4k by 2k or Quad HD...lots of rumors? thoughts? - Page 27

Originally Posted by audio/videoman

We're going to get a higher resolution hard copy format at some point in the future. The hardware technology has already been developed. Many 4K masters already exist for higher budget and/or classic films. 4K tv's and projectors are already being demo'ed publicly. From the reports I read, it looks stunning.

In other words, the panel tech as well as the software tech are already in place for a launch of 4K. It's obviously going to happen. The number of titles will be limited, and quite expensive as will be the tv's at first, and then after maybe 5 years of early adopters as the quirks are worked out, mass adoption will follow.

Originally Posted by audio/videoman

I remember all the doomsday predictions for the launch of broadcast hdtv. No one is discussing that now.
I don't know what "traditional" paths you are talking about. There are no obstacles to blu ray adoption, either. When I go to rental or retail stores, blu ray inventory is approx. half of all movie inventory. DVD's are clearly on their way out, and BR's are taking over shelf space. This is with catalog dvd's available sometimes for pennies online.

Originally Posted by irkuck

Blu-ray adoption is much slower than expected.

Traditional formats promoted by their high PQ are undermined by the youtube/net kind of stuff.

There is definitely a niche for high-end PQ products, big size, 4K, 8K and so on. Similar to the niche for high-end audio where people are willing to throw big money into whatever claims about PQ and there is niche industry around it. The display area is however peculiar since panels are not available for niche producers. Thus prospects for the 4K are bleak.

Originally Posted by irkuck

I am accepting the PQ improvement concept. I am only wondering if the 4K is inevitable for it (very likely not) so why not make it with the 2K. At this point it looks that showing 4K with the Cognitive PQ engine and 2K without it is a marketing tool to hook people on the 4K.

Originally Posted by irkuck

This confirms what I am saying all the time here: From the TV scenario distance of 3-4PH it is impossible to see any pixel structure.

Quite opposite to rogo, this confirms what I am saying. It is not the 4K but the subjective PQ improvement technique which made the Sharp demo look outstanding. Apply the same technique to 2K and it will be equally outstanding,.

Originally Posted by pcdo

Quick recap of this thread in case people had missed it:

4K proponent: I saw the 4K TV and it looks great and better than 2K.

4K opponent: In theory you should not be able to tell the difference between 4K and 2K at normal TV viewing distances.

4K proponent: But I did see a difference and it looked great. I'd like for that technology to come out.

4K opponent: In theory there's no difference.

4K proponent: And yet I saw a difference.

4K opponent: But in theory you shouldn't see a difference.

4K proponent: And yet I did.

4K opponent: But you shouldn't.

4K proponent: And yet I did.

4K opponent: But you shouldn't.


Rinse and repeat about 500 times and that's this thread so far. I'll bring another update after about 10 more pages for those who aren't able to keep up.

Originally Posted by saprano

Can current HDMI cables accept 4K resolution? Im not completely clear on this.

Originally Posted by saprano

Can current HDMI cables accept 4K resolution? Im not completely clear on this.

Originally Posted by irkuck

This confirms what I am saying all the time here: From the TV scenario distance of 3-4PH it is impossible to see any pixel structure.

Originally Posted by rogo

Size of the display absolutely matters. In the 1990s, the typical TV was a 25" TV. No one sat even remotely close. When looking at this in the 1990s and seeing people buying 36" TVs, they could still see no one sitting remotely close. Obviously, that has changed in the 2010s.

We don't actually. If the Sharp TV can improve existing content, viewers win. We don't give a hoot whether they "cheated" to do it. If it looks better, it looks better. I don't understand why you can't accept that. I'll accept that if it doesn't when it ships, it's not worth buying. Maybe it's because you didn't see that it was such a clear visual leap you don't appreciate it. I don't know. But your claim that we need to know the source is irrelevant. We need only to know if the shipping product provides anywhere near those results. If it does and it only comes in 4K with red ribbons and glitter attached, then we need 4k, red ribbons and glitter.



None in the posts you quote. You can criticize what I actually say if you'd like; what I won't tolerate is you deciding I said something else and then criticizing me for that.


This mythic "they" you speak of, who are they exactly? And how did they propose to have TVs that didn't support the resolution handle the extra resolution? Answer: They had no answer. There was always going to be one channel per broadcaster (even on cable) that could only hold so much data. Until the middle of the 2000s -- a decade after the HDTV standards were settled -- that data was limited to a stream of 1080i or 720p. There was never going to be any way to shoehorn a 4k stream anywhere -- not cable, not satellite, not OTA -- and the first 50 million HDTVs weren't going to have the circuits to downsample the stream so it couldn't well be the only stream either.

I know it's inconvenient to whatever thesis you're espousing, but those were the facts. There simply was never any serious consideration of supra-HD standards because there was no possible way to implement them.


The technology had numerous constraints:

1) Bandwidth did not allow it. You could not have multiple streams and really you can't afford them now on most multichannel systems nor OTA.
2) The codec that would hypothetically allow for higher resolution formats did not exist.
3) The ability to make a TV that supported higher-than-1080 vertical line resolution did not exist.

You can keep saying it was some nefarious political plot -- which by the way in no way agrees with irkuck's assertion it was solely based on the limits of human perception -- but the reality is they dismissed these ideas because they were not possible.

It's the same way we don't sit around discussing an end to importing oil overnight and replacing 100% of it with algae-based biofuels. Yes, that's hypothetically possible someday, but it's not currently possible at all. So we don't waste time talking about it. Similarly, the HDTV standards did not waste time talking about things that were unachievable even though there existed some small number of people from the IT world who had pie in the sky ideas that were completely unfeasible.

When you actually can comprehend what I wrote, instead of rewriting it to suit your thesis, I'll respond again. I am done responding to your misinterpretations of it.

Originally Posted by coolscan

You are missing the whole point of higher resolution. You are not going to sit and watch pixels "dancing on the screen".

Higher resolution is able to reproduce better quality both overall and in details.

The better reproduction in detail doesn't only mean Small pixel size Details, it means quality of everything from sharpness in edges to better reproductions of gradients.
One pixel color value will now get four different color values.

It is about how pixels combined build the quality of the reproduction of image parts.
The best way to do that is to have so many small pixels that you would need a magnifier to see the pixels.

The distance to the screen which is constantly refereed to in 4K discussions (not only by you) are not as important as it is claimed.

You can sit closer than a 2K display. One reason is that the image quality is better so you don't see the inherited artefacts that is in almost all 2K sources.

But you will also see the improved quality when sitting further away than you normally would do on a 2K display, because the quality of the image is better.

2K resolution is a mess of badly resolved details, blocks and artefacts. The resolution has to increase to avoid all the artefacts that are almost impossible to avoid due to too low resolution.

Just like SD, 1080p has always been too low resolution for good image capture.

For me even 4K is a generation I would happily skip.
In stills photography we have passed 8MP 4K a long time ago.

Originally Posted by pcdo

4K opponent: In theory there's no difference.

4K proponent: And yet I saw a difference.

It was also curious that they found textures on the 2k display to be not "much higher than standard definition".

Originally Posted by ordo


FWIW A friend of mine claimed to have seen two Sharp 80 inch sets showing the same demo. (one was a 1080p set next to a 4k set) Both using the same source. (he claimed that the rep said it was a 1080i source) Said that there was a difference especially in that you could sit closer to the screen and have a clear picture. I know for a fact that in a movie theater he sits quite close to the screen. Said her really liked the 4k set...

Originally Posted by irkuck

BTW, for those who watch at the distance of 2.5PH and less: there is no question the 4K will be beneficial for you (if the video is pristine). Point it that this is not a standard TV viewing scenario and not a sound proposal for mass consumers.

Originally Posted by saprano

I think even rogo can admit that he's seen a better 2K image than what he saw at the sharp demo.

Originally Posted by David_B

Personally, I don't care what you think you know rogo. You read the internet and think you have knowledge, when all you've done is re-spew what you've read.

Reading doesn't replace talking to the people that developed it and had a plan for another format that would last beyond 50 years.

BTW, did Apple ever worry about the fact that the MP3 player they made wouldn't hold a Cassette or CD? They seemed to do OK selling a player that couldn't play the popular formats of they day. It's silly to say people won't buy things because they can't play something of the past or the future, people do it all the time. Try and load a MAC program on a PC sometime.

I'm done arguing with a keyboard jockey.

Originally Posted by coolscan

You are missing the whole point of higher resolution. You are not going to sit and watch pixels "dancing on the screen".

The distance to the screen which is constantly refereed to in 4K discussions (not only by you) are not as important as it is claimed.

You can sit closer than a 2K display. One reason is that the image quality is better so you don't see the inherited artefacts that is in almost all 2K sources.

But you will also see the improved quality when sitting further away than you normally would do on a 2K display, because the quality of the image is better.

Originally Posted by Joe Bloggs

HDMI 1.4 can accept full 4K at only 24 fps and 3840x2160 at 24/25/30 fps.
So they'd be useless at those resolutions for Super Hi-Vision, or anything with high motion (eg. Hobbit).

Though I think there was a recent HDMI update (edit: October 2011 HDMI 1.4b was released according to wiki) that they didn't publicise the specs of. - that I read somewhere increased the bandwidth of - but it's strange they didn't release the updated specs.

According to some HDMI site, the next HDMI version is scheduled for the 2nd half of 2012.

Originally Posted by specuvestor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdmi#Version_comparison

I stand corrected. I never noticed 4k on 1.4 spec besides the ARC and 3D. In any case, HDMI is not going to be the bottleneck

Originally Posted by sytech

The new H.265 codec should allow 4K over standard HDMI. For reference the JVC 4K camcorder uses H.264 and multiple HDMI cables to process the 4K stream in real time at 144mbps. H.265 should allow it at 86mbps in real time. A blu-ray of course could allow for buffering and have an average rate in the 40-50 range. So yes, it should be doable over HDMI 1.4b.

Originally Posted by saprano

Can current HDMI cables accept 4K resolution? Im not completely clear on this.

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

High Speed HDMI cables can support up to 2160p30. As for the future at the CES 2012 HDMI press conference (starting at 11:40 in the video) it was announced that the next HDMI specification would support 2160p60.

Originally Posted by Joe Bloggs

That's good. Would have been better at even higher than 60 fps (like SHV at 120). They also didn't give a clear answer on what it would be for stereoscopic 3D (or any other types of 3D). Would 3D at 2160p be a max of 30 fps?

Originally Posted by Joe Bloggs

I suppose the next HDMI spec (bandwidth-wise at least) would also allow 1080p at say 120Hz.

Originally Posted by Robert2413

...except that HDMI has to pass the video after it has been decompressed, so the codec tech is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by sytech

I don't know how exactly they are getting it done, but the new AMD HD 7900 card can display 4K over a single HDMI 1.4 cable.