Death of HD? "2013...2K and 4K to Consumer Cameras"

I nod and agree again with 'Barry's bulls*%t'. Vitaliy, I don't know whom either of you are, but Barry seems to give reasonable arguments and irrefutable evidence on the subject, whereas you just came across as an arrogant impertinent twit.
 
Barry_Green said:
So yes, people will make 4K available. They also made SACD (Super Audio CD) and DVD-Audio available -- and how well did those go over?

Here's my prediction: 3DTV is, to the home consumer, akin to being today's LaserDisc -- a tiny niche product that a tiny few will buy, and will be eventually abandoned. And it will be offered again, 10 or 15 years from now, only maybe by that time they'll have gotten it right.
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So.. Barry, do you actually think that 4K and 3D are going to go away? That seems odd.

My prediction is that the TVs will increasingly support 4K and 3D but people will just not care.

You know, like how you would go and visit your friend a few years ago and they'd be running Windows at 640x480 on their LCD which was capable of 1024x768. And you hit your head on the desk in frustration. Then in 5 years time you visit again and WTF... they are actually taking advantage of the resolution properly. Technological progress happens slower than manufacturers want sometimes, but it does happen.

As for 3D in the future - well here are the stages for you:
1. active shutter glasses that are expensive and cause headaches
2. passive polarized (lighter glasses, no flicker)
3. passive polarized with laser or other light source that is damn bright when seen through glasses
4. glasses-free, kinda-working
5. glasses-free, no longer stereo but multi-view light field. True 3D, like a hologram. Content is ideally shot for that format but presumably the TVs will convert stereo to that format in real time too.

#5 is not total science fiction BTW. You just need a very high-res screen with microlenses (8K might do it)... or just build the screen out of pico LCD projectors - what you see at each "pixel" depends on where your head is. Paul Debevec (you know, the guy who HDR and lightstages to VFX) proposes exactly that.

I think the difference is that you see us going from #1 to DEAD to #5, whereas I see us slowly progressing down the line.

3D and 4K will really cost very little for manufacturers to integrate into their TVs in the future... so why not just keep 'em in there?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
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The topic is about if HD is going to be irrelevant in next year or not.

Also by the time we can watch the blockbuster of the year on our holograms (in which the image doesn't blend with the background o_P) it will be close to year 2500 imo. Definitely won't be in 2013 either.

What is SO WRONG with 2d, that it has to change anyway? You get a pen and draw something on a paper. Shall we require 3D PAPER in future as well?

Lastly, are we at the ultimate peak level of HD world? Panasonic's gh3 is coming out and it's still 8 bit 420. Why is it not 12 bit 444 may i ask? Are we REALLY at the optimum level of HD as of now?

I'm just a noob anyway. But i can clearly tell that HD is going to stay for a VERY long time in my country.
 
With a huge cinema industry as well as tons of TV channels, only a few programs are in HD (720 not even 1080). With the current technological advancement, I feel in the year 2018, 4K will start becoming affordable and used by consumer in large scale.

As far as content creators are concerned, we will continue to invest in new cameras hoping that our content will be future proof till the lifetime of our Kids and Grandchildren.
 
The general population hasn't embraced HD to its fullest yet. I'm still waiting to bump into a someone with a blu ray player. If they have one, it's because their DVD player broke. 720P TV's are still plentiful in the brochures. Many people don't care.
 
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People don't have to take technology step by step. People can jump from DVD to 4K. And people buy 720p televisions because 720p at 60 fps is sharper than a 1080p at 24 fps.
 
4K displays will come and their success and acceptance will rely on their ability to uprez HD to 4K on an 80+ inch display that retails for $1,500 -2,500 at Costco. People that buy them won't even know or necessarily care that they are 4K.

Personally, I see no demand on the consumer end. There is zero suction in the market for such a product. Just using myself as a demographic example, I'm here daily reading and talking about IQ, and I could care less about 4K, and if I buy a display with 3D, they damn well better tell me where the F*&ing off switch is. I'll choose the 2D experience everytime at the theatre. We have a variety of viewing enviroments in our home and 99.9% of the time we wind up with our CRT TV, DVD player and sat Dish with a S-connection. Imagine how the rest of the ignorant viewing public feels about the subject. Our 55" Samsung LCD with Bluray is severely neglected.

I agree with Barry not because of who he is, but because he's right and mirrors my feelings exactly as a consumer on this particular subject. ....except on the taxes. We will go off the fiscal cliff ...maybe, Barry, but the republicans will agree to tax increases only to incomes of $250,000 and above. It's inevitable.
 
Kraut69 said:
The general population hasn't embraced HD to its fullest yet. I'm still waiting to bump into a someone with a blu ray player. If they have one, it's because their DVD player broke. 720P TV's are still plentiful in the brochures. Many people don't care.
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My bluray player is a PS3, and I mostly use it for not watching movies, though I am a big HD whore. My plasma is just old enough to have one of those weird 1366x768 resolutions. Most programming in my country, as well as many other places in the world is still 1080i/720p, 1080p is limited to non-sat/cable sources, and all of it is heavily compressed unless bluray.

What the duck is 4K and what's it doing in my soup?
 
f64manray said:
....except on the taxes. We will go off the fiscal cliff ...maybe, Barry, but the republicans will agree to tax increases only to incomes of $250,000 and above. It's inevitable.
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That rate debate is not what has me concerned; that's just the thing that's being talked most about, even though it's only a small portion of what's expected to happen. It's a huge subject that combines the tax rate debate, plus the expiration of the payroll tax cut (which will hit every family, basically increasing their social security/FICA withholdings by 50%), and then there's a whole raft of new taxes that are scheduled to begin from the Affordable Care Act, and then there's the sequestration budget cuts that were mandated due to the failure last year of the committee to agree to a deal on the debt ceiling. It is the combination of all these things that is expected to trigger a new recession and result in the average family being hit with around a $3,000 to $4,000 increase in taxes paid, which ends up being about $250 to $350 per month.

Note: we are not here to debate the appropriateness, wisdom, agreeability, morality, or any other aspect of tax policy. I am merely pointing out that there are anticipated changes which may affect a consumer's spending ability in the coming year, with no regard to whether it's "right" or "wrong" or "I agree" or "I disagree" with any aspect of it.
 
Gary Huff said:
Not just resolution though, but space as well. How much space do you think a 4k movie is going to take up and not look like pixelated crap?
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Maybe not as much as you might think, if RedRay's specs are to be believed.
 
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Egg Born Son said:
... but it seems to me that 4K (unless compressed to death, as many of the existing feeds already are since the switch to mpeg a few years ago) would need a whole bouquet to itself. That's a lot less channels (maybe a good thing).
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Everything HD that comes over air, satellite or cable is a sad joke regarding resolution.
Have you ever measured the ACTUAL resolution of - what they call full HD - that comes in at a TV?
Barely over 700 lines if you are lucky. I would be happy to see the same HD resolution on my TV, that I see in my editing suite, before they dream of 4k.
 
Yeah, that's what I was talking about. The cable network that I work on encodes/compresses 16 feeds of digital SD into a RF channel that used to support a single analogue feed. They don't do it for fun, it's a bandwidth issue. Since the introduction of digital tv we've gone from 6 channels of content (including community tv) to 26 (and counting) free-to-air channels, several radio-on-tv channels and I have no idea how many digital radio stations. With the rise of mobile phone and wireless technologies there is a great deal of competition for the available spectrum so compression isn't going way.

Can HDMI handle an uncompressed 4K signal or is that another bottleneck?
 
Postmaster said:
Everything HD that comes over air, satellite or cable is a sad joke regarding resolution.
Have you ever measured the ACTUAL resolution of - what they call full HD - that comes in at a TV?
Barely over 700 lines if you are lucky. I would be happy to see the same HD resolution on my TV, that I see in my editing suite, before they dream of 4k.
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Crazy to think that 4k will be driven by any technical logic in any way

Remember being 10? Well Phillip had a TV in his room - I needed a TV in my room. Simple. (lucky never allowed)

Now everyone has plasma its time to sell them something else, because if you dont and are a tv maker you are going bust.

S
 
Postmaster said:
Everything HD that comes over air, satellite or cable is a sad joke regarding resolution.
Have you ever measured the ACTUAL resolution of - what they call full HD - that comes in at a TV?
Barely over 700 lines if you are lucky. I would be happy to see the same HD resolution on my TV, that I see in my editing suite, before they dream of 4k.
Click to expand...

Some people tend to get mixed up on numbers too much, 1080p does not actually mean that there are precisely 1920x1080 pixels of detail in the image, it's like stating that the 1080p from your phone is same as from your camcorder, as from an Alexa, as etc.
Even when it comes to high-profile shows, like Game of Thrones which shot on Alexa at 1080p, but people only got to see it at 720p or 1080i until the Blurays came out, what's up with that?
 
I believe that we're missing the real story.
Except for geriatric home bodies, sedentary TV is pretty much dead. Sure there's Televised sports but for the most part TV as a medium is no longer where it's at .
So yes the TV makers are trying to extend the game into 'overtime', before the inevitable demise.
The message is "if it's mobile it will thrive" Who cares about 4K TV ????
Fully 50% of UK and US households are STILL at SD. Repeat, 4:3 SD :cry:
 
Zephyrnoid said:
I believe that we're missing the real story.
Except for geriatric home bodies, sedentary TV is pretty much dead. Sure there's Televised sports but for the most part TV as a medium is no longer where it's at .
So yes the TV makers are trying to extend the game into 'overtime', before the inevitable demise.
The message is "if it's mobile it will thrive" Who cares about 4K TV ????
Fully 50% of UK and US households are STILL at SD. Repeat, 4:3 SD :cry:
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I agree mobile is the higher growth area but as far as TV being dead, I don't think so...AT ALL. More than half the US has more than one TV....The way we use them is changing and what we choose to watch is changing. Traditional broadcast is in flux, but people use their televisions more now than ever...because of the popularity of gaming, internet connections available for TV, redbox, netflix, dvr recorders, etc etc. Mobile is cool and all...but when you want to watch a movie or a show with friends or family-the best way to do that is with a nice big display. People aren't going to huddle around an IPHONE for the Superbowl.
 
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I think this conversation is sorely lacking a proper discussion about audience and content.

You don't need 50% of the world to have a 4K screen or a 3D screen to make a profit selling content in those formats.

You need a sufficiently large audience and for that audience to provide enough financial support (whether by buying your product, by watching ads, by buying other related products, by subscribing, etc). That audience can be really small.

For example, in the fine art world, the audience paying the artist per work is usually... 1.

Personally, I doubt that the people who just pay for cable and have 5 standard-def LCD TVs in their house will ever be a great market for my content anyway. So I don't care if they upgrade to 4K or not.

The enthusiastic young consumer is more of my target market. And they are far more likely to demand a quality standard that at least approaches other media.

If the game or app they are using on their phone or the other content they are watching on their computer or interactive TV is crisp and my content looks like blurry HD with bad colors, it is a problem.

I do a lot of post work... and there are real advantages to having a > HD camera in order to end up with good crisp HD content. So yes, HD will be a less-preferred acquisition format for me.

Just because it's TV does't mean it needs to be mass media. This is the digital, personalized world. Personally I think that the "long tail" is over-hyped... but the people thinking in 20th century terms are similarly off-the-mark.

At the same time, I saw a 35mm print of Barry Lyndon last night. Wow. Wonderful stuff. Who cares if it is 1080p or not. If some camera manufacturer wanted to offer a digital camera that offered color rendition like that I'd rent it in a heartbeat for certain projects. Oh yeah... it's called film!

Theatre was packed BTW with a standby line out the door. Surprisingly, there were people for whom watching it on a crappy TV just didn't cut it :)

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
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