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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."
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.
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.
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.