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UHD Spec Stomps on Current Blu-ray Spec, But Will Consumers Notice?
An anonymous reader writes Details have emerged on the new UHD Blu-ray spec and players set to start shipping this summer. UHD promises resolutions 4X greater than Blu-ray 1080p as well as much higher data rates, enhanced color space and more audio options. But, will consumers care, and will they be willing to upgrade their HDTV's, AV Receivers, and Blu-ray players to adopt a new format whose benefits may only be realized on ultra large displays or close viewing distances? The article makes the interesting point that UHD isn't synonymous with 4K, even if both handily beat the resolution of most household displays.
The future is increasing frame rates for more realism. Unfortunately, the big manufacturers need to sell 4k televisions, and will keep pushing the dead horse of increased resolution, which is completely pointless for a massive majority of users..
(4K does not count)
And why not?
Because unless you live in a palace with a real fucking movie screen 10 meters across and 6 meters high, 4K will be about as noticeable as an acarian bug. In other words it is completely useless for a normal consumer living in a normal house. You know the 99,99% of the world's population ?
Man, does that hurt. I'm afraid you're right to a very large extent. I could certainly upgrade from a 42" 1080 p screen, but unless I sit really close with my glasses on, it doesn't make much difference.
The nieces and nephews think the TV is something akin to a slide rule - an interesting historical object of little daily import. If it doesn't go on the laptop screen or the phone, it doesn't get watched.
Except for the Star Wars laser disks but that's another sad tech story.....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm projecting a 1080p image onto a 150" screen (my wall). It's damn obvious 1080p isn't enough. From 12' away I can see the individual pixels, and the anti-aliasing is obvious on news and sports graphics. I'd say 1080p video looks about as sharp as 480i video (DVD) on a 50" screen - not very sharp at all. And I'm 45 and my prescription 2 years out of date, so it's not like my eyes are as good as they used to be. If my next eyeglass prescription is sharper, I may have to intentionally defocus the projector image slightly to mitigate the screen door effect.
I'm seeing more and more 70"+ HDTVs for sale in stores, so I have to believe people are buying them. That's about the point when 1080p starts to become limiting at typical living room distances (about 8 ft between sofa and TV). Theoretical max for a room with 8' ceilings is just shy of 200 inches at 16:9, so there's still a lot of room for TVs to potentially grow. Add in more cameras capable of recording 4k, and 4k is going to gain traction in the next 5-10 years whether you want it or not. I've already decided that when the bulb on my current projector deteriorates, I'm just going to replace it with a 4k projector.
The original Ghostbusters film from years back recently had a '4K' remaster released in a 1080P Bluray edition. The film had no more detail than a good DVD version, because the 'original' negative was obviously in a horrid state, and the film had been shot mostly partially out of focus. The 4K did wonders for the GRAIN, though.
4K is great for nature documentaries. Everything else, less so. 4K tears apart the compromises in CGI and VFX, for instance, and the cost of improving the production so it appears 'perfect' in 4K just isn't worth it when ordinary people with ordinary vision watching in the cinema or at a standard viewing distance at home just won't notice the improvement.
Older movies never reached 4K on film, because of lens imperfections, camera judder, film grain, and other 'mechanical' issues. The Bluray transfers of the best 70mm anamorphic movies of the 60s and 70s have been variable, but the best of them definitely benefit from 1080P. Beyond this resolution, almost all of these older movies gain nothing.
Most films shot in the 80s and earlier 90s are noticeable WORSE in image quality than the best from the previous two decades. Their masters are also usually in a terrible state today, and so-called 'digital restoration' largely adds fake detail like edge 'enhancement'.
New material shot digitally CAN exploit any improvements in resolution, but as I said, at a horrible increase in production costs. Sets, costumes, props etc have to be so much better made, and the pipeline skills for doing this don't exist. The DREADFUL Hobbit movies show the problem. Razor sharp images of cheap sets and CGI, with 4K 'detail' of a shoddy and pleasing nature.
The IMAX trick of switching to much higher film quality on specific scenes, like landscapes and crowds, works best for 4K- real detail that isn't created for the movie obviously contains minute elements that 4K captures better. But the synthetic scenes that are crafted for most of the movie will always look WORSE as the resolution increases.
At the viewing distances and screen size I use, I can certainty see a considerable difference.
What is your screen size and distance? You don't say. And you see the difference between what? Standard definition and HD? Or HD and 4k?
I doubt very much you see the difference between HD and 4k, because while 4k TVs are being sold, there is almost no 4k media being sold. So any difference you might see is a result of artificial upsampling. You're fooling yourself.
Let's try an example. Enter "resolution" into google. What does it say?
the degree of sharpness of a computer-generated image as measured by the number of dots per linear inch in a hard-copy printout or the number of pixels across and down on a display screen. Their resolution never failed them, their fervour seemed never slackened.
Google says you are wrong.
Let's see what Microsoft says. Right click your desktop, and choose "Screen Resolution". What does it say? Microsoft says:
Resolution: 2560x1440 (Recommended)
Boy those silly software guys must have got it all wrong. Let's check the hardware guys... How about dell?
http://accessories.us.dell.com...
Under tech spec, that monitor says:
Native Resolution 1920 x 1200
Guess the hardware guys are wrong too. So who uses it the one true "Jane Q. Public" way?