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."

Comments

I want my games to have all the pixels!

[Major Ralph]

I can understand why 4k televisions may not take off, but 4k monitors will definitely be a big deal. Just look at how AMD and NVIDIA are gearing up their GPUs to support it.

Hnnnnnggggg

[L4t3r4lu5]

To make full use of that resolution ("Retina" quality, i.e. indistinguishable pixels) at a viewing distance of 10ft you'd need a screen 150" screen. That's 8ft wide 4ft6in tall.

Re:Hnnnnnggggg

[MozeeToby]

The ability to see individual pixels is not the limit of perceptible improvement though. Even on 'retina' displays there is visible aliasing on diagonal lines. Think about it like this, a 12nm chip fab produces individual elements at 12nm, but places them with much, much better than 12nm accuracy.

Re:Hnnnnnggggg

[jon3k]

Where are you getting your numbers from?

Using this: http://isthisretina.com/

I got: 4K display at 70" becomes "retina" at 55 inches.

Re:Hnnnnnggggg

[Anonymous Coward]

This, like the "you can only see so many colos" argument is misleading.

You absolutely can tell the difference between 4k and 1080p at average viewing sizes and distances - but not because you can pick out the individual pixels.
Lower pixel density creates visual artifacts. Aliasing, uneven gradients, pixel pop (Where small elements or points of light like stars get lost between large pixels), etc.
If you see a 4k and a 1080p display side by side the difference is shocking.

There is absolutely a place for 4k TV and monitors. Fuck, I'd even advocate double that (16k - 2d surfaces are squared you know)
People aren't going to pay a huge premium for that though. They'll pay a reasonable price smiliar to what they paid for their last TV when it's time to get a new one.

Fix HD First

[Rob Riggs]

Why the heck would I want UHD when most HD content is so compressed that the artifacts are easily discernible from across the room. At least that is my experience with every HD medium I have seen OTA, cable, satellite, and to a much lesser degree in Blu-ray.

Re:Fix HD First

[MightyYar]

I came here to post this. I'm in the minority, but to my eye it is more pleasant to watch the old grainy picture than it is to watch compressed high resolution video. In particular, my eye gets drawn to grass. Every time I watch a game played on grass (baseball, football, the other football, etc), the digital compression just hijacks my eyes. I can learn to ignore it over time, like watching a movie with subtitles, but it still is not my preference.

Re:Fix HD First

[realityimpaired]

Why the heck would I want UHD when most HD content is so compressed that the artifacts are easily discernible from across the room. At least that is my experience with every HD medium I have seen OTA, cable, satellite, and to a much lesser degree in Blu-ray.

You have a point, but you lost credibility when you included OTA in that list. OTA is uncompressed 18.2mbit MPEG. There is no point in compressing an OTA broadcast because the bandwidth is functionally unlimited, and I don't even think that the ATSC standard supports compression beyond normal MPEG2. When you see artifacts on an OTA broadcast it is most emphatically *not* from compression, it's usually from interference or a badly tuned/aligned antenna.

With a proper antenna setup, an OTA HD broadcast looks pristine... *way* better than the cable provider's offering. Some stations are broadcasting SD signals using digital/ATSC, but that is a completely different animal than compression.

All that said, I can't make a case for wanting UHD either. Compression aside, it's an incremental upgrade that the majority of users won't notice. The jump from an SD stream to an HD stream was a *huge* improvement, but the jump from HD to UHD simply isn't that much better. I liken it to Sharp's introduction of the yellow pixel in their TV's -- Most people have trichromatic vision, and the 3 colours included in a normal TV (Red/Green/Blue) were chosen because those are the colours of the cones in your eye. Ignoring the fact that *none* of the media is encoded for RGBY, the addition of the yellow doesn't add anything because your eye physically can't see the additional colour depth. In order to actually see the improved picture from UHD, you need to be sitting close enough to the TV that most people would be uncomfortable.

Obligatory disclaimer: I work for a company that provides IPTV/Satellite services, and we also own broadcast TV stations.

Re:I would love 4K!!!

[jerpyro]

I would love 4k too but I don't want to use it for a TV, I want to use it for a computer monitor (How many IDEs can you fit in 4k?). I keep looking at this particular TV and thinking about how much space I'd have to clear off on my desk to use it with my laptop:
http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/dp/B00DOPGO2G

Much cheaper than a lot of the 4k monitors out there, but is the image quality good enough to not make your eyes bleed?

Re:I would love 4K!!!

[canadiannomad]

Let me put it this way:
Linus Torvalds Advocates For 2560x1600 Standard Laptop Displays

The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad.

Re:Can't escape the laws of physics

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to look at the higher resolution phones to realize what you're saying is bullshit (and those are ridiculously small 5" screens, although albeit you do look at it closer than a television). The so-called "retina" display by Apple is still far short of the maximum resolution we can see. Have you actually gone and looked at a 1080p display before deciding on your 720p monitor, or did you trust your flawed math and went with it? Here's the actual math with references to the visual acuity numbers.

Whay doesn't /. save some time

[geekoid]

and just repost every complaint about going to 1080p form 10 years ago? Jest replace 1080 with 4k.
Or flat screen with 4k.

People are going to want 4k because it's stunning.

If I had time I would look at the history of the loud complainers and see if they were the people saying no one would do HD or pay for a flat screen.

Re:Can't escape the laws of physics

[evilviper]

4K is the video equivalent of Monster Cable.

While I'm no fan of 4K TVs... You're using a vastly oversimplified model of human vision:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230181&cid=18677583

Re:There really is no point

[JaredOfEuropa]

4k may not make much sense on a 42" TV, but on 55" the difference is clearly visible. And screens are getting bigger all the time, with sizes around 65" being common and even a few screens of over 100" hitting the market.

Also the comparison to 3D is flawed. 3D requires 3D content, but viewing stuff on a 4k screen carries a benefit even for content not in that resolution. Compare an ordinary blu-ray on a HD screen and a 4K one (both 55" or over); you'll see a marked difference in quality thanks to the upscaler. The same way DVDs look way better on my upscaling HD screen than they do on a lower res one of the same size.

Re:I would love 4K!!!

[wagnerrp]

Higher resolution beyond a certain point no longer becomes about displaying more data, but displaying it better. The font remains the same physical size, but more pixels are devoted to it, leading to much crisper, clearer text, without reverting to tricks like anti-aliased and sub-pixel rendered fonts.