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

[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

[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

[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).

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

[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.

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...

[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?

Yeah...

[rsilvergun]

but the cat videos look _amazing_ in 4k.

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.

In other news...

[westlake]

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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...

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: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: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.