Sony 4K and the rest - Page 5

It depends also on how things are shot. They haven't really changed shooting styles of TV/film to take advantage of bigger consumer displays taking up more field of view. They might with 4k and '8K' TV, and 'film' eventually.

Which gamers? It will be awhile before 4k pjs hit the price point of the average gamer.

most flatscreens i would guess are viewed from much farther away than the 'reccommended' 35-40 degree movie viewing angle so screens can probably go bigger without viewing difficulties

The final frontier in our quest for high end home theater is software based content. Software content is the limiting factor now.

Wait, when did they START taking the size of televisions into account when shooting films?!?!? Depending on where you sit in the theatre, the screen goes well outside your field of view, and it's been that way for decades.

That said, I don't 100% agree with the point of view I was summarizing in my initial post, I was just summarizing it as a response to another post.

IMPO, I have no doubt Sony will bring 4K to the consumer market soon with software offerings from their own studio.

I also predict it will fail!

There will not be nearly enough general public interest to make the format successful at any cost.

This is just another El-Cassette 40 years later!

Again IMO.

If they create the discs to be a hybrid (plays in 2k vs 4k depending on your hardware) I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work.

Just MO as well

Ok, the source is most likely already in 4K so that's not an issue. New films are mostly 4K work flows and many classics are being remastered in 4K today. That BTW is for preservation, not home video. 4K Home video would just be a bonus to offset these costs, yet currently unrealized.

However to make this hybrid disk, we now have to author the 4K version not to mention the pressing technology advancements needed to make the mass production cost effective. Better compression using the BluRay footprint? OK, but there's still the authoring and disc post production costs. To make a 4K version, you now added another full thread to the whole DVD authoring process. Now yes, software products could be developed to just copy the BluRay version metadata and recreate the menus/features to the 4K version which would greatly reduct costs. But for someone to develope that level of software, there would have to be a demand. Chicken and egg.

Keep in mind 4K is utterly useless on a 60in LCD screen in a home setting. And how many people have front projection over 10 feet wide? And of those how many can either afford or actually want to jump to 4K. Minuscule number for sure.

I'd love a 32" 4K hdtv as my computer monitor. With crt black levels please.

And we can already get those. And they will remain available as they are needed for certain work such as CAD.

But for watching TV????

I use a 28.5" Hanspree hdtv now, and wish I had more resolution then 1920x1080. I don't watch much tv but I could see running a 1920x1080 window for tv and scaling Bluray to 4K. Nice to have a third viewing option as there's four adults in this household.

Do these CAD monitors come with internal scaler, and multiple hdmi inputs and PIP ?

I sincerely doubt it as they are not intended for watching TV. HDMI is a possibility.

Not so much needed for CAD work as for medical imaging. That's where to look to find high res displays.

Damn, you guys are so old school. I can do 4K now with a blend. BORING.

Yep! Another excellent application for 4K. Looking for oil is probably another. Still not TV!

Right on target in my opinion.

commercial usage is an entirely different ballgame.

Lurking here occasionally.
I find amusing the debate about 4K and large screen when Apple is on the verge of possibly creating a 3K device on a 10 inch screen (IPad3). Not 4K, but pretty close. I have always been a big fan of high DPI screen and welcome the invasion of retina displays on CE. So content may exist after all for 4K devices, although probably not movies.
Michel

For once I agree with Amir. 4k is nothing but marketing hype at this point.

Even with native content the viewer needs to have pretty darn good visual acuity with even a large screen from typical viewing distances to start to appreciate 4k in the home environment. I am a projector guy with a good midlevel setup that just upgraded for 3D (Sony VPL-HW30ES). After going from a Matterhorn 576p DLP (2005-2008) with DVD as my primary source to a Epson ProCinema 1080UB(2008-2012) with BD becoming my primary source, I will say I saw significant increase in presentation quality. Even my wife noticed the difference on the 100-inch screen. BD and BD 3D deliver a very high quality experience in my home theater. I just can't see the upgrade to 4k making the same impact. I already see an extremely sharp detailed picture especially considering most modern films had their DIs done at 2k.

Pixel structure is clearly visible on 1080 displays with 20/25 vision at SMPTE standard viewing distances. I'm not saying that 4K isn't marketing hype but it isn't only marketing hype.

Art

New technology is always hyped as part of the marketing. That's part of getting the product to consumers. Doesn't mean the technology itself has no advantage or value. 4k will be the new standard in the years to come. IMO.

DVD
HDTV
1080P
Bluray

All "hyped" when first released. They are all part of our world now.

I honestly don't see what the debate is about? 4k is coming just as DVD, Bluray did, when don't ask me. And once 4K comes, their will be yet a new standard for people to say won't come(8K) and be marketing hype. And it will repeat itself over and over again as technological advances are made.

Only the old school people will ever cling to the idea that present technology is where the technology evolution will stop. There will always be someone trying to make something better.

I don't know why we would assume that technologic and market advancement would mean quality improvement.

Look at the audio world where convenience, portability and transferrability have become the most (only?) important factors.

I don't necessarily believe that higher resolution is considered the next step forward for content providers. Even if that is the case, then at what bit rate? On the fly, limited bit rate encoding/decoding has destroyed digital image quality as it is.

Kevin

I really doubt that I would have 4K in my living room, but if I ever build a dedicated theater room, I would look into it, by the time I'm ready to do that, price has come down. But then 12K might be out

4K is not right around the corner as some of you think. 4K has no native content outside the commercial environment. The current plan is to fake a la up-conversion. Trying to do 4K natively on a BD 50 is going to have similar results as using a BD25 with MPEG2 for a full length film.

4K is niche. It doesn't offer a significant quality increase with the content available. How many people have that great visual acuity to warrant it? How large does the display have to get to appreciate it? Look I am all for technology marching forward but I would rather see the time and effort be spent on improving and creating better display technologies instead of a meaningless number game WRT resolution at this point. 1080p is pretty good for most applications. Remember it has taken a while for BD to get to this point. We are an extremely small minority of the consumers driving the market. Just because DVDs replacement debuted 8 years after DVD's introduction doesn't mean that BD already needs a replacement.

How many people can accommodate a setup that adheres to the SMPTE standard? As far as seeing pixel structure there are other factors that make the structure more/less visible. There's only one true 4K projector at the consumer level, a couple of fakers, and NO NATIVE content. At least 3D delivered some high quality content after its introduction.

Sony's new CEO Kazuo Hirai made statements in just the past 24 hours that suggests consumer 4K will be a prominent part of Sony's new business strategy...

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8521

I agree that 4K only offers a noticeable improvement if you sit quite close to a large screen, e.g., around 1.0 screen width away. But for those that do (such as me) it does make for a better pic (even the 4K that is upconverted for 1080p input).

Sony is trying to differentiate from the competition. Someone also mentioned that Sony did not mention 3D. That's most likely because 3D is a feature all their competitors have. 4K is different because they have the only true unit for the home. Again we will see if 4K is really what we are being promised. I see companies going the cheap route. Most likely up converted 1080p for the foreseeable future. IOW pretty much pointless.

Well they brought us the ElCassette in the 1970s too!