4k by 2k or Quad HD...lots of rumors? thoughts? - Page 82

Interesting observations, Rich (as usual!).    I'm sure the new JVC's produce a pic that in most cases is very comparable to the Sony 4K.    The latter does have the advantage of brightness, but the JVC's with o/f CR.    In either case I think that one sees the benefit of these only if one sits quite close, e.g., ~ 1 SW or so--as I do, but I know that many people don't like this.    If one sits ~1.5 SW or further away I doubt they would see any benefit to anything beyond 1080p.

^And therein lies the rub, convincing the masses to drastically reduce their seating distance to detect these unprecedented levels of detail (or noise as in the case above),

Your sad view is one-sided. Slave wages? No, just market-driven wages. Environmental regulation? Mostly no worse than developed world 20ys ago and upgrading fast. Corruption? Not exceedingly high in the market economy sector. But there is another side of the picture which is absolutely phenomenal drive, abilities, skills, organization, planning and execution by the Dragon people.

To be fair, Avatar is a terrible quality Blu-ray. There's a ton of noise reduction and sharpening. I wouldn't expect to see any improvement displaying that on a 4K display.
I haven't seen the Finding Nemo Blu-ray, but Pixar have been filtering their Blu-rays for a while now as well, since Wall-E I think.

• Wall-E Render (not final lighting pass etc.)
  
• Wall-E Blu-ray

Look at the huge difference in sharpness and detail between the non-final render, and the filtered Blu-ray output.

So Pixar films aren't exactly a great source to use as an example of sharpness either.
Upscaling should not add additional noise to the image. However, when you move from 1:1 image mapping to a display with a finer pixel structure - even if you were not aware of the pixel structure before - you will find that the pixel structure was often masking a lot of the compression artefacts (and fine textural details etc) contained in the source.

And if you wanted, you can have an image that looks near-enough identical to a 1080p display (no additional artefacts etc) by using nearest-neighbour upscaling. This will give you an image of identical sharpness etc. (no benefits or detriments) but everything on-screen will be clearer due to the reduction in pixel structure.

I've posted these before, but here's the difference between a Retina iPad and a Non-Retina one, displaying the same image. To be clear, these are photographs, so there may be slight differences in brightness or sharpness as a result. That's nothing to do with resolution though. What you're looking at is the clarity of the images due to the reduction in pixel structure. The underlying images are the same.



This is exactly the kind of difference you would see comparing a 1080p native display (left) and displaying a 1080p image using nearest-neighbour resampling on a 4K display (right)
With the 4K display you also have the option of using upsampling to reduce aliasing, improve the smoothness of gradation, and you can usually get away with some fine sharpening to increase the sharpness of the image without introducing sharpening artefacts. You're never going to see more detail though.
You should not be expecting to see more detail when viewing a 1080p source on a 4K display. You need a 4K source for that. What you should see from 1080p content on a 4K display is a reduction in aliasing, smoother gradation, and a clearer picture due to the reduction in pixel structure.
Not to attack you or anything, but have you had your eyes tested recently? Pixel structure should be obvious on any 1080p projector if the image is of a reasonable size. (100" or larger)

The average Foxconn assembly line worker makes $1.50-$2.00/hour. After they pay for their company housing and company food, they have almost nothing left. They are basically voluntary slaves, who have no other options to live. This is not even including the Chinese government owned forced labor camps were the make all the dollar store junk for free. There is no way for anyone to compete with those labor prices. Those labor prices effect everything. From cost of materials to transportation of the goods. The only way to compete would to be to slap the items with a tariff, and used that money to subsidized goods manufacture in the US and elsewhere, so the consumer would bear to much of the extra cost. That will never happen because our economy is run by our consumption of cheap goods.

These are pyramidal absurdities. You deny that workforce wages in China are market-driven. Wages in many places there obviously are low but this is still better from the life in the countryside. Labor camps is nonsense, jailed people work but this is no way of any economic significance. Much more constructive way of thinking about China is that they are in the transition period from utmost poverty to civilised life, the fastest in history. Scale of this transition is incredible, several hundred million people already made it, about one billion is still in line. There is lot of sacrifice but overall amazing achievements, from just a bowl of rice once to 4K displays now .

Chronoptimist,

Thank you. I'm aware of the issues you brought forth.

FWIW, I think you placing a level of analysis on my post that it was never meant to bear - what I presented as an obviously compromised viewing situation. (And, LOL, only on a site like AVS will you find people declaring a Blu-Ray like Avatar to be "terrible quality." Not that the Avatar disc is free of issues...but with a disc that looks that spectacular it just shows how hilariously anal we are here).

Exactly. That's why I explicitly attributed the issue both to the limitations of 1080p source, and also likely some poor picture calibration.

My glasses prescription is regularly updated. I've used the JVC projectors for several years (they have a greater fill ratio than DLPs) and pixels have never been an issue in terms of my noticing them, even when I look for them. I sit between 9 1/2 and 11 1/2 feet from a screen that ranges from 90" diagonal 16:9 to 136" diagonal and up to 125" wide for cinema-scope. It's just never been an issue for me. As mentioned, my current JVC projector increases pixel count - a sort of "wobulation effect" for lack of better quick description - so that pixels are invisible unless you have your nose up to the screen.

Like I said, the problem I was highlighting in my post was 1080p content on 4K screens. As we know, for quite a while that will comprise the great bulk of the content watched on a 4K screen. So the limitations of 1080p in terms of resolution (and load on to that all the mastering issues with many Blu-Rays) means that the promise of "sitting really close to a big screen" will often be compromised by the limitations of the source, and this places especial pressure on any image processing employed, both on the source side and the display side, in terms of reproducing the best possible results for 1080p, to stand up to the closer viewing distances suggested as a benefit for 4K screens. My point being, mere pixel density itself hardly entails one can see a smoother, finer, better image when moving closer to the display. That's pretty obvious - my post was just that I had a "reminder" of how pertinent this issue is to the problems facing 4K screen adoption, when watching the Sony 4K.

But I'm sure we agree on that.

Cheers,
Edited by R Harkness - 1/6/13 at 7:04pm

Sorry, it wasn't a small portable display. There is no profit in there for Sharp. Proof of concept maybe, but the stockholders need profit. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T121020001961.htm The profit will be in the computer displays and TV's. I love to replace my (2) 22" monitors with a 32" or (2) 32" The media seems to think that Ipads and tablets will replace the desktop pc. NO! Not everyone in the world has wireless. I love my Ipad, but I can't do everything on it. I need more power, so it be long time for tablets replace the desktop pc.

IGZO is promising technology for 4k.

Sorry, it wasn't a small portable display. There is no profit in there for Sharp. Proof of concept maybe, but the stockholders need profit. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T121020001961.htm The profit will be in the computer displays and TV's. I love to replace my (2) 22" monitors with a 32" or (2) 32" The media seems to think that Ipads and tablets will replace the desktop pc. NO! Not everyone in the world has wireless. I love my Ipad, but I can't do everything on it. I need more power, so it be long time for tablets replace the desktop pc.

IGZO is promising technology for 4k.

Sharp is poised to make a good deal of profit from supplying smartphone and tablet screens. If it can deliver, it will likely supply 1/2 of Apple's needs for the next several years. That's a lot of iPhones and iPads.

Sorry, but TV displays are not profitable or just razor sharp, that is shown in the results by companies. Portables have much higher volumes and quick innovation/replacement rates and some buck is made there. Sharp has to go this segment to survive, possibly leaving the big displays where the chinese are moving. Computer monitors are also not a very good business and there is indeed mass tendency to drop PCs. That means desktop monitors my become more of a niche market. The case for 32"@4K is the clearest area where the 4K is really needed. Sharp will have a 32"@4K monitor on the market in couple of months but the initial price of five grands is for hardcore professionals. Hopefully this will go down fast.

Eutelsat Launches Europe's First Dedicated Ultra HD (4K) Channel

PARIS, January 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

As the television and cinema industries accelerate their progression towards Ultra HD (4K), Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) today announced it is launching a dedicated demonstration Ultra HD channel for Europe on the EUTELSAT 10A satellite. The first transmissions of content filmed in 4K will start on January 8. Delivering a resolution of eight million pixels, four times the resolution of HDTV, Ultra HD (4K) is poised to mark the next big leap forward in the immersive viewing experience.

Eutelsat's new channel is designed to benefit all actors in the broadcasting chain who want to acquire expertise in 4K, including production companies, pay-TV operators, rights owners and TV set manufacturers. The new channel will operate in progressive mode at 50 frames per second. It will be encoded in MPEG-4 and transmitted at 40 Mbit/s in four Quad HD streams. Eutelsat is partnering with ATEME, a video compression solution provider to the broadcast industry, for the transmissions that will be uplinked to the EUTELSAT 10A satellite from its teleport in Rambouillet, near Paris.

The launch of Europe's first dedicated channel comes as key actors prepare to meet in Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, one of the world's leading technology fairs. Ultra HD is expected to be a centrepiece at the show, with new Ultra HD sets showcased by display technology leaders revealing stellar resolution and immersive viewing experience.

"This new step towards 4K continues Eutelsat's longstanding commitment to achieving new broadcast milestones that over the last 20 years have included digital TV, HDTV and 3D," said Jean-François Leprince-Ringuet, Eutelsat's Commercial Director. "Early and close collaboration between all players in the broadcast chain will be a key success factor for this new revolution. We are delighted to propose this first Ultra HD platform for Europe."

For those technically oriented some information on the Eutelsat transmission parameters and video format:

Satelite Eutelsat 10A, position 10 deg East, European beam coverage

Transponder C6, 11,305 GHz, Polarisation: H, SR: 27500, FEC: 2/3; DVB-S2/8PSK

Video format: 1080p/50Hz, compression H.264, bitstream 40 Mb/s, send as 4 HD streams identified as TOP_LEFT, BOT_LEFT, TOP_RIGHT, BOT_RIGHT

It is of course highly amusing how they transmit the 4K in the form of four HD videos. There are simply no suitable broadcast 4K encoders and no standards to speak of. Shows how immature the Ultra HD is.

Yeah, that is pretty clumsy.
On the other hand, that's how Sony's 4K projectors where fed for many years (and maybe still are as far as I know).
Do they say if the 40Mb/s is for each of the four HD streams that is the 4K combined?
The press release refer to Ateme for further information (where there is nothing about this), assuming Ateme handles the compression process. Very possible that the broadcast world hasn't really caught up in the development of the latest compression techs for 4K, like HEVC/Mpeg and RedRay, where they all claim that 4K should be able to run at 20-30Mb/s. Same Mb/s claim Sony and ASTRA said they would aim for when they had test run of 4K over satellite some months ago.
Strange that they don't test this with HEVC compression from the start.
I guess Eutelsat/Ateme gets it right in the end.

The transmission rate is 40=4x10Mb/s, single HD stream is 10 Mb/s. With no existing standard, the broadcast world has nothing to catch up. For consumer products one needs new silicon which is scheduled to arrive in 2014. Real 4K products should be thus expected 2015 and by then 8K displays will be seen, game starting again .

I seem to recall that one idea was to distribute 4k2k content in a format where the broadcaster could use the same source to deliver both 4k2k and 1080 to consumers over separate channels WITHOUT any 'compromising downmix'. The strategy was to have 'odd numbered pixels' from 'odd numbered lines' (i.e., the ' TOP_LEFT corner pixel' from each on screen 4 pixel block) available as a native 1920x1080 broadcast for 'legacy receivers' . . . while '4k2k capable receivers' would capture all four channels simultaneously and interleave the additional TOP_RIGHT, BOTtom_LEFT, and BOTtom_RIGHT pixel streams correctly. This would appear to be a 20% bandwidth saving over broadcasting completely separate 4k2k and 1080 versions of the same show simultaneously...?!
_

One element "significant" to good Home Theater integration of 4k2k appears delayed again: Bloomberg reports a January 8, 2013, press release from HDMI org (link) which states...
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Does LCD that is 4K still have viewing angles that suck and black levels that Suck and do all that Sucking for higher prices?

And then have people that are geniuses about video post in here about how great that is?!

I'm not against resolution--I just wouldn't trust the same people that COMPRESS the entire universe to SUB 1080p quality to give us anything near REAL 4K resolution--and then to still use LCD with all its drawbacks?

That doesn't equal a good value for the money.

I'd think that would compromise the quality of what the 1920x1080 receivers get. They'd be getting every other pixel instead of every 2 pixels (in width & height) blended together - blending would give a better, more accurate result. You'd probably get aliasing or other artefacts if it was done in the way you describe.

There are so-called hierarchical compression schemes which are blending perfect 2K and at the same time transmit full 4K using information in higher bands. But this is not the case in the current Eutelsat system in which all 4 parts have the same bit rate. In the hierarchical system, the 2K band has significantly more bit rate than higher bands.

Did anyone else happen to notice that Sharp were demoing a 13.5″ 4K OLED display? Seems perfect for a notebook.

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=SJS&langpair=auto%7Cen&rurl=translate.google.com&tbb=1&u=http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/img/avw/docs/581/161/html/sharp15.jpg.html&usg=ALkJrhgan9ObpKq0uEr7j1rqjfin0Wt-hQ

Sony's ''new format'': 1080p 4K

new series ''mastered in 4K'' blu-ray discs, sourced in 1080p from their original masters in high bitrate to look their best when upscaled back to 4K.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/sony-4k-distribution-service/

What a fantastic set of films.
I must now go buy then

- Rich

It seems like this is probably equivalent to “superbit” DVD releases. I wonder if there’s going to be anything more than high bitrate going on. And yeah, the initial selection isn’t exciting at all.

Maybe it's so they can charge extra for titles without commentary tracks or similar extras?

Wow! So this is Sony answer to 4k Bluray. So did Sony show off their 4k Bluray player yet? I haven't looked much at CES 2013. Although, the Sharp 8k TV looks promising in the near future.

Sonys 4K Bluray player will probably be the Orbis or Playstation 4, thought to be announced at E3 this June.

Another guess? Actually, that prediction that Sony is going to produce another 4k bluray has been going on almost as long as this thread. As the specs for Orbis or PS4, no one knows if it will be Bluray.

Another guess? Actually, that prediction that Sony is going to produce another 4k bluray has been going on almost as long as this thread. As the specs for Orbis or PS4, no one knows if it will be Bluray.