Whatever happened to 4K? The rise of “Ultra HD” TV

Companies seem averse to calling their latest TVs 4K.

Read the whole story

 

[alxx]

Is ars going to review the Odemax 4k distribution service when it launches at sundance ?
and the redray player ?

http://www.red.com/news/red-announces-p ... ith-odemax
http://odemax.com/information.html

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread ... RAY-ODEMAX

They are going to be using the red ray codec, supposedly have had a break through and got it way down on bandwidth 2.5MB a second for streaming 4k video
http://www.redgrabs.com/up/1354328970.jpg


Also in Europe there is a dedicated 4k demo satelite channel that started on tuesday
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 93172.html

 

[alxx]

Awesome. No one really cares, because there is no content, and the ridiculous re-tooling of all our infrastructure is just not going to happen nearly as fast as the ITU (or whomever) is bumping TV set resolutions.....

There is content but not from the major studios and usual providers yet.

 

[alxx]

I predict 4K or ultra HD or whatever else it is called will never catch on. Very few people want their living rooms dominated by a monstrous screen. And even fewer people watch a movie and focus on the weave of the leading lady's knickers or the grain on the protagonist's leather sofa.

Its coming whether we want it or not.

I just wish they'd hurry up and get all this screen tech into pc monitors.
I want a full aperture 4k capable monitor (4096 × 3112) though I'd happily settle for 4096 × 2160.

 

[alxx]

When do we get uncompressed HD? Most "HD" Stations looks like utter crap. I shouldn't be seeing artifacts at the price they charge for cable/fios.

Never, because that would be dumb. Visual transparency can be achieved for most sources of 1080p at somewhere between 10-20 Mbps with Hi10p H.264 done with a good encoder (x264) by someone who knows what they're doing. Even MPEG2 becomes pretty lossless towards 40-50 Mbps.

As BananaBonanza said, the issue is that most HD Stations are morons/greedy and bit starve their streams in order to pump out as much as possible while simultaneously using pathetic encoding. Compression is good.

Compression is fine, we'd just need slightly higher bitrates...

It'd help if they had competent encoders too, or for that matter even used up-to-date stuff. I've seen plenty of "HD" broadcasts that still use MPEG2, let alone H.264 high profile. The stations don't want to spend the money though to change that, and to an extent it could be worse. People who really care will probably just get the Blu-rays later anyway (or in a dream future might be able to buy full quality normal MKVs online).

.red is an option , supposedly 2.5MB a second for streaming 4k (currently up to 4096 by 2160)

posting the links again so don't have to go back page of comments

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread ... RAY-ODEMAX
http://www.red.com/news/red-announces-p ... ith-odemax
http://odemax.com/information.html

 

[alxx]

Ultra HD!

Porn so real you can smell it.

you can buy smellovision units for movie theatres

We're buying one for a data visualisation arena we're working on.
Just takes a bit of work to synchronise the smells with the scenes(dmx script)

 

[alxx]

I hope these manufacturers are acutely aware of the fact that, in order to sell these things, they need UHD content, and in order for consumers to access UHD content, internet speeds in the country need to go up by a lot and quickly (along with no caps). If these guys can get more $$$ and muscle behind efforts to nationalize or at least make-competitive our internet infrastructure, it could go a long way in this almost impossible battle against incumbent ISPs.

Here's hoping odimax gives the indie producers a chance to shine and distribute their content and not get shut-out again by the big studios.

 

[alxx]

So... when is someone going to start testing a 4K television signal? And how much bloody bandwidth will it require?

This is something for the mass market once distribution channels are actually wide enough to deal with it. There is absolutely no reason for the majority of people to spend lots of money upgrading to a screen that looks almost the same as their current screen. Even less reason when they start realising that there's no current method for content distribution once they do upgrade.

People will not want to be buying movies on "Blu-Ray ultra" discs or whatever term the marketers come up with, they want to access content any time, any place. 4K at the moment is not going to be available like that - unless you live in Kansas City (where everything's up to date).

Wake me up in 15 years or so, when we have the networks to carry this traffic and the prices are sensible.

For those in the Euro zone with sat recievers
http://www.eutelsat.com/products/broadc ... ra-hd.html

EUTELSAT 10A at 10° East:
Frequency: 11304 MHz
Polarization: Horizontal
Symbol rate: 27500
DVB-S2
8PSK
FEC 2/3
Pilot ON