8K by 2016

Just buying a 1080p television will not guarantee better picture quality. 720p does not properly scale up to 1080p and it is difficult to uprezz 1080i to 1080p. Most native 1080p content is limited to 24 frames per second. To really see a difference with 1080p you need native 1080p60 content. When 8k televisions and 8k broadcasting becomes available you will see a difference if a good compression codec is used. It will be like looking through a window.
 
Paul V Doherty said:
Circle of confusion.
Average screen size is 50" (for argument's sake).
Joe Average can't spot the difference between SD and 1080 on a 50" screen at a viewing distance of 6'.
Until we have wall-size screens (literally 16' x 9') there's no point in domestic 4k or 8k.
Utter marketing wankery.
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I agree with this. I simply can't see it, so why pay for it?

I don't doubt some technophiles will pay for bleeding edge tech no matter what it is whether they can see it or not, and they may say the can see some difference even if it's not there.

But the average person is just going to say, why am I paying for something I cannot see? Might as well add infra red to the screen and charge extra for it, you can't see that either.

I can see it now, people saying Wow! check out my new infra red TV! You can REALLY tell the difference in quality!
 
^ That you have to seat REALLY close. I have relatively good vision, and am a bit of a pixel peeper too. I have a very nice 52" TV. In order to differenciate 1080p from 720p, I have to sit at 5 feet or closer. But my couch is at around 10 feet, so I think I'd need a 100" screen to differenciate 1080p from 720p from my couch. To differenciate 4K from 2K, that would have to be close to 200". To differenciate 8K from 4K, close to 400". I definitely don't want to look at a 400" screen from 10 feet away. Actually, 100" would be perfect, and all I can see in that is 1080p.
 
In any case, it seems like my eyes can see a bit more detail in bigger screens, sitting farther away (i.e. I see more detail on my 52" from 5 feet than on a 26" from 2.5 feet away), so maybe this whole thing is not linear, and on theatre screens there is an advantage to higher res. But I know my living room doesn't need anything beyond 2K, and I'd have to see a 2K vs 4K screening at a theater to make my mind about that one. Also, watching the news from my couch on a 100" screen would be plain frightening. If I'm ever buying a 100" screen, I need it to have a windowed mode, where it only uses the central 50" part of the screen to show the whole image.
 
If gigantic 200 inch screens are required to resolve 8k from 10 feet away we are going to see the return of the DLP projector. Projectors will be a lot cheaper than gigantic flat panels. It may seem like a step backward technologically but remember when HD was first introduced nobody could afford a 55 inch plasma television and back in those days the heavy 1080i CRT projector ruled simply because of affordability.
 
No need for DLP: 200" from 10 feet is kind of first-row-at-the-cinema, I don't think many people want that. The best seats at the theater are usually "screen diagonal times 1 to 1.5" away from the screen (my taste).
 
As someone mentioned is watching TV like looking out your window in terms of detail and quality? no well then there is room to improve. Just wait and see, who knows what new display technology will come out, I'm just saying dismissing things so quickly when you work in an industry that relies on technology and advancements in it is not the best way of going about things. Look where digital imaging and display technology has gone in the past twenty years now imagine where it will be.

I'm hearing a lot of the same arguments I herd against HD and flatscreen's back in the day. when my TV is like a window they can stop, and it wont matter how close or far I am, because I'm sorry but it doesn't matter how close or far I sit you play footage of a majestic forest on a tv in a house beside a view of the same forest out a window and I will be able to tell the difference in a second. There is plenty of room to improve weather you think so or not, and even if it goes against your numbers.

People have seen 4k screens from a foot away and it blew them away, more 3D than 3D people have said, and 8k displayed with four TV's was astounding. it's better and we can see the difference just wait and see, I can tell you I can see the flaws in my 42" screen and content from 8', it's good but far from perfect or the end of line technology in it's class.
 
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What we are probably running into is the geometric limitations of flat panel design. If broadcasters bother to make the switch to 8k for the ultimate imax experience it might as well be done right using state of the art technology. Consider the imax tilted dome format with its compound curved screens. It's triangular spherical aperture makes for the ultimate combination of wide screen and tall screen.
 
Gary Huff said:
I don't know if that's true. High quality IMAX is going to be 8-10k ultimately, and I'm not sure if there's really a workflow for that yet. On top of that, during the end credits, it explicitly says that it was "Shot and Finished on Film" and to me that means there was no digital intermediate.

But I could be wrong.
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Most of the movie had no digital intermediate, but anything with special effects had to be scanned since no one (for good reason) does optical compositing anymore. I've heard scanning resolution can be 8k-12k.
 
S. Matthews said:
As someone mentioned is watching TV like looking out your window in terms of detail and quality? no well then there is room to improve.
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People might get used to it eventually, but I personally think that the "through the window" look will cause massive nausea if there is any camera movement at all, because our brains will interpret the camera movement as something unnatural that is occurring, like an earthquake or something going wrong with our eyes.
 
That's one of the reasons why 8K broadcasters are developing 120 frames per second sensors in order to eliminate motion blurring.
 
If we have a digital IMAX (real version, not measly 4K) at the proper 65mm sensor diameter, then 8K is the bare minimum to fully reach its potential, I would think. We would still need about 12k resolution to realize the averaged resolution of 65mm film on a single sensor (or say maybe 14k-or-something to sample down to a proper 12k).

However if we're using 8K on a super 35 sensor still, we may have a problem then.
 
As an industry person, I do not post just preferences, I think about customers as well. Quite frankly, the pace of change is too fast. Broadcasters have stopped at 720p and the movie industry largely operates at 2k. Average Joe still uses DVD in a lot of cases. It may be fun to use the internet to keep up with tech advances but shooting and selling your services just seems to be a separate animal. If I offer 1k, 2k, 4k, or 8k customers are still going to ask how much it costs and only be willing to pay so much. I am tired of buying cameras when the amount to be earned seems more and more fixed no matter what flavor of HD you shoot in (DVD delivery as well).

Sorry to be kind of rash, but 8k to me right now is a big yawn. :)
 
One way that I save money is that I do not buy a prosumer camera every year based on incremental improvements. If I did that I would spend a fortune. I probably buy a camera once every 10 years but when I do I do a leapfrog and get a camera with the latest technology.
 
Who the shag needs 8k.

I could think up a whole lot other things that would evolve in entertainment, rather than resolution.
 
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