4K TV Article

When cellphones first came out they looked like bricks and weighed about the same. All you could use them for was making phone calls. Getting a smaller phone back then cost a fortune. Things changed a teensy bit since. Same thing will happen with 4k displays for tvs. When the price falls and people get used to using them as displays that have nothing to do with broadcast television then things will take on a revised clarity.
 
adkimery said:
Who is being forced to upgrade? Already purchased TV sets and cameras will continue to function as advertised for years to come. Even when HD TVs start being phased out, which I think will happen, the 4k sets will already be at comparable price points so if your TV dies then buying a new 4k set won't be anymore expensive than buying a new HD set.


-Andrew
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I agree, in 2005 a 55" LG HDTV was $19,000 and today Sears sells a 55" 4K UHD TV for $799.
South Korea's LG Electronics, for example, currently markets a 55-inch LCD
television for about $19,000.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24754-4-rich-people-sharp-unveils
 
Well, my 52" Sony TV was 1500eur in 2008. If it broke and I had to buy a new one, it would probably be about half-as-much for the same size, or just a little bit bigger (60") for the same money. Not a lot of progress for 7 years, is it?
Given that I already have the resolution I need (good 1080p), and also nice, accurate colors, what I want to see improved is size and price. TV makers seem to be pushing everything else, except this.
 
If there's a substantial advantage to 4K display, I suspect it will be the greater tonality and colour depth of Rec.2020 rather than the added resolution.
 
My thoughts... Almost all of the video work I do now is broadcast TV commercials for USA markets delivered via ftp upload. And the most requested spec, codec aside, is 1080i for video, with standard def center cut safe titles, and stereo for audio.

I can't tell you how many of us setup 5.1 surround suites because of all the surround sound work we anticipated, only to be disappoint by broadcasters rejecting surround sound commercials.

And when broadcasters finely started to accept commercials in high definition, only to have them rejected because the titles were HD safe, but not SD safe. To me it's like having an Olympic size swimming pool, but only being allowed to swim in the shallow end. But yes, there really are that many people still viewing broadcast content via standard definition 4:3 televisions. Although recently we have started producing commercials for select clients without center cut safe titles, with the thinking that their product is at a price point where if somebody can not afford to purchase an HD television, they also likely can not afford their product, so having their titles cut off on a standard definition is no big deal to them, as SD viewers are not their market model.

4K?

Great, but I honestly think it is going to be a while before it makes it's way to a delivery spec for the majority of the broadcast commercial work I do. And when it does, I'm wondering if we will look at HD like we do SD now?

Ever watch TV when a commercial break comes on and they show HD commercials, and then a standard def commercial plays and it just flat out looks like crap? Will the great looking HD stuff we produce now become the crap of the future?

Dave
 
GHKAM said:
4K TV's will come down in price - I'm talking seperate from TV's as viewing online video via a smartphone, tablet or PC monitor is way more common than hooking up a camera directly to TV. Even if direct upload of 4K video from a WiFi-enabled device (without acquiring a better PC), what will the benefit of 4K content be if many are viewing online videos on a tiny smartphone screen?

I'm just wondering if the present way of doing things will be transferable to 4K? (Again, I'm talking mass consumer adoption, not video enthusiasts or pros who work with video.)
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All of it. Whether or not you need it is irrelevant. It will just have it anyway.

When digital TV first hit the airwaves i bought a set-top box for our CRT TV. After a while we decided to get a new TV based on the fact that all the new shows were 16/9 (black bars on the top and bottom of a 68cm 4/3 didn't give you much to look at :(, as I'm sure most of you know). Now we already had the set-top box, we didn't need a TV with 1 built in, but by that stage there was no longer an option, they all had 1 anyway. The same goes for HDD recorders, they all have a STB built in.
You might not need it, but if the video card in your PC stops working so you need to get a new 1. that new 1 will be 4k.
If want to get a another PC just to surf the net. I only need a Pentium II 450 with 512mb of ram and Win98 for example. But even though i need so little, getting it new is not an option.
I just looked at the online PC parts store i use. I was amazed to see you could still get DDR1 ram off them! $60 for 2gb. Good luck buying the rest of the items to build a PC around it though, and look what i can get for $240 more
http://www.cplonline.com.au/basic-pc-intel-dual-core-code-01.html
Now that PC, all I will use it for is surfing the net. So all i need is a CD Rom to install the OS. But now the lowest option is a DVD-RW.

All Integrated on-board Audio is Surround Sound now (who here has speakers hooked up to that, I don't), and eventually the Integrated on-board VC's will be 4k. Despite that, YouTube will still have an option to watch video in 144p i bet, and just because you have a 4k Monitor doesn't mean you cant make it full screen. So why shouldn't it be 4k?

All these sort of things get overtaken by progress, and even though you don't need different the next time, different is your only option. The manufactures just need to make it backwards compatible.
 
David W. Jones said:
Great, but I honestly think it is going to be a while before it makes it's way to a delivery spec for the majority of the broadcast commercial work I do. And when it does, I'm wondering if we will look at HD like we do SD now?
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I think 4k is going to go mainstream in the 4-7 years but I doubt cable/sat/ota transmissions are going change over anytime remotely soon due to the expense. It won't be as bad the analog to digital switch but it will be close. 4k is going to come via streaming but maybe over the same timeframe all major broadcasters will have apps and 'simulcast' a 4k stream while the broadcast is HD.

At least with the move from HD to 4k you own't have worry about different title and action safe areas since the aspect ratio is the same.:thumbsup:


-Andrew
 
Ever watch TV when a commercial break comes on and they show HD commercials, and then a standard def commercial plays and it just flat out looks like crap? Will the great looking HD stuff we produce now become the crap of the future?
Click to expand...

I love this....so true!
 
Ever watch TV when a commercial break comes on and they show HD commercials, and then a standard def commercial plays and it just flat out looks like crap? Will the great looking HD stuff we produce now become the crap of the future?
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IMO Yes. Maybe not really high budget movies. But how many of the shows made in the 90's (and even the 00's) look absolutly crap now when they go the the sections behind the "Green Screen". Back when they were made you didn't spot it as much.
So unless they were made in 4k and down graded to 1080 (like high budget movies have been for a while now I think), then yes, they will look like crap.
 
alaskacameradude said:
This brings about another interesting point with regards to 4k. One of the big expected
delivery methods is streaming. Now again, the quality of your streaming experience varies
greatly depending on your market, but as a whole, the US lags far behind other counties as far
as network speed is concerned. Where I live, the fastest speed I can purchase is a 1Mb download....
and most of the time it runs slower than that. Other areas of my town can get faster speeds....but
they have usage caps put on them. You see, those faster speed connections are in areas of town
which have fiber from the local cable TV company. The last thing the cable company wants, is
for you to buy speedy Internet from them, and then buy Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime
and cancel you cable TV subscription. So you get a certain amount of 'data' and over that amount,
you pay usage fees (just like with a cell phone). So watching video is not very practical....unless
you like paying overage charges. 4k will take even more bandwidth to stream. My guess is that
the ISPs will need to sort this out to help 4k's cause. Already ISPs complain about Netflix and
other video streaming services 'clogging' the available bandwidth with estimates of over 80% of internet
traffic being streaming video from some sources
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Bandwidth is certainly a concern but once H.265 rolls out that will help on that front. On another forum someone talked about watching a 4k demo on a 70" screen using h.265 footage at about 7megs/sec and it looked very good and that's about the same bandwidth as a current Netflix HD stream. That's still way higher than you what you, and many other people, are getting but 4k will come in as premium option in addition to HD and SD.

Cable companies will dig in their heels as long as possible but they know which way the wind is blowing. For example, Comcast merged with NBC/Universal a couple of years ago so they would be on the content creation side of the business too just like Time Warner (I think TW and Comcast service a combined 75% of US cable subscribers).


-Andrew
 
adkimery said:
Bandwidth is certainly a concern but once H.265 rolls out that will help on that front. On another forum someone talked about watching a 4k demo on a 70" screen using h.265 footage at about 7megs/sec and it looked very good and that's about the same bandwidth as a current Netflix HD stream. That's still way higher than you what you, and many other people, are getting but 4k will come in as premium option in addition to HD and SD.

Cable companies will dig in their heels as long as possible but they know which way the wind is blowing. For example, Comcast merged with NBC/Universal a couple of years ago so they would be on the content creation side of the business too just like Time Warner (I think TW and Comcast service a combined 75% of US cable subscribers).


-Andrew
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And here is another opinion from 'Streaming Media' magazine
about a whole different challenge with streaming 4k.
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014...ntent-owners-cant-afford-bandwidth-costs.html

Also, I still think having cable companies controlling
so much access to the Internet will hurt 4k streaming
at least in the short term.
 
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To those who say 4k will be here sooner than you think, if you mean most people will end up with a UHDTV in the household then probably right. By that measure 3d got here sooner than we thought.

But it will be longer than you think if sooner than you think means mainstream 4k broadcasting. The audiences will choose download speed, convenience and portability over buffering, data caps and network traffic almost every time.
 
alaskacameradude said:
And here is another opinion from 'Streaming Media' magazine
about a whole different challenge with streaming 4k.
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014...ntent-owners-cant-afford-bandwidth-costs.html

Also, I still think having cable companies controlling
so much access to the Internet will hurt 4k streaming
at least in the short term.
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The article makes valid points but I think they are being short sighted. 4k is going to be a premium product for at least the next few years so it's not surprising that only players with deep pockets like Comcast, Sony, Netflix, etc., are currently tossing their hats into the ring (and H.265 will cut the data rates by about half which puts them in the same range as the higher end of Netflix today). I think it will be between 4-7 years before 4k hits the mainstream and that seems like a reasonable time frame to me. I mean DVD, the fastest adopted consumer tech, took about 4 years before it was embraced by the mainstream.
 
adkimery said:
The article makes valid points but I think they are being short sighted. 4k is going to be a premium product for at least the next few years so it's not surprising that only players with deep pockets like Comcast, Sony, Netflix, etc., are currently tossing their hats into the ring (and H.265 will cut the data rates by about half which puts them in the same range as the higher end of Netflix today). I think it will be between 4-7 years before 4k hits the mainstream and that seems like a reasonable time frame to me. I mean DVD, the fastest adopted consumer tech, took about 4 years before it was embraced by the mainstream.
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Not necessarily disagreeing with you, I just feel its interesting to see that not even the big guys
pushing 4k seem to be as optimistic about its immediate adoption as some on these boards.
And I do feel the cable company 'data cap' is an issue that will need to be resolved. I've done a
little work with various cable companies from all across the country. One job dealt with ways they
could get more customers instead of losing them. I suggested cutting data caps and was told that
categorically was out of the question and 'no one will do that'. They seemed to be strongly of the
mind that Internet become more like electricity where you pay according to how much you use.
 
alaskacameradude said:
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, I just feel its interesting to see that not even the big guys
pushing 4k seem to be as optimistic about its immediate adoption as some on these boards.
And I do feel the cable company 'data cap' is an issue that will need to be resolved. I've done a
little work with various cable companies from all across the country. One job dealt with ways they
could get more customers instead of losing them. I suggested cutting data caps and was told that
categorically was out of the question and 'no one will do that'. They seemed to be strongly of the
mind that Internet become more like electricity where you pay according to how much you use.
Click to expand...

Who realistically expects 4k to go mainstream immediately though? Or even in the next few years? Transition like these take many years and 4k has just gotten started. In 2002, w/HD in its painful infancy, how many people would have predicted that inside 10 years we'd be streaming HD quality video directly to our tablets, smart phones and internet connected TVs?

Sony has already started mastering (and remastering its back catalog in 4k), Netflix will start streaming in 4k this year (as well as shooting & finishing its original shows in 4k), Amazon announced partnerships with Warner Bros, Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox and Discovery to stream 4k content and Comcast is getting behind 4k as well. The PS4 and the XboxOne can output 4k video too so there are already millions of homes that have '4k ready' devices sitting in their living rooms. Time Warner and Comcast, combined, own like 75% of the cable business in the US and I'm sure they'll be happy to provide early 4k adaptors with higher bandwidth and data caps for a price (it pays to provide both content and content delivery). In the future H.265 will allow 4k content to be streamed at data rates comparable to today's HD streams and that will help shift 4k from 'premium' status to mainstream status.

I'm not saying 4k being successful is a foregone conclusion but it has fewer hurdles to overcome than HD or 3D so I think 4k has a great shot of landing in the mainstream sometime before 2021.
 
I'm not saying 4k being successful is a foregone conclusion
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Oh... but it will be. Why do we have so many discussions of if and when, knowing that the next generation of broadcasting WILL BE 4K? Anybody with a simple knowledge of the past can easily foresee the future of 4K, and the future is already here! The cameras are getting more price accessible and so will the TV sets. And the networks are surely working rapidly to implement it as well. Have no doubt about that. 4K is here and will be the hottest format around until 8K starts showing up.
 
4K will be a success, that's nearly 100% sure. When, that's another matter. I would say 2018 (more accurately: I think it will be in 2018 that 4K will break the barrier of half the sets installed in the US).
 
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