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4K Ultra HD Likely To Repeat the Failure of 3D Television

Posted by timothy on from the nostradamus-was-wrong-for-once dept.

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."

27 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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    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.

      --
      Someone had to do it.
    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.

  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.
  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.

  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.

  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 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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
  9. 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.
  10. 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.

  11. 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.

    --
    Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.