean up some of my 19tb server space to make room for super HD content. Considering that a 30TB server costs under $3k now and that you can buy a 4TB hdd for ~$250-$300 (seagate externals, then pop them into your server chassis) This is definatly doable for enthusiast home users. I expect the pirates to be the first adopters along with Anime fans as Drawn animation compresses more easily than live action shows. They were talking about 30-60% file size increases when using current compression methods so I don't see this as being a problem for my SAS RAID6 setup. (Intel SAS Controller with an Intel6-port SAS expander turning 1 sas port into 5 connecting 20 Sata HDDs in a Norco Chassis. Cost approx $1000) I can definately see this as being doable for an enthusiast, but for sure your grandma won't be building it tomorrow.
The article proclaims FUD. This is just silliness. The data requirements ARE NOT 600mbps just as 1080p's data requirements are not 150mbps.
Digital television is ALWAYS compressed.
It will require 4 times the data throughput as it is only 4 times as many pixels. Period. There isn't a downside. If it is only getting a 1080p signal then it will be at least that good and you know that they will have a lot of processing to anti alias the upscaled image. It will probably really help on 3D movies where they are cheesing out by cutting the vertical resolution in half.
The only issue will be getting the infrastructure caught up with it. The cable companies may have a problem but if they don't take care of it they will go the way of the buggy whip because the Internet and Netflix will scale to take care of it.
The only real issue that 4K may have is if it makes enough visual difference that anyone will care enough to pay the premium. I really think the only place it will really noticeably shine is 3D. We will just need to see how fast meaningful 3D content becomes available. And with the limitations on how much 3D content you should reasonably watch in a day that will slow the "need" for it.
Have you seen "The Hobbit" ?
48 FPS. 3D. A plethora of fancy-schmancy digital effects.
Have you seen "The Phantom Menace"?
Fully rendered CGI Characters. Lifelike animation. Fancy-Schmancy digital effects.
Avatar... Beowulf...
For every 'Wall-E' there are 10 'Cars 2"
I would so much rather see a great story in SD than this technological terror they have constructed.
Nerd-note video-game example: My kids are 8 and 10. Daughter just got a Nintendo 3DS for xmas. Zelda: Ocarina of time was one of the games. I decided to pull it up on the Wii-shop which (besides my 50" screen) is the same thing you would have seen in 1998. What an amazing game! Graphics are blocky and the textures are blurry but the STORY is phenomenal. I REALLY want to save Hyrule from that D-bag Ganondorf!
That is why 'Citizen Kane' is better than 99% of movies we have seen in the past 50 years
That is why 4K does not matter.
pump the pixel money into better storytelling and the world will be a better place :)
I don't care so much about the increased resolution. What bugs the shit out of me is the motion artifacts and the grayscale discontinuities that I constantly see even on Blu-ray. Fix the real problems first then worry about the resolution.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I think they're forgetting the current problem. Resolution = pixels. It says nothing about the data rate. Cable is somewhat compressed in my area but tolerable. Dish, though, look like a bad youtube stream. It's soooo bad when everything on the screen is moving. Last superbowl, with the confetti going, it looked like a mosaic. Every hard edge has HORRIBLE compression marks. It's just absolute crap. And yet they're both "1080 HD." Well I bet I can encode 1920x1080 at 500kbps too. That doesn't make it good, that just makes it wider and taller.
I think I'd rather see a higher frame rate. When I was watching "The Hobbit" I really enjoyed the HFR but I was thinking to myself that the rate needs to be even higher still. No less than 60, I would say...
4k video has 4 times as many pixels as 1080 video. At the most, it will need 4x the bandwidth? Do you really think that your future internet connection is not going to be 4 times faster than what we have today? In practice the similarity between pixels on typical 4k footage has less variation than HD resulting in better compression ratio and thus the actually bandwidth needed is less than 4x with the same codec. Codecs are also improving H.265 is much better than H.264.
Now lets discuss the size of the screen - Check out the pixels per inch for what apple would call a "retina" display. 4k video will look better even on a TV much smaller than sizes mentioned here.
Consider the state of network technologies 10 years ago. There is so much that can be done in the last mile by actually deploying fiber, combined with up and coming high speed switching speeds that I don't think this will be a problem long.
Whether people want to invest another couple grand on a new display, that's another thing.
What they *can* do is put that kind of resolution on desktop displays. Please, enough with the "1920x1080 is high resolution" bullshit. We all had the ability to do 1600x1200 on CRTs over a decade ago.
Just because one frame is 1080P, doesn't mean that with multiple frames, additional detail can be added as has been the case forever with HD sets upscaling SD to look way better than SD on a normal television. Why is it that everyone presumes that the source must be raw 4k full frame unique (compressed) to be worthwhile. I have a 65" Sony XBR rear screen projector that I still love because its picture tubes filter out aliasing video noise in console games. It also makes SD content look close to movie theater in quality. My son has a 55" Sony XBR flat panel TV and I can see all the pixels unless I am far away and the video game aliasing and noise give me a headache. Sure it has better contrast and brightness, and crispness on live HD signals, but is also makes SD signals look pretty nice. So my point (sorry to be long winded) is that 4K TV's will take HD signals and make them look great (on really larger TV's) without 4K signal sources...
football try 14-16 channels at the same time.
That will be what it's takes for NFL ST. and then you also have the local channel games.
The MNF and THN games are also shown on a local channel in the teams area.
Really, it does, uncompressed it does. Yes, we can compress very effectively and we do, but he does have a point that the current infrastructure is struggling hard to keep up with a few 720P channels, let alone 1080P. One 4K channel will probably take the same bandwidth that 8 or 10 720P "HD" channels take. Given the amount of 720P channels one user can choose from at the moment and the amount they can play simultaneously over their connection, only very few people will be able to receive 4K broadcasts in the foreseeable future.
That will make 4K the domain of physical media and brick and mortar stores renting those out have long disappeared. Buying media is something only few people do these days, so there's no supporting infrastructure or economy for the format to succeed. Bluray is the current state-of-the-art medium that will be replaced by whatever 4K will bring us. Whe VCRs were the thing, everybody I knew had at least one in their home. Almost the same with a DVD player. By the time DVD burners got popular, most people had an HTPC of some kind and didn't even watch that much on their TV, but also used their laptops and PCs to watch video. By that time, Internet downloads became so popular, that video rental stores would go bankrupt all over the place. The industry came with "HD" media and the public reaction was mostly "meh". I seriously don't know anyone that owns a dedicated Bluray player. I know quite a few that have a PS3 with a built in drive, but almost none of those people actually own even a single Bluray disk.
Distribution is going to be hard with the current available options. This will mean that the market adoption will be driven by whatever "portable media players" will support in terms of storage, resolution and processing power. Once tablets, 3D augmented reality glasses or whatever video output device we will be using "on the go" will be using higher resolutions than HD successfully, people will be wanting to get media to use that resolution. Until then, only people that want to compensate their below average size genitals and a few "enthusiasts" will be buying 4K equipment.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
?
- the boss
So the files are huge, so what? My first webserver drive was obe gig, cost a grand and took 3 years to fill up. Now we'll download a movie that's six gigs and not blink.
Files get bigger, pipes get bigger per demand. It's been this way since, oh, 1974.
Need Mercedes parts ?
That's weird. A new standard comes out and everyone runs to say it doesn't matter, meanwhile the world is running to buy retina displays. If you're having a hard time seeing how this could be cool, trot down to your local Apple store and check out a new Mac Book Pro, then imagine that awesome display in glorious 55 inches of TV. 4K is going to be awesome. Content will catch up!
Even with current bandwidth, video quality has dropped every year for the last five to seven years. Dish, Cable companies and netflix are compressing the hell out of the video. It's past the point where you can't see it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The only real issue that 4K may have is if it makes enough visual difference that anyone will care enough to pay the premium. .
I think the bigger issue is that it's already planned to be made obsolete by 8K TV. Japan's NHK is apparently going to jump straight to 8K and skip 4K entirely.
I see no trouble here. It surely is capable of displaying 720p? So you can buy it now and wait for material later.
Will it finally be able to figure out the aspect ratio of the source material?
standing at a normal viewing distance... There is _NO_ discernible difference between 4k and 2k.
As mentioned already, you'd need a larger screen. For many folks, that's a non-starter. Where will it fit?
55"? not large enough, unless I'm sitting too close.
80" minimum... Wouldn't bother otherwise. 4K is great if you have a small multi-screen theatre... Not for your home, not yet.
I give it 20 years, or more, before adoption into homes. It will be a boutique item in the mean time... 1% 'ers... that's it.
4k is awesome if you've spent 12 hours shooting the next feature film, and want to look at the dailies.
Not much use otherwise.
Well, I'll just wait for the 640K TV. That should be enough for anybody.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
i would like to know if they can do a borderless oled display, or one with a border so thin as to be invisible, such that one could put a few of them so close to each other to make a seamless high resolution display.
1080p still looks ok for video... I just wish they'd up the framerate a bit. Oh right, that wouldn't sell more TVs.
http://cinegrid.org
CineGrid's Mission
To build an interdisciplinary community that is focused on the research, development, and demonstration of networked collaborative tools to enable the production, use, preservation, and exchange of very-high-quality digital media over photonic networks.
Of course, for most practical use the content will be compressed (like most HD content is now). Typically, a 1Gb connection should be enough to show 4K content.
4K or UltraHD as it's known is a lot more than a pixel count. It standardizes a high color gamut, XYZ color space (as in cinema) a high progressive frame rate, a 22.2 surround sound audio and an optional auto-stereoscopic display. The new h265 standard also allows a substantial bandwidth saving over h264.
The larger physical screen size is a major jump, but no more substantial than the 28" to 50" we've had over the last 7-8 years.
With most film production workflows now mastering in 4k as standard (moving onto 8k soon) then content shouldn't be an issue soon either.
depends on what you do. Those of us who need screen real estate are already running three monitors with 4960x1600 resolution, which is just 4% shy in pixel count. Mine is with a $150 radeon from about three years ago. Of course, I don't game, but video runs fine.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I see what the OP did there: Criticise some new technology on ill-conceived grounds to Slashdot audience and let them evangelise it across the net and world.
I am really looking forward to 4K TV becoming popular, and I don't watch much TV...
I am so sick of having my computer monitors restricted in vertical resolution by the TV industry. Ten years ago, we used to have lovely 1600x1200 laptop screens, and now you can hardly find a screen that is larger 1366x768, and if you do, it's a 27" external monitor that only gets you to 1080...
This is a small step toward actually having an upgrade in "standard" screen resolutions.
The Redray player has a compression asic that can stream 4K content at 25mb a second. That's mega'bits'.
The codec is capable of streaming 4K for each eye simultaneously at a 60hz frame rate.
They are also establishing a Youtube like network called ODEMax to feed both theaters and home players content.
ODEMax is to debut at Sundance.
Sometimes I like to watch my old, grainy movies; you know, the .AVIs you used to download and cram 4 or 5 on a data DVD. I have a really nice hi-def, high refresh rate Samsung, and while it makes HD programming look almost hyper-realistic, it makes my old movies look like hammered ass. I've found that if I just take off my glasses, I don't even notice the pixelation and artifacts. Problem solved.
Bah. That would only be 100 feet high (at 300dpi). We can do better than that!
2K and 4K sets are just the beginning of a long road terminating at 640K, which I think ought to be enough for anybody.
I've been working on a little game for the last few years. In doing so, since the game is rather simple, I've become addicted to 60 FPS. 30 FPS just seems absurdly jittery by comparison.
Then one day I was at my mother's house where she has a CRT monitor, and I noticed it was running at 72 Hz. So I went into the settings to see what options it had, and one was 100 Hz. So I configured it to that.
100 Hz blows 60 FPS away in terms of how smoothly everything moves. Those people who insist the eyes can't see more than 60 FPS anyway have no idea what they're talking about.
So fuck this 4k nonsense. Just give me a higher frame rate. ...and if you have more bandwidth after that, stop compressing the shit so much. I absolute hate that JPEG and other compression schemes assume that I don't give a fuck about any detail smaller than an 8x8 square of pixels. What's the point of a 1920x1080 screen if it's going to degrade to 240x135 every time there's too much motion?
I already can barely tell the difference between 1080 and SD programs sitting 10 feet from my mother's television. (Don't have a television myself.) That 1080 is nice when you can sit closer, but it's already too high a resolution for a lot of people's seating arrangements, whereas features like higher frame rate and fewer compression artifacts would be enjoyable by everyone.
That's where resolution matters the most, isn't it?
No, fuck that. I want 8K.
Well, the redray player (I believe it might be on sale now, if not it will be soon) will deliver full 4k with a 2.5MBPS data stream, per their web site (www.reduser.net). And their upcoming $10,000.00 4k laser project even looks more awesome...
Apart from the distribution / file size issue, as the article says I think 4k is another marketing pitch to sell more TVs like 3d was. The reasons being: 1) At the moment we have TV stations broadcasting alot of their content in SD still. Surely, it should be more of a priority to find smarter ways for them to broadcast in HD (1080) first? 2) You have smart TVs / andriod wifi cards that can give you horrible quality videos from the internet. Surely, upgrading the internet connections to high speed fibre (like the Australian NBN) should be a priority for this so you can play all your internet streamed videos in HD (1080)?