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4K Ultra HD Likely To Repeat the Failure of 3D Television
New submitter tvf_trp writes "Fox Sports VP Jerry Steinbers has just announced that the broadcaster is not looking to implement 4K broadcasting (which offers four times the resolution of today's HD), stating that 4K Ultra HD is a 'monumental task with not a lot of return.' Digital and broadcasting specialists have raised concerns about the future of 4K technology, drawing parallels with the 3D's trajectory, which despite its initial hype has failed to establish a significant market share due to high price and lack of 3D content. While offering some advantages over 3D (no need for specs, considerable improvement in video quality, etc), 4K's prospects will remain precarious until it can get broadcasters and movie makers on board."
Existing 1080p quality can't be discerned as better by someone sitting 10 feet away on a couch looking at a 42" TV. Going past 1080p has no value whatsoever unless you're talking about insanely huge screens or impractically close viewing.
It will be like HD and 3D. In a few years it will become standard on mid range and even cheap TVs.
The key difference with 3D is not the cost of the TVs, it's the cost of the broadcast equipment and cameras. 3D was actually quite a cheap upgrade from HD, and most of the same equipment and software could be used with a few modifications. 4K is another ball game though.
Even worse there is 8K on the horizon as well which will require yet more brand new equipment. NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster that invented 8K, has stated that they will not support 4K at all and are instead going to look at going directly to 8K around 2020 (in time for the Olympics). I have a feeling they may not be alone in wanting to wait, but of course TV manufacturers all want to push 4K as a reason for the consumer to upgrade or pay a premium.
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I agree. Compression is the primary issue here. Make the resolution 10k and it'll still look like crap because of the heavy compression. But if you're claiming to see compression artifacts on a blu-ray disc I think you need your eyes checked. Those usually don't use anywhere near the compression of cable TV.
1080p took off for the same reason macs did, marketing. 1900x1200 was starting to be common when everything suddenly got yanked back to 1080 because it was cheaper and marketing bullshit convinced people to pay more money for less monitor.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Well that's kind of in-line with my point. Samsung (or insert panel manufacturer here) can have a production run of 1920x1200 panels destined just for monitors. OR they can have a larger run of 1920x1080 destined for both TV's and monitors. Guess which will be cheaper?
1080p TV drove the adoption of 1920x1080 as the standard for PC monitors more than marketing.
MPEG-2 is compressed by definition; an uncompressed HD picture is something like 1 Gbps. Confetti, for example, looks awful no matter what the source, because it's hard to compress.
The only reason MPEG-4 isn't supported in ATSC is because it didn't exist when the standard was written! MPEG-4 is actually now in ATSC, but is not a required part, so no receivers support it and no broadcasters use it except in rare corner cases.
And it's only 18.2 Mbps if there are no other services on the OTA channel; some stations in smaller markets now cram 3 HD services into the 19.393 Mbps channel, which is an average of about 6 Mbps per video channel when you take into account audio and overhead. Most other stations run at least one SD channel in addition to the HD channel, many run more than one. Others are doing Mobile DTV which eats into the bandwidth available. The bitrate of a single HD feed averaged across all OTA stations in the US and Canada is something in the neighborhood of 13 Mbps in MPEG-2.
Obligatory disclaimer: I used to work for a broadcast TV company heading up our broadcast TV engineering projects. I now work for the FCC on over-the-air digital TV matters. In my spare time, I run digital TV website RabbitEars.Info.
Economies of scale don't have much to do with it, at least not in the TV > PC realm. The panels which go into TVs are very different than those that go into monitors. Combine that with the incredible size difference between the standard TV and the standard monitor and there's not much they share in common.
Stupid fucking "HD" marketing is what caused PC monitor resolutions to stagnate.
I bought their original 50inch model in May of this year to use as a monitor. I paid $1099 at the time, with Amazon Prime shipping.
There were a few little annoyances immediately that I had to work out, and the Seiki support people were great. Got new firmware to fix a few things.
The only functional issue I have left is it won't autowake up from the hdmi on my video card (it is actually the video card not the monitor) so I have to hit the button.
Overall I'm happy with it, here are a couple of my quick comments
The screen is a little glossy for my taste but not horrible.(personal preference)
The colors are a little over saturated, I should probably to a color calibration on it.
The monitor is a little too big, I actually have to turn my head and pick up my mouse more than I'd like for stuff on the far edge. I've been telling people a 42" would be about perfect so the 39" looks nice, especially for the price.
On a couple of games I've thought I've seen a little ghosting but nothing horrible. At 4k the HDMI is only 30Hz but the actual screen refresh is still normal.
I originally said I would try it for 60days and worst case scenario it would become just another TV. That time expired in July and I'm still using it.
Hope this helps.
There are so many facts wrong in your post that I sincerely hope you don't work in the technical field of broadcasting. OTA uses MPEG-2 (same codec as on DVD's), which is a lossy compression technique. ABC NBC and CBS stations all take an MPEG-4 feed from their network and re encode it to MPEG-2; FOX stations get MPEG-2 video that they then "splice" is their network bug and local commercials and promos. Getting a lousy picture on digital TV from a poor or unaligned antenna is a lie that salesmen use. If the signal isn't strong enough the picture will drop out, you'll see big blocks everywhere, its quite obvious. Anyways, I have an outdoor antenna with actual line of sight to the towers on top of Sandia Peak and I can very easily see compression artifacts on each station; some are worse than others because they have sub-channel. If you can't see them you don't know what is meant by artifacts, you need glasses, your TV is small, or you sit a long ways away. Cable systems *usually* pass on the local stations exactly as they are. DirecTV and Dish Network re compress them back to MPEG-4. Thats right, when you watch ABC/CBS/NBC on D* its gone from MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 and back to (a much lower bandwidth) MPEG-4 video. Is 4k/UHD pretty silly? Yes, because in the end we'll just get an overly compressed junk signal just like regular HD, because that means more channels crammed in and more cash for the providers.
I've seen 4K on a not-yet-released 20-inch Panasonic tablet - it's jaw-dropping. You might not be making "full use", but...oh, my it's beautiful. This from a guy who doesn't care much for TV or video.
OK, you're asking "why a 20" tablet? WTF?" - one vertical market for this is radiologists, who definitely need all the resolution they can get, high dynamic range, and a big screen. Saw it at a medical convention.
When I visit the local Sony and see the 4K 9with true 4K content) side-byside with their best regular HDTVS, the improvement is quite stunning. The get pretty close to "appearing like a real window rather a just a TV" threshhold.
4K is horizontal resolution. That's not a marketing trick, they're using digital theater projection lingo. Makes more sense with theater, since all movies are the same width, but not all are the same height due to aspect ratio differences.
But for some material out there 480p is as good as it will ever get (old 80s tv shows).
Which was ironically shot on 35mm film and would just need to be re-edited to be released in 4K. Just look at Star Trek or Seinfeld in HD. On the other hand, shows from the 90's and 2K's are shot on digital at a much lower resolution.
The only reason to move to 4K in the home is larger screens. That and for computer screens. As in larger than 60". HD TV's came around before the content too.
That's a very bad idea. It's common for television sets to overscan and crop the video inputs. It's hard to find one that will actually do 1:1 display.
Most people who replied to you didn't answer you and most of those people gave you the wrong answer. A number of people said that the Seiki will only run at 1080p with a computer attached, which is just flat wrong.
The 4k Seiki will run in full resolution with both the 39-inch and 50-inch models. The limiting factor on the Seiki's are the connector, which is standard HDMI. A standard HDMI cable cannot push more than 30 hz, which is a very flow refresh rate for monitors these days. Indeed, the Seiki itself supports 120hz, but because it only comes with a cable jack that allows 30hz, you need to use 30hz.
In the next year hopefully other companies or Seiki itself will come out with displays with HDMI2 or Thunderbolt ports at similar price points. This will allow higher refresh rates to be used, prevent screen tearing in 3d work and gaming and improve fast-motion scenes.
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