4k by 2k or Quad HD...lots of rumors? thoughts? - Page 85

I think you are seeing that there is some inherent premium for the larger displays that go "uncut", but not a ton. The 80" Sharp, for example, is $4000 while you can buy 4 branded 40" TVs for $2000-2500 pretty easily here. Right now, the 90" is a higher multiple.

That said, it's not hard to imagine the 110" eventually being a $10,000 product. The question is, "What's the market size at $10,000 vs. $30,000?" If it's genuinely 3x as big, you'll likely see it reach $10,000. If it isn't, you probably won't.

If one 50-inch 1080p LCD retails for $500, shouldn't a 100-inch 4K LCD retail at $2000? If that's essentially the economics of 4K, then no wonder manufacturers are all trying to bring 4K to market ASAP to charge those premiums. Side-effect of this is that the rate of adoption of 4K should progress quicker than most people had thought. Everybody wins, except early adopters.

There are obviously many factors impacting the price. What I said about the absolute limit 110"=4x55" is based in fact on assumption that sales of 110" would be a signifcant % of the 55" sales, which is unlikely. Why the current big panels carry significant overhead could be attributed also to Sharp virtual monopply on the manuf of such panels. But in the case of 110" situation is totally different, there are two Chinese manufs racing here with great zeal and with much lower price of labor than Sharp. This gives basis to expect prices will be rocketing down. From pure technology point of view it should be much more complicated to make full sheet of glass with 5"K@2K LCDs though this should be much more profitable too.

Well. not precisely, but not terribly far either.

Right, Sharp has a monopoly on 70s in a practical, high-volume realm. They lack a monopoly on other larger sizes, all of which are made using the 2x2 technique on older-generation fabs.

I doubt it's complex at all, although by the time you get to 110", you hit logistical constraints.

Also, I don't see any reason to price all the way down to the cost when (a) everyone can charge a premium, for various reasons (e.g. people will pay, not every brand has the same perceived worth in the marketplace (b) the market will not size up precisely on price. With respect to (b), there will obviously need to be experimenting, but we already see that the 70" is not so compelling that everyone wants one. While it's not yet priced at 4x the cheapest 40" (yes, I'm aware it's not as large, my 3rd-grade math is intact), it's not terribly far from that either), it's also not selling anywhere near at the volumes you might expect given its current pricing.

That doesnt' mean it isn't much more popular than at intro. The first year, the entire 70" was <200,000 units worldwide, in 2013, it's going to be much larger. But if 70" prices were to settle in at $1500, there would not be 10 million 70" panels sold in 2015 because there isn't demand for them at any price.

The question now is when do we see full range of 4K sets including 110" in shops.

It seemed to me that the only company that was even contemplating the 110" as a true product was HiSense, which might build it as a statement piece to establish the brand as state of the art in the U.S. Westinghouse's $300K "price" and Samsung's non-product announcement spoke huge volumes about how neither is making them.

The funny thing is that even with the Westinghouse's breathtaking price tag, reports say it does a lousy job of upscaling 2K. Oh well, what do you expect for $300K?

I do not see signs of less committment from the TCL. Both companies face a problem how to establish themselves as high-end brands by breaking traditional rulers and overcoming market scepticisim. They are in extreme fast forward move from rice fields to the replacement of Panasonics, Sharps and Sonys. How to do it is big question.

First of all I would like to thank many of the posters here for their informed posts. I find the many threads in this forum fascinating.

I was in WalMart yesterday and they had an 80" Sharp on display which appeared to be showing a DVD of Finding Nemo. I was tempted to eject the disc just to make sure it was in fact a DVD and not a Blu-Ray because the image was so soft. Anyway the pixel structure of the tv was clearly visible from more than 6 ft away(there was an end cap beyond that so I couldn't stand any further). It reminded me of looking at one of the old "ED" plasmas about 8 years ago with the screen door effect. The 80 inch LCD could have clearly benefitted from an ultra HD screen.

I also don't understand the people who go by the charts when discussing resolution. I sit about the same distance from two different tvs in the house: a 40 inch Samsung and a 46 inch Sony. The cable guide is much sharper on the 40 inch Samsung. This is not a case of a difference in the scalers because the Sony is hooked up to a Realta external video processor. I believe the difference is solely attributable to the fact that the Sony's pixels are larger than the Samsung's.

4K TV turns out blockbuster, home market sales growing by breathtaking 300%

Imagine the market, they could sell up to 1000

- Rich

An EIGHTY INCH 1080 DISPLAY at 6 feet? Yep, prolly going to get some dreadful image quality. Go figure.

Not sure why you don't understand peoples acceptance of rez charts. They use the charts (the correct ones, anyway, lol) because they're based upon verifiable, repeatable evidence of people with 20/20 vision. Surely you're not claiming your experiment with two different televisions and a myriad of other factors involved is more valid?

If science was dictated by what you, I, or anyone else believed, we'd be living in a much more "interesting" world than we already are.

James
Edited by mastermaybe - 1/22/13 at 8:34am

No, it would be for ME (and dozens of others while we're at it) as well, as I recall with vibrant specificity how absurd your "science/study" of visual acuity was, being hacked by- wait for it- an entity with a fantastically VESTED interest in 4 and 8k, no less. Oh, the irony.

Go figure.

James
Edited by mastermaybe - 1/22/13 at 8:34am

None of those charts are based on looking at displays and having to deal with things like visibility of pixel structure, motion, aliasing, or other artifacts related to displays that are not found on vision test charts.

And 20/20 is average vision, not perfect vision.

You can't sit to far away because you will loose to much detail (most detail you will see when you stand in front of TV!). You can't sit to close because you will see to much of technology drawbacks.

^^that is what you have to deal with in the real world

Well that's exactly what 4K and 8K are here to address.

Sure, if it's native. An infinitesimal amount of video is encoded at such high resolutions.

Eh, not. All PQ issues could addressed by the 2K already. But there is a limit in data transport budgets. It is less severe in the case of Blu-ray and this is why it has reasonable PQ and much more severe in the case of broadcast. The bit budget issue is even more critical for 4/8K. Even if the bigger data transport means are found, they could be used with the 2K to good effect. Instead there is again risk that 4/8K will suffer from artefacts.

Today.
You're crazy if you think lossless 1080p would be better than HEVC 4K, and that doesn't address things like the huge pixels the display is made up of.

Oh mighty ignorance. You do not recognize the issues behind the words you use. Lossless is a well defined notion while HEVC is not since it hugely depends on the compression ratio. In broadcast a deep compression regime is used, just on the border of visible artefacts showing up. This is why artefacts are visible occasionally and sometimes not so occasionally in HDTV and why Blu-ray uses much higher bit rate. One may be sure that in broadcast the HEVC will be also used on its border and there will be no essential difference in this respect. Next issue is in the comparison, the 1080 content can be easily used in 4K displays with upconversion. The question then is what will be better: 4K in the HEVC deep compression mode, say 25 Mb/s, or 1080 compressed with HEVC at the same bit rate of 25 Mb/s and with upconversion? I tell you the difference will be negligbile at best and usually in favor of 1080, even if the 1080 is compressed with H.264. If one would use lossless (or contribution quality) 1080 vs. HEVC@25Mb/s the difference would be evident. Regarding the difference between the 1080 and 4K displays, 2K pixels are not huge comparing to 4K pixels. The difference in resolution is visible at <2.5PH but it is also content-dependent. Thus, transparent 1080 content on 1080 display may look definitely better than deeply compressed HEVC content on a 4K display.
In the end, the advantage of compressed source if mostly showing up when it is not deeply compressed and 4K is showing up when it is watched from close distance

At the same bitrate, HEVC 4K will look better than H.264 1080p. Comparing lossless 1080 to HEVC 4K one would assume the same bitrate would be used, to keep the comparison fair.

I don’t know why you are talking about broadcast, because that isn’t even 1080p.

Not necessarily in the deep compression regime. The problem is that in the deep compression regime 1080p with upconversion may look subjectively better than 4K. Point is that many compression steps in this regime are more or less like equivalent to lowpass filtering, i.e. it is like downconverting the 4K to 1080.
This is the same thing as one can observe between the 720 and 1080 @ 9-10 Mb/s on a 1080 display. 720 looks better then despite being upconverted. But obviously in a non-deep compression regime which starts in the region of Blu-ray compression 1080 will look better.

You mean broadcast is 1080i? Do you know what would be the lossless 1080 compression bit budget/sec?

Yes, I think this last bit is important. ISPs in many other countries cap off data limits just as cell phone companies do here. If these guys ever think its a smart move to put caps at different price ranges to make a bigger buck, I think streaming services might slowly start to fail as well.
Edited by GIK Acoustics - 1/24/13 at 6:08am

Many ISPs now have deals with companies like Netflix where they host the content locally and streaming it doesn’t count towards your data caps. Same thing with digitally distributed games on Steam.

That's terrible! Good to know though, thanks for the info.

Terrible because it starts to make streaming a lot more viable?

If you live in a country where data caps are the norm, it's fantastic to be able to subscribe to something like Netflix and not have to worry about eating into your data allowance, or being able to switch to Internode's servers on Steam and download as much as you want. It typically means better speeds as well, because it's all hosted locally rather than the other side of the world.

That being said, I only buy Blu-ray. I see a lot of people complaining about how streaming services are going to take over, and how the quality is so much worse, and yet these same people are subscribed to Netflix, Hulu etc. because they like the convenience of it! If you don't want those companies to end up replacing physical discs, stop giving them money. For what it's worth though, Netflix's highest quality stream is often better than broadcast quality here - but I refuse to watch broadcast either.

Is there any chance of the Blu-ray specs changing so that one day they will be able to offer more resolution?

Will we ever see deep color encoded onto Blu-ray so that you could actually view it?

On January 14, 2013, a TechHive com article "Blu-ray looks ahead to 4K" (link) reported that "There is currently activity within the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) to bring 4K into the Blu-ray specifications, and the BDA created a task force three months ago to study the prospects of adding new technologies to the format, according to Andy Parsons, BDA president."

I suspect we should wait six months or so (maybe to CEDIA 2013?) to see what progress the BDA reports in that time...?!
_

No! That is not why its terrible. What is terrible is that data caps are the norm in a lot of countries - and its also terrible that there's already programs in place so when the US finally does decide to start capping us off, it will be a smooth transition for the companies. But of course, if you're in a data capped place, then yes - its good.

Also, it promotes charging higher for smaller data caps. IOW, since people stream so much content through services like Netflix, if they add Netflix to the "do not count" data, then they will only give us X amount of data to use otherwise. If all content like Netflix and Hulu all counted towards the total data count, the data caps would be MUCH higher but for the same price (if you were to take an average that is). So, in essence what I am saying is its GOOD for people who stream movies, and BAD for people who use large data for other usages like web design and video editing & uploading, etc since they don't get any 'breaks'. And on top of that, it seems that it doesn't promote good grounds for streaming services that haven't started up yet to compete with Netflix, Hulu, and the like. Does that make sense?

Now that I've typed it out, I'm not sure how in the hell I expected anyone to deduce what I meant by saying it's terrible. Obviously its nice, but I just forsee bad repercussions for people like me who do not stream video, but transfer files via the internet often.

I totally agree, and its odd that its like that in so many markets. People complain about bad quality control or terrible customer service (like automated tech support and sweet "Live Chats" that everyone loves) from certain manufacturers yet they aren't seeing sales decrease because people keep buying their product anyways. People complain about how horribly Wal-Mart pays their employees and how forceful they are with their vendors, yet people still shop there. Edit: We can stop discussing here though as I'm sure this could turn into some weird debate about free-market enterprise and all sorts of economics. And this thread is about 4kTVs, not social problems caused by consumerism. Edit 2: But maybe the morality of spending good money on a 4kTV when 1080p is fine for most folks can relate to consumerism? Alright I'll settle down now.
Edited by GIK Acoustics - 1/24/13 at 11:06am

There's no reason that they couldn't. They would have to be marketed in such a way that people would be aware that they will not play on current Blu-ray players though, which also means that it would make sense to switch to quad-layer discs.

The problem there, is that many people have only just bought Blu-ray players, and people are already choosing to buy DVDs over Blu-ray because they work in anything, when Blu-ray discs only work in Blu-ray players. Having 4K discs that only work in an even smaller number of players makes things more difficult.
It's fine for the type of person that visits this site, but a real problem in general. That's another reason streaming is likely to prevail. A new disc format is a huge problem, adding a 4K option to your streaming service is trivial.
"Deep color" is just marketing speak for increased bit-depths. Today, there is absolutely no point in going beyond 8-bit native video content from an image quality standpoint, because no displays on the market today could take advantage of that improved gradation. The best 10-bit LCD (and LCoS) displays are really only equivalent in quality to sending a CRT 8-bit native content. Plasma, DLP and other displays are all less than 8-bit quality.

From what I have seen of OLED, gradation was actually worse than my LCD, but that was Sony's HMZ-T1 and not a large flat panel. Manufacturers are speccing them out as being 10-bit native, but I don't know what that ends up being in the real world. If the native tonal response of OLED is not matched to the target gamma response, you're throwing away a lot of gradation there just to bring it into spec. LCD has a native S-curve gamma for example.


However, going above 8-bit allows for better compression efficiency, so it would certainly make sense to move to at least 10-bit if we are changing the Blu-ray requirements. The problem is that decoding 10-bit is far more demanding than decoding 8-bit content, and is therefore more expensive.
When displays don't currently need anything more than 8-bit source content, and the problem can be solved simply by throwing more bitrate at it - which is a much easier thing to do - I don't see it happening any time soon.

Many people have discussed things like 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 native video rather than the current 4:2:0 we have today, but that's pointless.
Firstly, most displays are only processing in 4:2:2 anyway, so it would be wasteful to encode 4:4:4 on the disc.
Secondly, chroma resolution is much less important than luma resolution with video, and high quality chroma upsampling can do a very good job today.
Thirdly, rather than move to 1080p 4:4:4, you are far better off moving to 4K 4:2:0, which has the same 1920x1080 chroma resolution, but 4x the luma resolution.
Well so far, that does not seem to have been the case. I agree that it does put more power in the hands of companies like Netflix that have content delivery deals in place, because it's much more difficult to compete with that. But so far it doesn't seem to have had any impact on data caps, other than lowering monthly data usage. (at least, of data that counts)

Here, there are providers that offer unlimited data, but still have deals in place with companies like Netflix to host files locally as that allows them to offer higher quality streams, so that Netflix can offer better quality to their customers without incurring higher data costs. So it can work both ways.

It's one thing to complain, but people have to realize that the only thing these companies listen to is money. But most people aren't willing to make small sacrifices (doing without, paying more for better service etc.) so they get away with it.