Is 4K (or higher) feasible with plasma?

Since nearly all the current HD content is set up at 16:9, who or what will provide the viewable resources?

Also, broadcasters have barely have enough bandwidth these days to support 1080i/720p and unfortunately Blu-Ray growth has diminished due to on-line streaming, which is even more compressed. So how or when there will be support for 4k is a BIG question mark.



Ian

Agreed. Since I got Netflix and Apple TV iTunes movie access on my TV I never physically rent a movie anymore. I just can't be bothered going to the video store, renting them and then having to return them and possibly having to pay late fees. The only reason to do that would be if there was a movie I could not get there or one that I really wanted to watch in Blu-Ray quality. Also, the cost-benefit with services like Netflix ($8/mos for all the TV shows and movies, albeit not entirely competitive in terms of offerings with video stores) is very compelling.

It's kind of like when there were not TV remotes and people were too lazy to even get up and change the channel. So, variety shows thrived a during that time and totally died when the remote came out as people could create their own variety show by just flipping channels when they got bored. So, we flock to that which is most convenient and that makes the market.

Cable TV and Internet are struggling to even deliver pictures to our HDTV's in 1920x1080i quality. 1920x1080p broadcast is totally out of the question because of the excess bandwidth it would consume. Netflix has even had to dumb down their video quality in order to fit within the download capacity and GB limits that many households have. The signals are compressed severely in order to deliver them now via cable (an antenna on your roof delivers a better HDTV picture!). So, given that is the case, the days when we will be able to view a 4K picture in the quality that was intended is a long long way off. No one is going to pay for a 4K video over the pipe that is delivered in less than 2K quality. That will result in an extremely low rate of adoption of this technology. Likely the only market will be videophiles who want to and can afford to buy 4K Blu-Ray players (the only medium that will effectively be able to deliver 4K video) and 4K HDTV's.

Remember, it took over 50 years for HDTV to arrive after SDTV and even though technological advancements are accelerating 4K TV is not going to happen anytime soon. The limiting factor will likely not be the technology of the recording device (4K camera), the source material device (4K player) or the display device (4K HDTV) but rather the capacity and speed of the delivery mode, ie the pipe. But, the high cost of the devices will result in there being a lack of demand for a higher capacity and speed pipe. The classic chicken and egg situation. And, all this is in addition to the fact that 4K quality will really only be able to be perceived by the human eye in display devicees above 65" which is the short tail of the marketplace, hence low demand.

So, it's probably a bit of a moot point about whether plasma will support 4K. Likely OLED, which has so many advantages over plasma with the only two (big) disadvantages being cost and panel life, will eventually take over. The cost of OLED will eventually come down to be competitive with plasma for sure as yields and volumes increase. Panel life will eventually too. Both of these will happen by the time 4K starts to achieve some momentum, which I suspect will be more than 10 years away, if that soon.

yes Panasonic has 4k+2k pro set right now.

4k will mainstrean in 2-4 years an optical media will be out before then different type bluray.

Quality up-scaling can produce noticeable improvements, even in the absence of true 4K source material ( which will not be available for a long time ). Too often 4K is dismissed by those who say there is not content. Take a look at some of the published projection screen shots comparing native 1080 and 4K with the same image. There is a visible improvement in detail in the upscaled image! I believe the same benefit will be seen on TV screens- provided they are large enough. I see little benefit of a 4K 50" TV, but on a 100" TV I think it would be significant.

So, aside from upscaling a Blu-Ray, could you then upscale a broadcast feed then and see a noticeable improvement (on a 100" TV, that is, which few people will ever have)?

inch vs resolution is curious to me.
19" with 800 x 600
vs 50" with 1900 x 1080.
seems the dots per inch is similar.
I do know my SD TV
did not show bad signals like an HD does.
And yes, when a true
1900 x 1080 is shown it is beautiful.

I dunno... I guess it depends on the quality of the "broadcast feed" and the quality of the scaling. Some rave about upscaling SD to 1080, but others not so much. I agree few will have a 100" set, but larger sets are coming. we'll see a 90" this year. As I said before, it's pointless (IMO) to have a 4K 50" TV. So the issue goes hand in hand with larger sets (and screens). I'm sure the "garbage in garbage out" principle applies here too. Anyone with a large set is going to want the highest possible quality when it comes to source. Others may know more about this point, but my sense is that a Blu-ray is going to provide a higher audio and video resolution than most any other source. I prefer renting the actual disk to streaming or PPV.

I would love to see it happen along with a 21:9 native projector (2560x1080) but probably not in this lifetime.

Your requirements for sub-24-hour response times are challenging!

Yes, it's possible. I doubt it would be easily achieved in sizes below 60" because we'd be back to pretty small cells. The 60" is 2x the size of a 42", where 1080 can be achieved... So you'd have to halve the cell sizes to pull that off.

I doubt you'll ever see it, however, unless they start to mass produce at 85" or larger.

As for 4k itself, seeing is believing. Sharp showed 1080i source on their 4k prototypes and it looked amazing. They did have their I-cubed processor doing the upscaling, which I'm sure is a lot of why it looked amazing, but clearly it looked amazing.

Anyway, I suspect plasma R&D will begin to wind down over the next 5 years, not accelerate. To that end, I doubt you're going to see plasma join the 4K parade, except perhaps in jumbo sizes.

Regarding <60" 4K PDPs. Obviously when you make a pixel smaller you reduce the light output. Unfortunately, in Plasma displays, the reduction in light output is compounded by several other factors. A smaller cell not only reduces phosphor area and aperture ratio but also produces less efficient gas discharge and less controllable pixels. On top of that is the way Plasma drives the panel. All the pixels are addressed and then all the pixels are activated. This is done 10+ times per frame. If you double the amount of pixel rows from 1080 to 2160 you literally halve the amount ot time available to emit light.

And to top it off, Plasma produces the least amount of light with the highest amount of power of any display. In other words, it does not have the lattitude to reduce light output any further.

When displays went from 480p to 1080p it was PDP that took the largest hit in brightness because of the factors above.

The good news is that there is technology available to increase the gas discharge efficiency, phosphor light output, and addressing speed (Panasonic separate priming cell tech directly referencing 4K). I'm not sure any of this technology will make it into actual products.

Edit: Also, NHK in the past has worked on higher resolution PDPs

No one solved the manufacturing problems on SED, which is why you never saw it. Believe what you want about how some relatively small IP lawsuit magically killed the technology, but Toshiba made two big bets on HD-DVD and SED at about the same time and started to lose a fortune on the former, making it unable to risk losing a fortune on the latter.

As for Panasonic, they will find a way to make OLEDs or they will eventually shrivel and go away in the TV business. I very much doubt that the order of magnitude improvements that plasma could theoretically make will ever happen.

I'm also not convinced any of the Japanese companies will necessarily be in the TV business a decade from now. Not saying they won't, but there are issues each faces.

According to an article last week in the Chicago Sun-Times, China is loosing their previous price advantage due to rising labor cost. There is also talk of manufacturing TVs here in the states again. Here is the article:

http://www.suntimes.com/business/101...ade-in-us.html

also, think about- using these "TVs"-- to show off your products- From Victoria Secrets to a Honda> to a home.. better commercials{ absolutely beautiful} = better sales....
in store........

Is the States cheaper than Mexico for back end assembly? Your competitor is nearer than you thought China backend will likely be for Asia consumption.

As for panel production, the incumbents in Taiwan and Korea are too entrenched to be unseated. Even China is having problem trying to create a complete display value chain.

Besides Sharp it is frankly hard to fathom any Japanese TV maker beyond this decade.

My feelings more or less echo Spec's here. I will note that if we had this conversation 18 months ago, it would be hard to fathom Sharp making it to 2015. That said, at least at the time Sharp had the world's only 10G LCD fab already mostly complete.

There is nothing at any of the other Japanese producers that currently represents a "weapon" with which to compete in the future. They are not leaders in OLED, do not have mature, scaled large-motherglass LCD fabs to crank out displays with, etc. That's why I've basically said it's now or never for Sony and their CLED. It's unique, they could theoretically get it started for a reasonable investment. But if they don't go now, it will never happen.