Any CES Buzz on New Projectors Accepting Ultra Hi-Def or 4K? - Page 3

You're most likely only going to get 10bit color resolution. The reason behind that has to do with almost all LCDs being limited to 10bits of color per pixel. I'm not an engineer so I don't know if this has to do with the controller or the panels themselves. But what I've heard is that most LCDs these days are 10bit native and won't passthrough anything higher than that. Apart from LCDs, I think most consumer processors/dispalys can only passthrough and display 10bit color. So the situation will be similar to 3D in the fact that, if you want 12 bit color you're going to need to upgrade your display device to one that can actually display 12 bit color.. But I highly doubt 12 bit color will fly and 10 will be the number they land on due to compatibility.

Yep, was exciting to see the Niners handle the Packers; I didn't think they would be able to do it.

 

Would be great to see a Niners-Pats SB, for my son-in-law is a die hard Pats fan (and I actually like them too).   I think the Pats will certainly make it, but looks like the Niners may hard a real test with Atlanta.

 

PS   And watching it all this weekend on the VW1000, with a 136x72 pic on an HP2.4 screen, 11 ft away, still makes me giddy.    I still am in your debt for talking me into buying this projector!

All of the displays in my house currently will accept a 12-bit signal. Whether the panels or displays actually keep the signal 12-bit I don't know, but they'll all accept it.

Yeah, any HDMI 1.3 or higher will accept them. Most processors and the panels themselves can only do 8 or 10 bit

Without any 10 or 12 bit video material on the consumer side of things (other than PC generated stuff perhaps) there hasn't been a need to produce them. Maybe if that becomes the standard the displays will be upgraded to meet specifications?

Audiophiles wanted SACD and DVD-Audio but the masses like mp3's. The same thing will happen with 4K. Store shelves are lined with DVD's and outnumber Blu Rays by a considerable amount. The majority of LCD's accept 1080p yet DVD's must be feeding most of them given the ratio of DVD to Blu Ray titles I saw the last time I walked thru Best Buy. If the masses are satisfied with DVD's where's the logic that they'll buy 4K Blu Rays? If there is a relatively low cost development path to 4K it may happen but I'm not sure it makes business sense to spend a bundle of dough developing and releasing 4K discs and 4K players to a relatively small market. The other thing is how many movies would really benefit with 4K. Are film based flicks going to really look a lot better at 4K resolution? Seems to me there is going to be a limited subset of content that will shine with 4K so not only is the market going to be small I expect content choices will also be limited.

Of course wikipedia could be wrong, but it says: "Based on HDMI Forum meetings it is expected that HDMI 2.0 will increase the maximum TMDS per channel throughput from 3.4 Gbit/s to 6 Gbit/s which would allow a maximum total TMDS throughput of 18 Gbit/s". Let's do some math based on that. My numbers don't match exactly what wikipedia has calculated, so maybe there's a small percentage error in my numbers, but they should be roughly correct:

Maximum throughput (Gbit/s) with 8b/10b overhead removed:
HDMI 1.4: 8.16 Gbit/s
HDMI 2.0: 14.4 Gbit/s

3840*2160, 4K, 24fps:
2D, 4:4:4, 8bit -> 4.8 Gbit/s - ok
2D, 4:4:4, 10bit -> 6.0 Gbit/s - ok
2D, 4:4:4, 12bit -> 7.2 Gbit/s - ok
3D, 4:4:4, 8bit -> 9.6 Gbit/s - ok
3D, 4:4:4, 10bit -> 11.9 Gbit/s - ok
3D, 4:4:4, 12bit -> 14.3 Gbit/s - ok

3840*2160, 4K, 48fps:
2D, 4:4:4, 8bit -> 9.6 Gbit/s - ok
2D, 4:4:4, 10bit -> 11.9 Gbit/s - ok
2D, 4:4:4, 12bit -> 14.3 Gbit/s - ok
3D, 4:4:4, 8bit -> 19.1 Gbit/s - fail
3D, 4:4:4, 10bit -> 23.9 Gbit/s - fail
3D, 4:4:4, 12bit -> 28.7 Gbit/s - fail

3840*2160, 4K, 60fps:
2D, 4:4:4, 8bit -> 11.9 Gbit/s - ok
2D, 4:4:4, 10bit -> 14.9 Gbit/s - fail
2D, 4:4:4, 12bit -> 17.9 Gbit/s - fail
3D, 4:4:4, 8bit -> 23.9 Gbit/s - fail
3D, 4:4:4, 10bit -> 29.9 Gbit/s - fail
3D, 4:4:4, 12bit -> 35.8 Gbit/s - fail


Yes, but I hate if specs (or connectors) limit what we can do. I also hate that we have to update receivers etc every other year because of HDMI version bumps. I would expect HDMI 2.0 to have enough bandwidth to do everything we could ever need/want in the next 10 years. Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case. From what I've heard, the RED projectors will be able to do high bitdepth 4K 3D at up to 60fps. Their codec can do that, too, so can their delivery platform, I think. Whether 4K 3D is really necessary is a question worth asking, but then if you create a new spec / delivery platform and you can pull out all the stops, why not? I think that's a *much* better approach than what we're used from CE companies and film studios.


You may be right with that. I sure hope not. If they don't support bigger color spaces and higher bit depth with 4K Blu-Ray then I would consider that really really stupid.

The problem is that HDMI is basically single link DVI just reconfigured into a different pin/port configuration. I think it's safe to say they're really pushing the technology to it's limits. It might be better to create something new if they can't make a new configuration of it work with 4K in all of it's possible forms.

Who's obliged to use HDMI anyway? There's a display port/thunderbold, for example, which is free for makers of electronic devices (unlike HDMI). Can someone please explain why?

All these bandwidth specs are designed as cost/performance ratios. They take a look at what sort of signal processing is currently affordable and design around that. What was unaffordable, state-of-the-art back in 1998 when they were designing DVI is now not only dirt-cheap, but obsolete. Due to Moore's Law the transceiver chips in the HDMI ports can be a couple of orders of magnitude more powerful than they were 15 years ago for the same price. So it isn't really a case of pushing the limits.

Single-link DVI is ~5Gbps, HDMI 2.0 is projected to be 18Gbps. Less than 4x increase over 15 years isn't particularly aggressive. We saw a 10x speed increase in ethernet in just 3 years (100Mbps in 1995 to 1Gbps in 1999) - although to be fair even though the cable standard stayed the same, there were unused wires in the 100Mbps spec that the 1Gbps spec made use of..

Also, the reason they want to use HDMI is for backwards compatibility. Adapters are a PITA. HDMI has 100% of the consumer entertainment market - displayport and the rest are niche specs for PC monitors with 0% of consumer entertainment devices. Any consumer entertainment device that implemented displayport would still have to include HDMI for backwards compatibility.

I am surprised that HDMI has survived this long. Must be the worst connecting plug design in the history of electronics.

There is some hope that HDBaseT Alliance, founded in 2010 by LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Valens Semiconductor, will be the alternative in the future. They have taken their time to get this going, but there is some movement. HDBaseT Announced at CES 2013 That Onkyo & Pioneer Have Joined Alliance.

Separate HDBaseT extender boxes excist, but HDBaseT buildt into equipment as an alternative transmission standard to HDMI would be a much better solution. If it could be upgradeable with new firmware we wouldn't need to buy new equipment every time they upgraded the standard.

HDBaseT use a standard RJ-45 plug and a Cat5e/6 LAN cable.

The compelling features of HDBaseT technology include:
>Uncompressed video/audio up to 10.2 Gbps.
>Maximum cable length of 100m, including support of multiple hops, up to 8 x 100m
>Low cost standard Cat5e/6 LAN cable
>Utilizes a standard RJ-45 connector
>Supplies up to 100W of power – which can be utilized to power a remote TV
>Support for 100Mbps Ethernet
>Easy installation utilizing existing in-wall Ethernet connectivity
>USB support
>Supports HDCP
>Networking support including extended-range daisy chain and star topologies

There is also a similar "Chinese" system under development called DiiVA, founded (allegedly) by among others Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, LG, and Toshiba and a multitude of Chinese companies. But as of today, the list of Chinese and Japanese companies that have adopted this, only Toshiba and Foxcon are well known names.

Doesn't look like there is much difference between HDBaseT and DiiVA.

Pretty much what I have been saying. The market is such that 4K content will be very nitch and will be served by servers. Content will be more expensive than blurays and will eventually be network based. but limited distribution could be by menory card or hard drive and there is some movie content now (Time or some title like that) that you can buy it in true 4K for about $300 a copy hard based.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

OT

But IFAIK the "Hobbit" is not 4K, its "only" 2K, 3D HFR ( 48 P ) or am I wrong?

dj

The Hobbit was shot with Red cameras in native 4K (or prehaps 5K) resolution. However, the current digital cinema standards do not support full 4K resolution for HFR 3D and therefore I assume it is shown as 2K for the HFR 3D presentations. With the next generation of HDMI, even if it doesn't have the bandwidth to support the most demanding 4K 3D format, industry implementators could get creative and define a "standard" configuration to support HFR 3D 4K w/12-bit depth and 4:4:4 would use two HDMI connections with one for the right and the other for the left video streams. Perhaps not very likely, but possible.
Edited by Ron Jones - 1/14/13 at 7:20am

The Hobbit at the moment exist only in a 2K version. The reason, and this goes for all movies, is that to create and render VFX/CGI in 4K is very much more expensive and take very much more time than doing VFX/CGI in 2K.
For The Hobbit it was just not even time to do VFX/CGI in 4K. The Hobbit edit was locked just 2-3 days before the world premier in New Zeeland.
That is also why we will never see a true 4K version of Avatar.
They are now working on creating a 4K version of The Hobbit part1.
My guess is that we will see a lot of 4K movies where the VFX/CGI is just up-converted from 2K and reconnected to the Live shot 4K camera capture. (The Hobbit was shot in 2x5K)
Or just up-converted movies that are shot on cameras with lower resolution than 4K, like Skyfall.

Because of how clean FX can look when rendered they have to be post processed with Noise,grain etc to match the scene . The Up conversion of 2k to 4k depending on how it is done, you may not notice a difference.


Also depending on how they did the Hobbit. Once you properly De-Bayer Red 5k Footage you are left with around 2.5k.

I agree. Also is the fact that often the VFX elements are just a part of the frame so it doesn't have to have the full resolution of the frame.
But the time consuming (and thereby expensive) is that when a 4K Live shot frame shall be combined with a VFX part that is originally created for a 2K finish, it has to be up-converted and rendered out first to match the finishing resolution. You can not just take the original VFX/live shot combination 2K frame and up-convert it because it will look different from the rest of the original Live shot frames that doesn't have VFX.
I think you miss spelled that or think about RedOne or Scarlet that resolve about 3.5K after debayering. When you debayer Red Epic 5K footage you have about 4.5K of real resolved resolution.