4k by 2k or Quad HD...lots of rumors? thoughts? - Page 87

Most of us have pictures shot in 4K and better. There is no reason why those can't be displayed in much better quality on a 4K set than on a 2K display.

See, we already have 4K content sitting on our HDs, memory sticks and SDHC cards. That was easy.

I wouldn't go that far. The difference between 4:2:0 and 4:4:4 is definitely noticeable, but it's not worth pushing 4:4:4 yet when there are other areas you could improve first that would make a much bigger difference.

As I said before, rather than 1080p 4:4:4, you are much better off moving to 4K 4:2:0 for example.


There is a massive difference if you run a natively 4:4:4/RGB source such as a PC or games console through a 4:2:2 processing chain.

agreed, that's why 4k make the most sense for computer monitors initially

Nope! There is not going to be huge demand for these TV's at all. Look at economy, so how is a person going to fund for a 4k TV with no content with this type of economy. Who is going buy a 4k TV, when in about 5 to 7 years. There will be an 8K version available. I do agree that if Sharp is available to lower their price on 4k computer monitors, then you see 4k being sold. I talked to a friend that develops characters for games, he is waiting till 4k monitors drop in price.

It may be too early for 12-bit consumer video but I think that a good case can be made for 10-bit consumer video.

25 Mbps HEVC for 2160p24 video sounds good considering the bit rates that are used for the major video streaming services. In terms of relative compression performance that is more than 3 times higher than 4 Mbps Netflix and is about 40% higher than 9 Mbps VUDU HDX.

There is a reason that no major video streaming service offers 720p24 at 10 Mbps and that is because at a certain point going with 1080p24 gives better video quality. What bit rate with HEVC do you think would be needed when going from 1080p24 to 2160p24 would improve video quality? Would it be 30 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, etc...?

Right, it's better than all that streaming (although nothing on Netflix exceeds "laughable" in quality). But is 25 Mbps HEVC 2160p24 better than 1080p24 BluRay? I really doubt it. Really.
So that's the thing. And I don't know the answer here.

If the bar is "better than Vudu HDX", then certainly 25 Mbps would be interesting enough because I really doubt whatever they are doing there would benefit from being trebled in bitrate.

But there's a reason why BluRay is at much higher bitrates than Vudu HDX. The idea that you can simply have that bit rate and 4x the resolution and get a better result strains the imagination -- irrespective of the improved codec.

And since 4K is inherently a videophile format, the idea that bit starving it is part of the solution is even more absurd. It needs to fed enough bits to be better than BluRay in every way or else there is simply no purpose.

Who? The same people that frequent AVS and upgrade their displays more frequently than 5-7 years (or sooner) anyway. The videophile market is always there. I suspect that 8K will be a much tougher sell since the benefits will be extremely difficult to demonstrate for screens under 150".

720p24 is nonsense, 24 is used for cinema mode and cinema is special. Take 720p/60 vs 1080/30 @10 Mb/s for fast events and the difference is obvious. BTW, German public TV made lots of investigation of this and they are not so constrained by cost as commercial broadcasters. Their choice is 720p for all programming.

Regarding the HEVC 4K, with 25 Mb/s you get PQ comparable to the current 1080 broadcast @ 10 Mb/s, this is deep compression regime. You will not be then at an 4K equivalent of 1080 Blue-ray. To get to an equivalent of Blu-ray you would have to have at least 2.5 rate over the current 1080 Blue-ray which means 65 Mb/s minimum.

I suspect if cost were not a factor for the Germans, then they would have chosen 1920x1080 60p for its much greater resolution.

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Do the Germans generally have much smaller TV's?

Agreed. But I am not worrying about BD disappearing from the market. Unlike VHS and LaserDisc blu ray is also media for data storage. With increase demand for its capacity and portability I rather see standard DVD discs decline but not BD. Remember that blu laser became cheaper to produce reducing size of pcb circuit thus its cost. This will push blu ray expansion even stronger. Long live BD!

I am not so sure you are right about that.
Based on reports from people that have watched the Sharp 85" 8K TV at expos the last few years, they have all commented on that such high resolution gives such a "3D pop" to the 2D image that if we had such TVs today the interest for real 3D would be minimal.

Important to note that this was a prototype TV with 8K material from a 8K prototype camera, and it wasn't the latest 8K prototype camera even.
So it will get better.
Even the 8K shoots at the London Olympics that used the latest 8K cameras didn't demo project the material in real 8K.
They used a JVC "8K" projector that was really using 4K panels and e-Shift technology to interpolate to 8K.

I believe that 8K TVs will be a much easier sell than 4K TVs.
But it always comes down to price and the quality of the material that are used to sell them.

It all comes down to screen PPI. The higher the PPI the more impressive the quality of the display image becomes.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/industry-news/npd-disc-not-digital-drives-home-entertainment-revenue-29495

Without doing an A/B of 4K vs 8K at distances AND screen sizes that can make it into a typical house, the 8K expo demos don't mean much. I've heard the same observations you cited made of 4K demos.

To me the substantiation of my premise lies in the fact that so many don't see a significant improvement going from 2K to 4K.

If that's the case, how is going from 4K to 8K going to be better? The logic eludes me.

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Guessing, but I believe 8K will be detectable for most screen/livingroom setups, but I don't believe the 3D pop thing, unless there's a resultant oddity going on in processing, such as the SOE.

But it's not from resolution alone. Otherwise, wouldn't high-quality super sharply focused film movies have provided that "pop"? I see nothing inherently "flat" about lower resolution per se.

This has nothing do with the TV size. 720p/60 is better than 1080i/30 in the deep compression regime. It has better motion rendering and is less compressing pixel areas, upconversion effects are not visible. There is obviously no question that at Blu-ray bit budgets 1080 is better.

Yeah, especially when the PPI becomes totally invisible .

Discussing merits of 8K vs. 4K in standard TV viewing scenario is grotesque. The point of introducing 8K is to kill the resolution problem once and for all by providing a very healthy overhead . 8K may also be useful for nonstandard scenario, e.g. IMAX like or curved displays for gaming simulators.
Edited by irkuck - 1/31/13 at 10:08am

The question is will the resolution argument ever be put to rest? Where there's an opportunity to sell the 'latest & greatest' next gen panel, we'll always see the next 'logical' argument: 8K,.16K and beyond. It never ends.

Visual acuity? C'mon, there's no room here for real logic. ;-)

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Other than an increase in compression efficiency from using 10-bit (which is offset by the increased complexity & cost) 95% or more of the displays on sale today will not benefit from a 10-bit source in the slightest.
It will absolutely be better than 1080p24 Blu-ray.

Compression does not scale linearly with resolution at all, and you are much better off with a higher compression high resolution image, than a lower compression, low resolution image. Obviously there is a point where compression artifacts overtake any gains you made from increasing resolution, but 25mbps HEVC 4K vs 1080p24 Blu-ray is not it.

I can see already these thousands of household having 4,8 and 16k curved IMAX curved screens covering entire wall in designated ht room or basement. Like there was no more important things to spend the money in this screwy economy that would eventually affect all of us and our lives dropping the lifestyle down by a level in next 10-20 years where I am sure priorities for many will change dramatically.

I do not want to sound pessimistic but here is no turning back to golden era of mid-XX century civilization happiness, it is not going to get better and those who sit on the top of finance pyramid know this well and plan for it.

There are really nothing to compare with today in terms of resolution. 35mm film is about 3.5K at best, but can be scanned at 4K or preferably 6K and down-sampled an can yield a Ok 4K image on a 4K projector.
Most digital shot films are still finished at 2K and are said to equal 35mm film projection.

Film shot digitally on a camera with higher than 4K resolution and down-sampled to 4K has been projected digital in side-by-side tests with 70mm 5perf and Imax 70mm 15perf and match the 70mm and the 16:9 portion of the Imax screen.
But this is big screens and long seating distances, and the PPI is really very very much lower than the screen of a mobile phone or "retina display".

Go from 4K/ 8 megapixel up to 8K/ 33 megapixel on a smaller screen and everything changes.

The only way I know of today to test high resolution to get some kind of idea of the effect of high PPI is if you have some good lit fine grained positive 35mm film (twice the framesize of 35mm cine film) and put it in one of those small plastic slide viewers you hold up to one eye. Do it in good daylight.
There you will see the almost 3D depth like image. But because you use one eye and a 2D image, it will look a little like those paper cut out figures that we see in today's badly converted 3D films that where shot in 2D.

Apple iPhone 4 is 329.65 PPI.
50" HD TV is 44 PPI.
85" 8K TV is 103 PPI.
A 50 feet wide cinema screen at 2K is 3.15 PPI.
A 50 feet wide cinema screen at 8K is about 12 PPI.
Remember that a camera with higher resolution will pick up more details (finer texture) to be shown from a high resolution projector on a cinema screen almost regardless to seating distance of a normal cinema. 50 feet wide cinema screen is not very wide. The really large screen are 60-70 feet wide.

You don't need a big display for 4K. 8K... probably - though I wouldn't mind an 8K monitor for my PC. 8K on a 55" display is only 160 pixels per inch - your phone is probably over 300 if it's a recent model.
It's very depressing to know that my generation will never be in a position to make "good money" and looking forward, I really do fear what the future holds for us as populations continue to rise, more and more jobs are outsourced or even eliminated due to automation/computerization.

pray tell what do you know that we don't.

i hopw it's not like those let's scare you to death ads about financial apocalypse that i see on tv.

agreed prices have to drop, but if i understand rogo correctly, eventually the cost between 2k and 4k will be de minimus. smaller 4k screens cost less that the jumbos, and once you set up a 4k graphics card, motherboard and software, you can have 4k gaming.

i actually think gaming will be the first media to rapidly adopt 4k

The only future for the next generation is a govt job. That's the only area there will be expansion. Sad but true.

It uses almost exactly the same materials to make a 2K and a 4K.

Obviously, in the short run, the machines that create the color filters, the LC layer and the TFT backplane aren't set up for 4K, but even that's misleading. Consider that the 84" 4K sets you see are almost literally being made out of 4, 42" 1080p displays with virtually no changes to the fab (the whole sheet is patterned without a gap and there is no cutting into 4 anymore).

The processing electronics are currently somewhat pricier, but that's mostly (a) volume and (b) the more complex chip.

But a 4K chip on a next-generation semiconductor process will cost no more than a 2K chip does today.

So eventually, it's hard to see how 4K will have a bill of materials any higher than 2K does currently. And even looking out 3 years, you can imagine that if, say, a 60" 2K display has a build cost of $200, a 60" 4K display would have a build cost of about $220. (You can insert a different figure for the $200 if you wish, although I suspect that's not terribly far from correct. But either way, the gap of 10% to the 4K of the same size might be even slightly high 3 years from now.)

TV talk about local nationwide apocalypse and I am sure it does not make us happy. What they are not talking about is global economy shift that has already started and how it will affects us.
Example, in 2060 there will be two 65+ citizens for just one person in working age in Europe. Guess what happens with pensions system? I do not think many of old continent inhabitants will have 4k or 16k dilemma there in that situation.

With regards to thread subject, developing great idea, service or product does not mean it becomes sealable. Japanese has obsession about perfection so higher resolution home video entertainment may be successfully there. Does not mean it will be adopted immediately in US. If customers will keep buying 2k disks, players, etc, they won't switch to higher resolution because 2k is good enough for most of us. Almost all of us. There are of course perfectionists among is and these will be seeking perfection and I am sure there will be a gear that will satisfy them.
Edited by esdwa - 1/31/13 at 7:09pm

I think that it will be possible with HEVC. RED thinks that 2160p24 with a bit rate of 20 Mbps will be better than Blu-ray using their proprietary video standard. That claim should be proven/disproven sometime in the next few months.

720p60 and 1080i60 get into the issues of interlacing and frame rate. I use video streaming as an example since 720p24 video streaming is common but even with VUDU HDX the bit rate isn't as high as what you say is needed. To me that indicates that at a certain point 1080p24 delivers better overall video quality than 720p24 at bit rates that are far below what Blu-ray uses.

I don't think that an average bit rate of 65 Mbps would be needed to get equivalent video quality. If the video standard didn't make a difference than consumer video would have continued to use MPEG-1. The bit rate alone doesn't tell you about video quality since if that was true there would be no difference between 1080p24 at 25 Mbps when comparing MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and HEVC. MPEG-1 can support a bit rate of 100 Mbps and the reason that MPEG-1 wasn't used with DVD was because MPEG-2 delivered the same video quality at half the bit rate.

Professional video uses 10-bit video since that is what is needed to avoid banding with the HDTV color space. 12-bit video or more is needed for larger color spaces and the highest end movie cameras record 16-bit video. With HEVC it looks like we will start to see 10-bit video released to consumers and I think that will happen regardless of whether the 4K version of Blu-ray supports it. I think the 4K version of Blu-ray is going to have a tough time selling the message that it is about video quality if it sticks with 8-bit video.
Edited by Richard Paul - 1/31/13 at 8:35pm

Professional video uses higher bitrates because that is not the final image, and it's actively being worked on. If you try to edit an 8-bit file, you're going to have bad results. Most cameras are still shooting 12-bit natively, or 14-bit with some of the more recent ones. I'm not sure that anything is actually shooting 16-bit yet. Note: anything over 8-bit is typically put inside a "16-bit" container, and is not necessarily 16-bit native.

However, if you are simply displaying the image as it is, rather than editing it, you don't need so much precision.

You're correct in saying that wider color spaces need higher bit-depths, and perhaps with 4K & HEVC we will see a move towards that - HEVC is going to require new hardware to decode it anyway, so that's an opportunity to increase the bit-depth. I don't think we will ever see it with H.264 Blu-rays though. But with higher resolution displays, you have more room to use dithering and not have it be noticeable as pixel density increases, so there's that to consider as well.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly would not object to an increase in bit-depth, but there are good reasons why it hasn't happened yet. It still doesn't change the fact that most displays on the market now would not show any difference whether you sent them an 8-bit or a 12-bit native signal. It's really only the best LCDs, LCoS displays, and potentially OLED where it would even matter.

True, but... consumers are sensitive to marketing number games but up to a point. The case here is example from audio were after CD there were numerous attempts to introduce 'better' standards, 24-bit audio and so on. Nobody could hear any difference and even more importantly compressed audio came in and convenienc has won.
Not only people are not using "purest" 24-bit audio, they use 128 kbits/sec compressed. Same will be with displays, 8K is a limit of teasing people by numbers since there will be absolutely no difference visible at all. Besides, consumer are moving to portable displays.


This is very tricky issue which you do not appreciate most likely because of lack of deeper knowledge how compression works. In this case 4K and Blu-ray have then both about 25 Mb/s budget but for 4K this is deep compression regime and for Blu-ray it is safely away from it. Now, one could downconvert the 4K to 1080 and according to your claim be sure it is absolutely better than Blu-ray which is unlikely or absurdal since it would imply deep compression at higher res is better than non-deep compression at original res . But one could up convert the Blu-ray to 4K and easily claim that it will be better than 4K just due to going around the compression artefacts due to the deep compression regime.


You are reall comparing apples and... HD . Talking about the PPI without viewing scenario is pure absurd.

Yeah, what other statement could be expected from them?

The were reports video is processed by intelligent 'creative ' engines and this is the source of pop. One can of course say this is fine but sounds bit of virtual reality. More important is how this creative processing would look on 2k and 4k displays, maybe same?

I think just as logical a case could be made for resistance from the public in moving from 4K to 8K. People, most people, will say "enough!". It's going to be a very very tough sell when almost nobody will see the benefits of 8K. It's tough enough making the 4K sale for reasonable screen sizes and seating distances. 8K? Good luck.

Remember, most people don't attend CES or trade shows where they'll have the room to demo a 150" screen and perhaps show some benefits to 8K. However, in the screen sizes that 99.99% of people would be able to shoe-horn in to their homes, shoppers will see no benefits. Why? Because there will be none until you move up to sizes that people simply can't accommodate, not living in mansions. They just can't fit movie theater sized screens in their dens and living rooms and won't enjoy sitting 4 1/2" from their 60" 8K screen so they can derive any tangible benefits. I don't see the logic at all.

Honestly, as much as I love this tech, I can see it getting to the point where it just gets a bit silly.