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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."

42 of 559 comments (clear)

  1. I would love 4K!!! by JDeane · · Score: 4, Funny

    But I don't want to pay 4K.

    1. Re:I would love 4K!!! by jerpyro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

    2. Re:I would love 4K!!! by canadiannomad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
    3. Re:I would love 4K!!! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      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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    4. Re:I would love 4K!!! by skids · · Score: 4, Funny

      It will be like HD and 3D. In a few years it will become standard on mid range and even cheap TVs.

      ...and People On The Internet(TM) will still be complaining that it's all "hype" and will never make it in the market, even though they own one.

    5. Re:I would love 4K!!! by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Just because it's being force fed to you, it doesn't mean you are actually using it.

      I own a Smart TV but I have a Roku attached to it. If my next TV also has "smart tv" features, they will be completely transparent to me. It's like a PC that has a force bundled copy of Windows on it.

      Will never see it. Will never use it.

      The real question here is "where's the content?".

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    6. Re:I would love 4K!!! by somersault · · Score: 5, Interesting

      the Macbook Air is a specialist laptop specifically designed to be smaller, thinner and lighter. Apple has lots of laptops with 2560x1600 resolution, you just chose one designed for a different purpose.

      Why do so many tablets have a higher resolution (and probably higher quality) display than the Air then? Even the iPad Mini has a higher resolution.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    7. Re:I would love 4K!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    8. Re:I would love 4K!!! by omnichad · · Score: 4, Funny

      TV isn't interactive - if you're moving, you're doing it wrong.

    9. Re:I would love 4K!!! by omnichad · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    10. Re:I would love 4K!!! by scamper_22 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but I recently went out to get a new monitor.

      I ended up getting a 1080p 23 inch LED TV instead and just plug in my PC via HDMI.

      Now, like I said, I'm a simpleton, and I'm sure other people can make use of much higher resolutions or other characteristic that my simple eyes and brain cannot process.

      But for me, I sat there staring at the monitor and then the TVs. Then I looked at the price; they're about the same and it just made sense to get the TV. It comes with built in sound, a remote control (good for sound control too).

    11. Re:I would love 4K!!! by wagnerrp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:I would love 4K!!! by wagnerrp · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  2. I want my games to have all the pixels! by Major+Ralph · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
    1. Re:I want my games to have all the pixels! by rogoshen1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:I want my games to have all the pixels! by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:I want my games to have all the pixels! by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The x1080 is more popular as a TV because movies are filmed in 16::9.

      No they aren't.

      HDTV is shot at 16:9 because that's what the TVs are. But movies are usually wider, at 1.85:1 or 2.40:1.

      16:9 was chosen because it was more or less a compromise between the common widescreen film ratios and the narrower 4:3 SDTV and 1.375:1 Academy ratios.

      There's a good youtube video about this sort of thing here, and the wiki article on the 16:9 ratio is also handy.

      Now it may well come to pass that movies will be shot in a native 16:9 ratio, but so far the trend is simply to make sure that all the action fits into that area when they crop the image for transfer to home video.

      Of course, the moderate popularity of IMAX weirds things a bit. I remember seeing the Bluray release of The Dark Knight, parts of which were filmed for IMAX, which has a 1.44:1 ratio. The rest of the movie was in a more typical 2.40:1 ratio. Their solution was to present the conventionally filmed parts of the movie letterboxed, but to show the IMAX sections in 16:9, filling the frame of the TV, but still cropping the top and bottom of the original image.

      --
      -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
  3. There really is no point by nctritech · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:There really is no point by Guppy06 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have some fine, genuine 24-karat gold-plated HDMI cables you may be interested in.

    2. Re:There really is no point by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Funny

      You're 2 feet away from a 42" display?

      Are you stupid? Does you neck hurt yet? Are you tired of having to lean over to get a good head on look at the 1/3rd of the screen on either side of the middle or do you just ignore 2/3rds of your screen.

      Sitting 2 feet away from a 42" display makes you a moron unqualified to continue this conversation.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    3. Re:There really is no point by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    4. Re:There really is no point by Immerman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I take it you've never played a first-person game on a 40" screen. Granted I'm usually a little closer to 3' away (arms length is the recommended distance to sit from a monitor). Filling a larger portion of your FOV is a great way to boost immersiveness. And yes, I do have to move my eyes a lot to see the full detail in the corner of the screen, but I have to do that out in the real world to.

      Works great for office work as well (though that 4K resolution would be a huge bonus), in which case I'm generally only looking at a portion of the screen at a time, but can switch between tasks/monitor different things simply by moving my eyes, almost like working on a physical desk. And it's a big boost over multiple monitors in that you can size windows to whatever size and aspect ratio makes sense for the tasks at hand.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  4. Hnnnnnggggg by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    1. Re:Hnnnnnggggg by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Hnnnnnggggg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Hnnnnnggggg by jddj · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  5. Fix HD First by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    1. Re:Fix HD First by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:Fix HD First by Russ1642 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Fix HD First by realityimpaired · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Fix HD First by Trip+Ericson · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Fix HD First by lobosrul · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Fix HD First by dinfinity · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If an option, use ffdshow. Add noise.

      Best way to turn almost all compression artifacts into regular noise. Your brain is great at perceiving that as being higher quality imagery.
      Using post resize noise or post resize sharpening (MPC-HC or MPC-BE sharpen complex 2) also works great to turn 720p content into '1080p'.

  6. Problem is, most content struggles to do 1080p by ShooterNeo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As it is right now, the only true 1080p content is high bitrate blu-ray disks, and PC games. There is nothing else.

    None of the currently released consoles can render 1920x1080 at 60 fps : they use a lower frame rate (30 fps) and a lower rendering resolution (not even 720p internally for most games). The next gen can maybe do it, but I suspect that some games will use lower frame rates or internal resolutions so that they can put more detail into other things.

    Broadcast channels, satellite channels, and HD cable channels all generally are full of lower bit-rate tradeoffs. You need about 30-50 mbps to do 1080p without compromises or visible encoding errors.

    Maybe in another 10 years, when the technology is actually fully utilizing the 1080p displays we already have, will an upgrade make sense.

    Note that this is for video content. For your computer or tablet PC, higher resolutions are useful, and shipping tablets are already at higher resolutions.

  7. Re:Can't escape the laws of physics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Whay doesn't /. save some time by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    1. Re:Whay doesn't /. save some time by amaupin · · Score: 4, Funny

      I know plenty of people who really can't see much difference between NTSC and HD. This is one of the reasons why they still watch DVDs, and not Blu-Rays.

      I, too, have parents.

  9. Re:Can't escape the laws of physics by evilviper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  10. Who Cares about 4K? by trongey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wake me when they announce 640K.
    That should be enough for anybody.

    --
    You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
  11. 4K is stunning by peter303 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  12. Seiki 4K by neoshroom · · Score: 4, Informative

    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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  13. I think everyone is missing the point of 4k here. by a4r6 · · Score: 3

    It is not to have 4 times as many things on the screen as a 1080p monitor. It is to have a 2:1 pixel ratio (like all the apple retina displays) or somewhere in-between. Web content, thanks partly to apple pushing high dpi displays, is now often tuned for this, showing you twice as much detail in the same space while keeping the dimensions it would have on a normal dpi display.

    Read what anandtech had to say about testing a 4k monitor, and about how nice it is to look at fonts that arent just anti-aliased, but hardly have aliasing to begin with, thanks to the dpi.

    I run a 1440p monitor, as it was the most pixels I could reasonably afford, (4K is just too much $) and I scale everything up so it's roughly 1080p sized. I love it for the clarity and sharpness, not for the number of things I can cram on the screen. (Although I do run my font just a little small in my text editor/ide)

    There are of course downsides besides the price. Most of the 1440p monitors have poor input latency, meaning your mouse might feel a tiny bit laggy or put you at a slight disadvantage if you're a gamer, compared to lower latency 1080p monitors. That's totally ignoring whether your video card can render smoothly at that resolution. With 4K I'm not sure but I suspect it's the same or worse.