4k by 2k or Quad HD...lots of rumors? thoughts? - Page 81

Now, imagine this is a 55" TV whose primary in-store attribute is thinness, which is hard to notice when it's shoved against the wall. People walk by it over and over until someone notices the $8000 price tag and screams "What the F$#*$@)#($*@)(!" At least the Sony is huge. Huge is rare. I look forward to the marketing of OLED in a world of ubiquitous, over-assorted 55" TVs.

The CBS football is almost always better than the Fox... It's obvious to me as well.

And that nips the theory in the bud that 4K is an OLED killer, lol.

I don't agree. Neither OLED nor 4K has much real merit for most people.

"More pixels" vs. "more contrast"?

Neither matters to Joe Bloggs.

It's about which will be marketed more successfully.

I like the chances of pixels in this argument.

I feel the same way, Ken. I saw the difference and where 4K has an advantage over 1080p, but it's not night and day like i've been saying all along. When i first walked into the sony demo area it looked like any other good source 1080p video. Only when i began to look harder and focus, and move closer, is when i saw the difference of 4K; Better resolved detail, better separation of everything, better texture, smoother etc. But nothing like going from DVD to Blu-ray like the media outlets have been saying. Far from it.

The difference is there, it's just not that noticeable. And my Kuro had better black levels than the sony. As im sure your Elite does too.
Edited by saprano - 12/28/12 at 6:25pm

Perhaps the real question is whether either is really a "2K killer" despite the fact that 4K is coming.

Have to agree Mark, it's always about marketing and, as we know, bigger is always better.

Saprano, it would be a shame if these pricey 4K displays don't measure up in the other important PQ areas. I don't care how many pixels it has, if the black levels are middling, I have no interest.

I agree that pixels can be marketed effectively.
The problems I find objectionable in LCD's, are not cured with more pixels.

- Rich

I disagree. I think both matter

Well, that's for certain. Time will tell if the next generation of IGZO displays are an upgrade in that regard.

True.

Haha. Maybe the post of the year.

Seeing is believing!

4K is a very effective marketing killer of 2K. In the same way as the infamous war of megapixels in digital cameras where more pixels=definitely better for Joe 6packs. When price of the 4K gets closer to 2K, the 2K may be quickly disappearing.
Edited by irkuck - 12/29/12 at 6:10am

I was in a local retailer today and they had an 84" LG "Ultra HD" TV on display (not for sale). this one: http://www.lg.com/uk/tvs/lg-84LM960V
They had the usual high contrast, overly bright, colour saturated demo reel which seems to be a highlight video for some european tourism company.
It looked good, especially for the size of the display, but I wouldn't say I was wow'd by it. It seems to me to be an evolution of the format, and definitely nowhere near the same "wow" as going from an old CRT TV to a 1080 LCD. I would definitely buy one at current TV prices, but not at 20 thousand.

^Would you buy it if it was not Ultra but mere HD only?

Going from 4:3 CRT TV's to 16:9 TV's definitely helped with the change to HD. It was something different nobody had seen before. The term "flatscreen" was marketing by itself. Everything is the same with 4K.

Maby they should of used 17:9 TV's for the full 4096x2160p 4K resolution. They could of had a new marketing scheme.

EDIT- What would the dimensions be of a 17:9 TV compared to 16:9?

4096x2160 is used in digital cinema standard but the difference of 17:9 vs. 16:9 is negligible. More radical would be 21:9 which matches widescreen cinema and is used in some displays. But the widescreen cinema format is not so good for other contents.

That's the catch isn't it?
Unfortunately on a smaller display (less than 70 inches) you aren't really going to notice a huge difference between HD and "UltraHD" and the sad part is that many laymen will find themselves wowed not by the resolution but simply by the size of the display given that, in Australia at least, displays larger than 60" are a reasonably new phenomena and still rather niche and seeing 70/80"+ screens in stores is quite a novelty.

I'm happy with my halfway point X95 with eShift2. "Faux-4K" all the way

"By 2017, NPD DisplaySearch estimates UHDTVs will account for only 2% of all LCD TVs sold but will represent 22% of all televisions over 50 inches in size. (LCD is the current, widely used technology for TVs.)"

Fascinating forecast on multiple levels.

1) It's coming, but not going ubiquitous that fast.

2) TV size creep is forecast by no one -- and this includes manufacturers from whom DisplaySearch builds its industry-wide forecasts -- to meaningfully continue. This probably has a lot to do with most of the sales occurring in emerging markets and most mature-market sales being secondary and tertiary purchases to finally get rid of all tube sets that are in dens and such. But it roughly means that only about 10% of all TVs sold will be 50 inches and up, according to DisplaySearch. I find that number surprisingly low, but not mind-bogglingly shocking given what I just wrote.

22% would be huge penetration indicating that later it can grow even further. I see logic in this: for LCD increasing pixel density is not critical cost-wise since backlight remains essentially the same. Thus in principle every future HDTV set may become 4K or even 8K, this may not be technically needed/used but it is an attractive marketing argument . It can be seen in portable devices already: high density retinal displays are becoming norm without exorbitant costs and selling well.

I agree with your assessment, irkuck. I'm just surprised at how slow it's going to reach ubiquity given the low cost to do it. 22% in 2017 is pretty low.

It is not so low if one takes that nothing is sold yet. 2013 is thus year zero, with negligible sales, 2014 a couple precents, and so on.

It does seem a little low. Especially, if it is only a 5-10% price difference over 2K by that time, as predicted. I guess it will all hinge on how well Sony/LG/Toshiba handle the 4K Blu-ray launch and the pricing of the hardware and software. Again, by 2017 it should not really cost much more than 2K. Gaming is another wild card. If the Xbox 720/PS4K launch with the ability to play 4K gaming in addition to 4K movie playback, it could provide a killer "application" so to speak to spur sales.

Anyway, I suspect that number is somewhat subject to wiggle room. It's one thing to make more 4K vs. 2K -- same production lines. It's another thing to make more big screens vs. small screens -- can't be done really. Again, we see LG with no announced 65" LCD from what I can tell for 2013 (yes, yes, a tiny production jumbo set.. but that's not really the point).

Let's hope there is more 4K and that at least Sharp survives to make sure there's someone making a market in the 70+" range. I am sensing really big OLED is far, far away. Given that the investments there are heading for 8G, we are going to have a replay of the LCD problem where basically nothing over 60" comes out in quantity for the foreseeable future, I fear.

If the 60" LED 940X I have is any testament then no. Obscene cloudiness in the backlight (normal according to sharp) and unwatchable 3D... I hope they go out of business as the sheer size of the screens is all they have going for them.

If they go out of business, then >60" LCD goes with them. The few 80+" TVs you see rely on using an old fab to make a 4x40 or 4x42 TV into one panel, which is why you are seeing astronomical pricing. Don't look for those to ever -- and I mean ever -- become mass-market products. Sharp has a mass-market 70" panel, which is why you now have a 70" Vizio as well. If Sharp goes, that panel goes.

Having just bought a 65" and thinking that's the bare minimum I'd be happy with and recognizing that of all the other 65" LCDs ever made, none has been more than a limited production set, I'd be pretty sad to see that happen.

When I buy a bluray movie, it has the audio and video tracks. Can't say that rentals, seems they remove the audio tracks in some titles. Same with all streaming services. A streaming service from the cloud should also have all the audio tracks that are available from Bluray.
Most of my friends complain about Netflix video quality and some times Apple. Not sure about Vudu, but I know it doesn't the audio tracks. None of them do. Well, I heard one is testing in Japan. I don't buy all the Bluray releases, just the ones that are worth buying.

IGZO was primary designed for computer displays. Sharp is only showing it with computers right now. I will wait till the price drops, but I definitely probably upgrade to IGZO for my pc.

Primary target is portable displays since there benefits are substantial. But according to reports IGZO layer is more transparent which makes pictures more vivid, this could translate into still better PQ for big displays.

Previous Godzillas like Sharp are now zombies. But there are new emerging Dragons with monster firebreath. Look at their full range of 4K crowned by the 110" and read it is as a statement: Next generation belongs to us.

IGZO is allegedly much cheaper in the long run too, although for a lot of reasons I don't believe that. But those Korean analysts insist it is and that's part of why OLED will ultimately be cheaper than LCD -- something I've also been skeptical of here for years (until someone comes up with a radically different way to make OLEDs). Fact is, though, it's better image quality and production lines are being moved to it... If that can be done efficiently -- and there are reasons to doubt this but reasons to be optimistic too -- we'll see it in large displays soon enough.
Again, we'll see. Right now everyone is still relying on older 8G fabs and a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The next generation will belong to those who can make money and deliver new technology.

Sadly, the next generation is going to belong to the Chinese. Period. The End. There is no way to compete with slave wages, lacks environmental regulation and the corruption. Even LG is building new manufacturing plants there. They are going to follow the same business model the Koreans are using now and the Japanese used 50 years ago. Build cheap crap and eventually become Teir One companies. Just look where companies like Lucky Goldstar, Samsung and Hyundai were 30 years ago. The only difference is the Chinese are going to transition at a much faster rate, unless the world risks an unlikely tariff war.

Earlier in this thread I expressed a bit of disappointment about a lack of "wow" factor with my first encounter at a Sony store. Today I saw the Sony 4K display at another local "high end" store today (Bay Bloor Radio).

Having recently read a number of rave reviews about it's image quality with 4K and how beautifully it upscaled 1080p to it's 4K panel, I was intrigued to find it playing the Avatar Blu-Ray. As usual, one can never really judge a display due to the normally abysmal picture settings in a store set up (even, regrettably, just about every "high end" store doesn't bother with calibration, although Bay Bloor does bother sometimes, usually with their projection set ups). Anyway, the initial impression is that it looked dazzling. But in a way not particularly different from any other really good LCD display. It was just super bright, vivid, colorful, contrasty and detailed. But you get much of that with many of the decent LCD displays anyway, so it was hard to separate out the "wow this looks amazing" due to the super brightness/contrast/color vs what the added pixel count brought to the table.

In fact, I went back and forth between Avatar playing on the Sony 4K and Finding Nemo (Blu-Ray) playing on a fairly large Samsung in another room. The Samsung 1080p model had much of the same "wow" factor as the Sony 4K screen, with pretty much all the same picture qualities. I had to force myself to notice the pixel structure on the Samsung 1080p model to try and see a difference. Moving closer than I think most people would watch either display, I could just make out a very slight granular quality to the Samsung vs the Sony which looked perfectly smooth. Also, while moving closer to the Sony 4K didn't reveal discrete pixels, general image noise (from upscaling and other processing I presume) DID become more visible. So it sort of worked against one of the big pluses of 4K - the virtue of "being able to sit closer to a bigger screen" was in tension with the quality of the source material and upscaling/image processing. And sitting closer did not show much more detail. Rather, I became more aware of detail that was missing in background details, small objects etc. Some of this I think is the limitation of 1080p to some degree, and some was I bet due to a sub-optimal picture settings that I bet was bleaching some fine detail.

But it was a reminder that 4K puts us back into the position we were in when Flat Panels came out during the DVD era, and the quality of upscaling and image processing (both on the DVD player and Flat Panel end) became important to keep image noise at bay and produce clean, enjoyable images from the new bigger/higher res screens of the time. It won't be much fun to sit closer to a 4K display watching Blu-Ray if the source/upscaling don't stand up to closer inspection. (Again, I'd bet the Sony would perform better after calibration).

That said, when I moved close to the Sony and when the image happened to be more free of noise, the lack of pixels, of anything between me and the image, was really smooth and dimensional - a compelling glimpse of how immersive and natural looking the image could be.

I'm still trying to remain optimistic about 4K. In fact, as I've mentioned earlier, I'm using the JVC "Kinda 4K" projector, which uses an optical system to increase on-screen pixel count to approximately 4K (though it can not accept a 4K source). I never did have an issue "seeing the pixels" with my previous 1080p JVC projector, even though I often view quite large images. But flipping the 4K on and off on my new projector, seeing it go from a 1080p to 4K pixel count, produces a subtle but fascinating added density to the image. Though, I can't say if this is due strictly to the increase of pixels on screen per se, or to the characteristic of the additional image processing used to re-map/upscale the 1080p image.

FWIW....