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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
.. 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...
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.
We've still got 636k to go then!
"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.
A lot of hi-def production looks terrible now-a-days because it's too real, it looks like actors standing on a set
You know what else looks like actors standing on a set? Live theater.
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.
don't blame the messenger - tell the people who make the shows!
if you get a crap makeup artist it'll look like a stage show.
if you get crap actors it will look like people standing around talking.
if you get a crap DoP, everyone will look boring.
maybe viewer discretion should be advised?
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
The MPAA must be downright giddy about it. It's the first technical detail I've heard in years that could actually hinder piracy.
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.
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.
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)
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.
There's no creepy factor to live theater. It looks strange to watch stuff like that on a screen. Kind of like lens flare - artificially added because we expect it to be there in movies. It aids the suspension of disbelief.
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.).
Bingo! Be sure to answer any 4K survey with "Yes, I will definitely buy one".
Place nail here >+
oh noes we must use the imagination again
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
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?
I'm far more exited about OLED displays, because A) even though they are still clinging to 1080p, they pushing boundaries for display technology in other ways such as improved contrast and viewing angle, and B) the fundamental technology of OLEDs is far more exciting that the same old LED-backed LCD technology being scaled down that's done with 4k televisions.
In other words... 4k isn't geek tech enough to be that exciting.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.)
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).
in 1999, I had a 21" with 1600 x 1200. It's 2013 and my 24" is 1920 x 1080.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 ?
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.
Will it finally be able to figure out the aspect ratio of the source material?
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.
A MacBook you sit literally inches away from during normal use.
A TV you sit literally feet from during normal use.
Thus the TV never has to have more than approximately 1/12th of the resolution of a laptop display for you to not even spot the difference.
4K is just a step up on the HD-scam, which you won't be able to detect without a HUGE TV or by watching it from a completely unnatural position.
Hell, SVGA monitors were doing HD resolution back in the 90's, and I used to watch TV on a card in my PC because it was a FABULOUS image on them compared to a TV (and that was from a standard SD signal and some nice deinterlacing). It's taken 20 years to catch up and get to the point where a 32" screen can do the same.
The fact is, though, is that I was literally able to see individual pixels (running Windows 3.1, you could actually see every pixel on a window edge, for example) from the distance I sat at when I was doing fine work that needed the resolution (e.g. DTP, etc.) and usually had to sit back in order to actually appreciate the display in its entirety, where I lost that view of individual pixels (and, when watching TV on it, I usually did it from the other side of the room).
If you get close enough to and squint at anything, you can see fine detail. From the other side of the room, not so much. Or else houses with wallpaper would form a kind of OCD in people and they'd need it to be perfectly printed, aligned and defined.
Fact is, a 4K image printed at 600dpi (like the cheapest lasers have been doing for - what - 20 years also?) is 6 and 2/3rds inches long. Personally, I've never been able to distinguish between 300dpi and 600dpi without a magnifier of some kind (and have used 2400dpi printers and scanners - in fact, my usual setup is to set everything to 300dpi toner-save, with 100dpi for scanners and faxes, and NOBODY complains even for presentation work). At 300 dpi? That's barely a 14" image. What you're claiming is that if you look at an A3 piece of paper printed full-colour at 300 dpi, you'll see the whole image AND nearly every dot at the same time, and that if it was printed at 290dpi you'd notice it looking worse. Rubbish.
Now, even adding some extra width to the pixels for movement, colour, etc., you're still in the bounds of a TV-size from paper-reading distances. And you don't watch TV from paper-reading distances.
Please stop buying crap. The world might be running to retina displays (but, to be honest, I work in IT and have never seen one and know nobody who has one) but if they are it's because of ignorance. 20 years ago, people were buying "2400dpi scanners" which were really just 300dpi scanners that interpolated. And nobody noticed, because they just assumed it was true, and were happy to pay for the number. While the rest of us locked them into 100dpi modes and everyone said how wonderfully they scanned and that they didn't have trouble emailing 1Mb scans around like their "other" scanner which generated 500Mb scans or larger.
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.
I looked at the cinema listings near me the other week.
Every movie had a sequel number/name in it, and most were around the 4th or more in the franchise. I could not find one that was NOT a sequel in some fashion, and all were sequels to things that had no precedent (i.e. it wasn't like they were the movie of the second book in the series, but were just completely fabricated sequels to only the popular first-runs in order to cash in on the name - I'm honestly waiting for Avatar 2 to appear before I shoot myself).
And then people wonder why I haven't been to see a movie in, literally, YEARS.
I'm a mad Tolkien fan. I couldn't stand more than half-way through the first movie, and splitting The Hobbit into three movies? I read it yesterday evening in one sitting.
My girlfriend is Italian and LOVES UK cinema - but not the stuff we ever show in the UK, which is only ever the US "blockbuster" movies. Literally, she can name English directors for the most obscure movies that have some of our best actors and we have NEVER seen them playing at any cinema anywhere. There are niche cinemas, in central London, that show the sort of things she's referring to but NOBODY goes to watch them, and nobody even knows where to find them.
If it's not fourth-in-the-franchise, big-name film with trailers, special effects, 3D and famous-actor-who-can't-act in it, it's not shown, not on DVD and nobody ever sees it.
I'm not a huge "niche" movie fan, but I've watched and enjoyed more on the obscure channels and late-night "arty" movies than anything I've seen even listed at a cinema in over a decade.
Sure, we all love a bit of Aliens or some mindless comedy pap every now and then, but honestly the cinemas now are babysitters for infants. "Cars 2", "Toy Story 3", "Shrek 4" - and, because not all infants are children - "The Expendables 2", "Iron Man 3", "Men in Black 3", etc.
I have not been to the cinema (except out of sheer boredom or to accompany friends, but not to actually SEE something that I wanted to see or enjoyed seeing) since, what, 2005-ish because my girlfriend-at-the-time wanted to go out somewhere (and IIRC we both walked out before the opening credits had even finished, after paying for the movie, popcorn, drinks, etc.)?
The problem is that in my country, Hollywood own the cinemas, and the rest is given a bad rep "It doesn't have a famous actor as the main star?", "There's no 'feel-good' ending?", "It has subtitles?", "It's an indie production so it has to be like The Blair Witch Project (shiver)".
Best films I've watched in the last few weeks? Perfect Sense - Ewan McGregor in a love-story where people around the world start to lose their senses (smell, taste, hearing, then vision - a bit like a mini-Day of The Triffids). It wasn't the best thing I've ever watched but certainly better than all the Christmas-shite and big-name re-runs for Christmas on TV and in the cinema.
I also showed my girlfriend "Mrs Brown" (Judi Dench and Billy Connolly playing Queen Victoria and Mr Brown - one of the best bits of serious acting I've seen from a comedian, but his latest attempt at replicating that success with the newly-released Quartet? - I'm not convinced it will be any good).
What do both have in common? No special effects. No HD. No 3D. No modernised-to-the-point-of-stretching-credulity plots (seems to be the thing now to insert modern-era jokes into historical movies to make them "funny" at points). Just some skilled people, in front of a camera, trying their best to make you believe they are someone else and the things they do are really happening to them.
There's a difference between "entertaining" and "enthralling / enrapturing". One is what you do to babies, with magic tricks and twinkly things, to keep them occupied and their minds off the things you don't want them doing (like remembering how much that fecking cinema ticket and popcorn cost!), the other is to make someone live another person's life through a perfect setting, convincing acti
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.
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.
So 300dpi at 14" on paper is your visual limit, but you don't want a 300ppi monitor for your computer? Why not? Retina displays are far more useful than 4K TV's at 5 feet away.
Bah. That would only be 100 feet high (at 300dpi). We can do better than that!