YouTube Goes 4K — and VP9 — At CES

sfcrazy writes "YouTube will demonstrate 4K videos at the upcoming CES. That's not the best news, the best part of this story is that Google will do it using it's own open sourced VP9 technology. Google acquired the technology from O2 and open sourced it. Google started offering the codec on royalty free basis to vendors to boost adoption. Google has also learned the hardware partnership game and has already roped in hardware partners to use and showcase VP9 at CES. According to reports LG (the latest Nexus maker), Panasonic and Sony will be demonstrating 4K YouTube using VP9 at the event. Google today announced that all leading hardware vendors will start supporting the royalty-free VP9 codecs. These hardware vendors include major names like ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba."

Comments

Still 3K$ for a monitor

[ackthpt]

I don't quite have to have it, yet.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

4K for $3K, isn't that a great deal!? Less than a dollar per pixel!

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The Seiki SE50UY04 shows up at less than a thousand pretty frequently.

The one major downside is that the cheapies almost certainly have neither Displayport nor HDMI 2.0 HDMI 1.4 will drive a 4k panel; but maxes out at something like 30Hz. Given that pre-canned 4k video is practically nonexistent (but would be the material that might have been shot at under 30FPS originally, and has plenty of detail in the original film if somebody feels like doing a good transfer), the only real use case is hooking it up to a computer, where the refresh rate will promptly unimpress you.

It won't flicker or anything, this isn't the CRT days; but 30FPS is Not Good.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[ArtForz]

Dell UP2414Q. $1299 for a 24" 3840x2160 60Hz IPS (also 10bpp and wide gamut, but... meh.).
Finally a monitor for us high-DPI weirdos clinging to their preciousss IBM T221.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[aliquis]

If the film is filmed in 4K film wouldn't one really want to have that rather than 4K UHD?

Seem a little weird to shrink the pictures just a little bit.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[tlhIngan]

4K is the horizontal resolution, not the number of pixels. Actually, it is 3840 pixels Ã-- 2160 for most "4K" TVs, or about 8.3 MegaPixels. Some models are much less than $3K. Here is one for $500.

4K Ultra HD is quad-1080P, i.e., 3840x2160.
"4K" can also refer ot 4K Cinema, which is 4096x2160, where the 4K literally means 4Ki.

Though, sometimes it's also confused with the plain old 4000x2160 format, or 4K.

Of course, home electronics use 3840x2160 because it's just doubling 1080p in each dimension, making it easy to scale.

And until you have HDMI2.0, it's really 3840x2160 @ 30fps (same bandwidth as 1080p 3D @ 60fps) using HDMI 1.4 which doubles bandwidth of HDMI 1.3 which supports 1080p @ 60.

HDMI 2.0 is to support full 4K (Cinema) @ 60fps.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unless the DCI changes course, fast, the point will be largely moot. DCI 4K is higher resolution than 4k UHD; but 4k UHD hardware is available right now (with the cheap seats down to under $1000, and the 'walk into a Sony store and look rich and clueless' option still likely to set you back only ~$5k). DCI 4K gear is... niche. Not only is it almost entirely high end projectors designed for commercial movie theaters (and priced accordingly), the DCI writes their specs with all the paranoia, loathing, and pathological aversion to user friendliness that you'd expect from an organization composed of the big seven film studios writing a standard to 'protect' their precious content from being obtained in very, very, high quality digitized form once distributed to theaters. (If you thought that HDCP was a nuisance, check out Section 9. Who wouldn't want a projector where support for FIPS 140-2 level 3 is mandatory, and you can blank the embedded keys just by opening the case incorrectly? The spec also covers actual video-related stuff; but the section on DRM, logging, phoning home, and per-showing authorization was not written with customers in mind.)

It's a pity, because I'd like to see the format with more pixels win; but it would be quite a shock if DCI remains anything other than a morass of acronyms designed to keep movie theaters on a very, very, tight lease until their eventual bankruptcy. "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen." will live on for another generation...

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[DarwinSurvivor]

Too bad the monitor doesn't use DisplayPort, then it could be running at 4K with 60Hz with no problem for over half a decade.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[evilviper]

4K for $3K, isn't that a great deal!? Less than a dollar per pixel!

I suppose you think an HDTV has just 1080 pixels as well?

3840x2160 = 8294400 pixels

8294400 / 3000 = 2,764.8 pixels per dollar

I just wonder if they have the same dead-pixels policy as my first 800x600 LCD monitor way back when. Three out of 8 million isn't a bad ratio.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[aliquis]

Wider is ok for me. I've thought a little about a 21:9 monitor. Among other things simply because movies are often very wide.

Doesn't have to match or care about old HDTV because .. why would it? :), for old content? Now when I mention it I will follow up on that point real soon now.

I wasn't thinking about either of the aspect ratios or letter boxing, I was thinking about the actual down-scaling.

4K ultra wide television: 5136 x 2160 (2.37:1)
DCI 4K: 4096 x 2160 (1.9:1)
4K UHD: 3840 x 2160 (1.78:1)

(DCI 4K also had cinemascope and flat cropped at 2.39:1 and 1.85:1, just because? =P)

So I guess one is just fine if one cut off the extra width from the 1.9 content for the 1.78 screen, but if one is really shrinking the picture to keep the aspect ratio and introduce black borders top and bottom then you'll cut of some resolution along each edge.

I don't know how much it matters that one go away from the native resolution with this kind of encoded data though, maybe someone can tell? Do it decode to pixel perfect or to any resolution?

Obvious reason I saw was that with a little rescaling stuff will be wrong (at least if you have a perfect image at first), then again one reason to stick with UHD after HD would of course be that you can easily put a HD image on a UHD-screen since the aspect ratio is the same and it's 4 times as many pixels. That is one thing I didn't thought about before. I think it make more sense to adjust to the content you will be viewing rather than something old though, then again I suppose content will be made in and for UHD too and not necessarily DCI and then UHD is just fine too.

So maybe UHD is the best after all :).

As for the number of pixels I don't care much since they are so close anyway. I wouldn't mind a wider aspect format though since so much movie content is wider than 16:9.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[Kjella]

The DCI spec won't change because it's a cinema standard to protect cinema content, but there's no reason for consumer level gear to follow it. Whether you have a 16:9 (HDTV), 17:9 (DCI) or 21:9 (ultra wide) ratio screen it should play consumer movies just fine. The only question is if the delivery system will have a 17:9 version of the movie, it depends on how they've reframed the movie. If you could take the 3840x2160 stream and add a 256x2160 slice left/right you could have "dual format" discs that'd give you the full 4K DCI picture, assuming you have a 17:9 screen. That would be rather neat.

However, most consumers will get 16:9 screens to avoid black bars/stretching on HDTV and BluRays, it'd just be for niche movie buffs who really want those last pixels and will buy a 17:9 screen to get it. It's not ever going to become a mainstream resolution when 16:9 is so entrenched as it is now.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[TheRaven64]

Yes, but the problem with DisplayPort is that it's a royalty-free standard, so to implement it the manufacturer has to pay royalties to no one, making it expensive. In contrast, HDMI requires implementers to pay $10,000 per year plus a royalty rate of $0.15 per unit, reduced to $0.05 if the HDMI logo is used, and further reduced to $0.04 if HDCP is also implemented, making it cheaper. Or something.

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[Jupix]

I've actually got a Sony X9005A as a desktop display for my PC and no, the 29Hz refresh rate does not make it "unimpressive". If you're looking for getting impressed then the resolution will vastly overpower the refresh rate. When you have a window-like view to your games, photos etc. you just instinctively ignore the slow refresh.

The worst thing is probably the input lag introduced by the low refresh rate. The thing has one of the lowest input lag scores on the market, but the slow refresh still makes cursor input really laggy. It's not the kind of lag you see but the kind you feel. It's gone if you switch to 1080p, but you won't if you have a 4K panel, will you.

FWIW the Sony supports hdmi 2.0 and thus 4k@60fps, but good luck finding a GPU that outputs it. I'm stuck waiting for the eventual NV GTX 800 series which probably will. NVIDIA haven't even confirmed it.

On the topic of Youtube, I thought they'd supported 4K since 2010. In fact 4K vids on Youtube were one of the first materials I tested my panel on. They stream fine over 24mbps ADSL2 but the bitrate is not great (the vids are noisy).

Re:Still 3K$ for a monitor

[JoshRosenbaum]

Well if we're gonna get technical, you just calculated pixels per dollar whereas he was calculating dollars per pixel. Switch your numbers around:
3000 dollars / 8294400 pixels = 0.00036 dollars per pixel
So technically he is still right. It is less than a dollar per pixel.

4K video

[BringsApples]

I had to look it up, so here ya go...

4K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels. Several 4K resolutions exist in the fields of digital television and digital cinematography

Re:4K video

[ackthpt]

I had to look it up, so here ya go...

4K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels. Several 4K resolutions exist in the fields of digital television and digital cinematography

And with that resolution you can see the layers of pancake makeup on your favourite actors and actresses, plus all that spitting during sports events in astounding clarity.

Well, I'd like the vertical resolution just for photo editing, it would be nice to see the full resolution without affect from scaling algorithms.

Re:4K video

[Mike Buddha]

Yeah, but it will deliver 1080p and 720p video to you with lower bandwidth requirements. Less buffering and fewer artifacts (because of lowered data requirements and a corresponding lower rate of dropped packets).

Re:4K video

[jedidiah]

>> And with that resolution you can see the layers of pancake makeup on your favourite actors and actresses, plus all that spitting during sports events in astounding clarity
>
> ...in stills.

Nope. Video shows you all of Hollywood's ugly skin conditions in all of their frightening glory. Although you don't even need 4K for that. Just regular 1080p will give you that effect.

Sometimes, you really don't want to see everything.

Re:4K video

[Kjella]

And with that resolution you can see the layers of pancake makeup on your favourite actors and actresses, plus all that spitting during sports events in astounding clarity.

You're like an echo from 15 years ago when 1920x1080 was to replace NTSC 640x480, both HD porn and HD sports looks great despite the naysaying. Movies and TV too, if the costumes, props, backdrops or special effects no longer looked real they simply had to improve until they did. Why should UHD be any different? It might be that many people meet it with a yawn like Super Audio CD vs CD, for the vast majority a regular CD was more than good enough already but the "too much detail" should be thoroughly debunked by now.

Re:4K video

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a complete waste of money. You'd need a gigantic screen and to be sitting so close that you can't see all of it in order to need 4k. 4k is for movie theaters.

I'm surprised that the idiots on slashdot aren't aware of the pixel density that the eye can perceive is the limiting factor here. Even with the current crop of HDTVs being 1920x1080, you need a rather massive TV and to be sitting quite close in order for the pixels to be a problem.

4K really only makes sense for monitors and large screens like at the theater or ball park.

So how's it look?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Is there any word on how this '4K' actually looks at bitrates Youtube can push enough ads to pay for, and your ISP will permit?

I have the greatest respect for people who actually handle the challenges of paying the computational costs of video compression and decompression (and scaling if necessary) as efficiently as possible; but once their work is done, a nominal resolution (even an actual X pixels by Y pixels value, not some marketing bullshit) is nearly meaningless unless you are in the (rare for video, probably less rare for audio) situation of having such a high bitrate that the quality of your reproduction is being constrained by your resolution.

Barring an increase in bitrate, will it even be possible to distinguish between Xmb/s nominally 1080 video scaled up to 4k and Xmb/s nominally 4k video?

Re:So how's it look?

[ackthpt]

I have a feeling AT&T, Comcast, et al, are working feverishly to figure if they can make money with existing bandwith caps on this.

THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[QA]

That’s not the best news, the best part of this story is that Google will do it using it’s own open sourced VP9 technology. Google acquired the technology from O2 and open sourced it. Google started offering the codec on royalty free basis to vendors to boost adoption.

Google has also learned the hardware partnership game and has already roped in hardware partners to use and showcase VP9 at CES. According to reports LG (the latest Nexus maker), Panasonic and Sony will be demonstrating 4K YouTube using VP9 at the event.

VP9 keeps FSF happy, users happy, content providers happy, carriers/ISPs happy and hardware vendors happy.

Google today announced that most leading hardware vendors will start supporting the royalty-free VP9 codecs. These hardware vendors include major names like ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.

VP9 is beneficial for everyone as it makes the codec available to vendors for free of cost – thus boosting its adoption compared to the non-free H.264/265. At the same time being Open Standard and Open Source it also ensures that users won’t require proprietary (and insecure) technologies like Flash to view content. The third benefit of VP9 is that it can deliver high-resolutions at low bit-rates thus using less bandwidth to watch content. It means that those on slower connections will not have to wait for buffering and be satisfied with low-resolution videos. It will benefit those on faster connections as they won’t have to waste their expensive bandwidth on videos.

Re:THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[SerpentMage]

And this is a problem how? It is called competition you know, a free market you know. And guess what I am mucho happier that Google is competing without clubbing everybody over the head using patents. You know like that Fruit company?

Re:THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[iluvcapra]

Google has also learned the hardware partnership game and has already roped in hardware partners to use and showcase VP9 at CES. According to reports LG (the latest Nexus maker), Panasonic and Sony will be demonstrating 4K YouTube using VP9 at the event.

I work in film post-production in Hollywood and I'm not sure we've had any consultations on VP9, MPEG always gets SMPTE and the ASC involved in screenings and quality shootouts. Of course Google might just be trying to buffalo filmmakers, which would be nothing new, I suppose. "Content providers," as a term, rarely describes the people working the camera or doing the color (let alone syncing the sound). If you're a professional the licensing of the codec is completely irrelevant, it's a poor economy if the quality is even remotely compromised.

Panasonic and Sony were demonstrating Google TV STBs a few years ago and I we all know how that turned out. It's basically no-cost for these shops to turn out this gear for whatever marketing event Google cares to throw. What you want to hear is Sony Consumer Electronics saying they wouldn't support the next MPEG standard, or Sony Pictures Entertainment announcing they'd standardize their delivery format on VP9. SPE is one of my employers and the codecs that, say, Crackle.com uses is decided by a group of people completely independent from the consumer electronics folks, and Crackle will support whatever codec is optimal on the target STB/mobile/desktop platform.

Why would a provider want to go single-track with a codec which is "Open" in the way Android is, which is to say, you can download the source code, but the reference implementation that's distributed to millions of clients is controlled by a single vendor?

Re:THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[symbolset]

You people are sick. Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars to give us a free and open universal video codec, to crush the MPEG-LA monopoly that actually sued ordinary people for posting their own cat videos over patent licensing, and improves it enough that it can do 4k video even over LTE, and actually gathers enough industry support to ensure universal hardware adoption. And you have to bitch about it like you have ever in your life achieved something so globally useful and helpful and difficult. So you don't like it. Here's my gift to you: you don't have to use it. There. Now we can both be happy.

Re:THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[TheRaven64]

The difference with VP9 is that there isn't already an entrenched standard that's better. When work on Theora started, MPEG-1 was still pretty common for web video, but by the time it was released everyone had moved to MPEG-4. Theora was definitely a big step up from MPEG-1 (and MPEG-2), but not as good as MPEG-4. When VP8 was open sourced, it was better than MPEG-4 (ASP), but most of the rest of the world had moved on to H.264. Now VP9 and H.265 are appearing at the same time. No one is considering switching from H.265 to VP9, they're considering switching from H.264 to either VP9 or H.265. If VP9 is royalty free and comparable quality, then that's a big incentive to move in that direction, particularly as they already have the H.264 infrastructure set up to support the devices that can't do VP9.

Re:THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[fatphil]

Frauhoffer say that VP9 has 8.4% worse bitrate (at same PSNR) than H.264/MPEG-AVC, and has encoding rates that are 100x slower. See page 3 here:
http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf

I see no incentive to move in the direction of VP9. It's google very persuasively shoving their proprietory format on everyone, that's all. We criticised MicroSoft for doing that in the past, we shouldn't pretend that google is anything apart from an enormous multinational that wants to control a monoculture.

Re:THIS is fantastic news! From the article...

[ArtForz]

3-clause BSD is a proprietary license? Since when?

Yeah...

[rsilvergun]

but the cat videos look _amazing_ in 4k.

4K videos of russians crashing into each other

[alen]

well worth the $3000 TV and the $100 a month internet bill to go with it

Re: The most important question goes unanswered

[danomac]

When you see what they really look like you'll wish the resolution was 320x200.

Re:Microsoft and 90s all over again

[msobkow]

Oh, yes, of course, an open sourced codec is clearly the same problem as a platform-specific closed source product designed to lock the customer in to a particular vendor.

The only thing they have in common is that you hate them both.

More Google ADD

[rudy_wayne]

When Google bought Youtube they converted all the videos to h.264 and made that the standard. Now all of a sudden h.264 is evil.

Re:More Google ADD

[MildlyTangy]

"Now all of a sudden h.264 is evil."

hyperbole much?

H.264 cant do 4k like vp9 which is royalty free and open source, where H.264 is not. And it will be widely supported by all the manufacturers that matter.

I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

What exactly is the problem here?

In other news...

[westlake]

Related Posts

Is LG Ditching Google TV? Working On WebOS TV?
Goodbye Patent Evil H.264; YouTube Switches To WebM
Opera Welcomes Google's Move To Drop H.264 Support
Microsoft Backs H.264, I Back Betamax

YouTube goes 4K at CES, brings royalty free VP9 to fore front

There are some very big players moving in HEVC.

Netflix has tossed their hat in the 4K ring with the announcement of 4K streaming starting next month.

The jump from streaming 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 is not something that can be done by just flipping a switch. First of all, viewers need a 4K TV, which practically no one has yet. PCMag's Chloe Albanesius has informed us that Netflix's 4K content will require ''somewhere between 12 and 15 Mbps'' to stream properly. That;s a pretty serious connection which, again, not many .

By using H.265 HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) moving forward instead of the currently popular AVC H.264, Netflix thinks they will be able to stream the same quality they currently transmit at half the bitrate. Not only does this mean there's room for higher quality 4K streams, but the current HD content will be transmitted more efficiently.

It's unclear when we'll see 4K streaming available in standalone set-top boxes any time soon, or whether or not it will require new hardware in order to handle the increased resolution in the future, but for now it looks like the TV itself is the home for 4K streaming.

Netflix is bringing 4K streaming to TVs with H.265 and House of Cards [Dec 19]

4K YouTube? Great...

[wonkey_monkey]

So now we'll get idiots uploading cellphone footage of clips from Family Guy (dubbed into Spanish) scaled up to 4K instead of 1080p...

Always how it goes with new tech

[Sycraft-fu]

It is just entering the consumer arena. Hence it is expensive. However since it is entering the consumer arena, we see companies like Youtube starting to support it.

Re:Always how it goes with new tech

[gbjbaanb]

I think the point is so Google gets VP9 support out there, mainstream.

See, we all know it'll be so highly compressed it'll look crap. I'm sure that's intentional partly to save bandwidth, but also to encourage you to buy stuff instead of just youtube streaming it all the time.

But the 4k over VP9 only, that's a message to producers that they must start to make their stuff available in VP9 format if they don't want to be "left behind" in the future video technology, and they will. And once that's the only format natively supported on all 4k playback devices, and all content gets produced in it, they will start to make content available in VP9 for all formats, and we'll have royalty-free video everywhere. 4k has nothing to do with it except as a way to kick the industry in the right direction.

Oh and 4k porn... I wouldn't, slightly fuzzy images are better for your intended purpose in watching it, than the "full gynaecologist" video version.

Everybody except Apple

[Overzeetop]

And not a single Apple device will play VP9. Every Apple device will require transcoding, or using whatever format they find optimizes their [battery life|thermal envelope|PROFIT], which will nudge every well heeled, non-technical user to gravitate away from VP9.

Re:Everybody except Apple

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And not a single Apple device will play VP9. Every Apple device will require transcoding, or using whatever format they find optimizes their [battery life|thermal envelope|PROFIT], which will nudge every well heeled, non-technical user to gravitate away from VP9.

Jobs is gone. Android marketshare is up. Apple may not be as wedded to h265 as they were to h264. Things change.

Re:Everybody except Apple

[Overzeetop]

True. Jony has destroyed much of the UI Jobs toiled over; maybe he will sell out and join this open standard. My money is on the no side of this though. I see Apple devolving into all the bad things with none of the elegance now that Jobs is feeding the worms.

Re:Everybody except Apple

[ne0n]

That's OK, Macs don't come in 4k anyway. When they do I suspect they'll be interested in supporting Youtube.

Re:Everybody except Apple

[evilviper]

And not a single Apple device will play VP9.

That's utterly untrue. You might mean that Apple devices won't include VP9 support out-of-the-box (unlike Android), but that's quite different, and won't necessarily hamper adoption. You might as well say: "And not a single Apple device will have Google Maps."

All that's needed is for a popular iOS multimedia app to include VP9, or perhaps even for someone to simply implement a VP9 decoder in javascript:

http://libwebpjs.hohenlimburg.org/vp8/webm-javascript-decoder/

Besides, it's far more of an uphill battle for Apple these days than it was before. They're no longer seen as THE smart phone platform, nor do they have a monopoly on rich, young influential people. Plus Theora/VP3 was crap next to H.264 and VP8 didn't appear until the fight was long over. This time VP9 is around before H.265 has a foothold, and there isn't no gaping chasm of disparity as there was before. Not to mention the Opus audio codec is often considered better than anything else out there, including HE-AACv2 (or whatever the preferred branding).

Would Dell be ok?

[AHuxley]

http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/02/dell-ultrasharp-4k-monitors/
3,840 x 2,160 resolution, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB 3.0, US$1,399 for the UltraSharp 24?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7563/dell-24-uhd-up2414q-gets-a-price-28-uhd-4k-3840x2160-announced

High hopes.

[westlake]

While YouTube's preference is VP9, [YouTube's Francisco ] Varela left open the possibility that the site might use HEVC in the future. ''We are not announcing that we will not support HEVC,'' said Varela, adding that YouTube supports 17 different codecs currently.

According to YouTube, the first partner TVs and other devices that incorporate VP9 will start hitting the market in 2015. In 2014, YouTube will start transcoding HD video into VP9.

YouTube's Ultra HD Strategy Could Spark Battle Over 4K Video-Delivery Tech

I am not convinced that the transcode to YouTube will be enough to derail HEVC.

On May 9, 2013, NHK and Mitsubishi Electric announced that they had jointly developed the first HEVC encoder for 8K Ultra HD TV, which is also called Super Hi-Vision (SHV). The HEVC encoder supports the Main 10 profile at Level 6.1 allowing it to encode 10-bit video with a resolution of 7680x4320 at 60 fps.

On October 16, 2013, the OpenHEVC decoder was added to FFmpeg.

On October 29, 2013, Elemental Technologies announced support for real-time 4K HEVC video processing. Elemental provided live video streaming of the 2013 Osaka Marathon on October 27, 2013, in a workflow designed by K-Opticom, a telecommunications operator in Japan. Live coverage of the race in 4K HEVC was available to viewers at the International Exhibition Center in Osaka. This transmission of 4K HEVC video in real-time was an industry-first.

On November 14, 2013, DivX developers released information on HEVC decoding performance using an Intel i7 CPU at 3.5 GHz which had 4 cores and 8 threads. The DivX 10.1 Beta decoder was capable of 210.9 fps at 720p, 101.5 fps at 1080p, and 29.6 fps at 4K.

High Efficiency Video Coding

An inbuilt HEVC decoder is not entirely new of course, as LG's LA970 series of UHDTVs released last year also offered the same feature. However, the company's latest 4K Ultra HD TVs due to be unveiled at CES 2014 will use a ViXS XCode 6400 SoC (system on chip) that can decode HEVC-based content at 3840x2160 resolution with support for 60p frame rate and 10-bit colour depth, a world's first.

LG's 2014 4K TV Models Gets HDMI 2.0 & 10-Bit HEVC/H.265 Decoder [Jan 3]

Re:60fps

[jones_supa]

Completely agree. I'm not terribly interested in the jump from 1080p to 4K, but very interested in seeing 60fps content.

Re:Microsoft and 90s all over again

[msobkow]

Can you point to any vendors being locked out by the use of VP9, other than through their own volition?

The sky is not falling, Chicken Little.

Re:Oh great. And when will they fix their crap?

[dbraden]

I, too, have been having a terrible experience with YouTube, with it often times just freezing at the half or 2/3rd mark. It also seems that when you select a specific resolution, they take it as merely a suggestion. As you noticed, you can no longer let it buffer, they try to do some type of adaptive resolution switching which more often than not results in the stream dropping down to 240 just because I chose to skip ahead. Very annoying.

Re:Snowball's chance in hell to get adopted

[Lennie]

Yes, when you enable the HTML5-player some videos are still using Flash.

If you look closely, you might have noticed that videos with 'annotations' all load in Flash, those without annotations load in HTML5.

While I have seen videos on YouTube that had annotations in the HTML5-player (they clearly do some A/B testing at times), I would call that: not yet for general consumption.

So it is work in progress, but they aren't moving fast.