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Japan Starts 8K TV Broadcasts In Time For Rio Olympics (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Japan began the world's first regular 8K television broadcasts on Monday, five days ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games. 8K refers to broadcasts with a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels. That's 16 times the resolution of today's full high-definition (FHD) broadcasts and four times that of the 4K standard, which is only just emerging in many other countries. The format used by NHK, which it calls "Super Hi-Vision," also features 22.2-channel surround sound. Public broadcaster NHK launched a satellite channel that will broadcast a mix of 8K and 4K content as it prepares to launch full-scale 8K transmissions in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The channel will be on air daily from 10am until 5pm, with extended hours during the Rio Olympics. Japan's early lead in 8K broadcasting is thanks to NHK and its Science and Technology Research Laboratories in Tokyo.
We'll even be able to digitize the fingerprints from the corpses that come floating up in the lagoon.
My Schwartz will look huge in 8K
4K resolution is hard to notice at typical living room viewing distances of 8-10' with anything smaller than a 65" TV. 8K is going to only really make a difference in something larger than 80-90". Most people, even with 20/20 vision, have insufficient visual acuity to resolve such a resolution under these conditions. The vast majority of the public does not buy displays this big, and much less so in Japan where living spaces are tiny. 8K is a great resolution for large venue screens and for mezzanine/master files, but has little to no value for the consumer and imposes substantial costs on content creators, distributors and CE companies. As a point of comparison, some of my colleagues at a major movie studio were talking about scanning old film stock with 6K resolution and content with it. 8K is 4x as much storage as 4K, and we haven't even begun to talk about far more tangible technologies of importance like HDR and wide color gamut.
As for this 22.2 business, it is an infernal waste of time. The extra LFE channel (the ".2" in 22.2) is completely redundant because low frequencies should not be able to be located by the human ear in a properly set up theater, home, small or large venue. The 22 channels is an anachronism in the era of emergent object-based audio coding as found in AC-4 and MPEG-H audio. There, an arbitrary number of objects has position location information recorded in 3D space and relies on the playback rendering device to place the sounds in whatever speaker configuration may actually exist, from a single mono speaker in front of the viewer to dozens of speakers in an array as you'll find in a Dolby Atmos enabled theater. By channelizing audio, NHK not only forces an arbitrary speaker configuration on the viewer, but substantially complicates the job of downmixing to more traditional configurations such as 5.1 or 7.1, or even some of the newer configurations like 5.1+4 and 7.1+4 (the +4 indicating four height speakers over the listener/viewer), and is a complete waste of bandwidth, assuming they even carry the metadata and publish how the downmixing will be accomplished AND will be QC'd by a real person. Again, the producers, distributors and CE companies are behind the eight ball trying to support this nonsense in an era where only a very small fraction of people have 7.1 in the home, much less in Japan where premium audio solutions as you'll find in Akihabara consist almost exclusively of sound bars with speaker arrays that can do the same job.
Sorry to be so cynical about this, but there comes a point where this gets out of control for the average viewer and for the people who are in the industry making and distributing and playing back this content. NHK long jumped the shark even as nice as their jumbo display every broadcast show I have gone to may be.
At least we'll be able to see the turds floating in the water.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
What's the point?
You don't see it? I think its clear enough. Its all in the details. You just don't get the big picture.
Bill Gates said so.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
WRONG. I went to Tokyo in 2012. I stood in Akihabara and watched an 8K video of the London Olympics opening and Closing ceremonies provided by NHK on a 8K screen. I also own a 4K screen at home so I can say with absolute certainty. The difference was highly noticeable. The camera angles they were shooting took in the entire stadium. You could make out every face in the crowd. Could actually pick individuals with clarity in shots which would never be possible on a normal resolution or even 2-4k resolution screen. 8K resolution is perfect for cinemas. Admittedly it seems a bit pointless on a TV below 70-80+ inches in size. But the picture quality was stunning and to this day I haven't seen anything that looked as good. Japan has the right idea. By pushing technology and adoption of technology they are staying ahead of their competitors. Sure they're not wildly ahead, but they are still ahead of their competitors.
if they don't tell you the bitrate.
The Rio Olympics will appear so clear in 8K you'll be able to feel your skin crawl with excitement.
I thought you said excrement.