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

legrevedotcom

legrevedotcom

Veteran
http://cinescopophilia.com/2013-sony-brings-high-frame-rate-2k-and-4k-to-consumer-cameras/

While Sony has only just announced pricing for their two new mini flagships, they are now also announcing the 2013 prospect of bringing 2k and 4K to the consumer end.

HD has for a while now been the prime delivery for productions big and small, but with these news cameras coming out across the board and Sony putting the 4K TV on the market, along with monitor manufacturers.... are we finally going to see an end to the world of HD. Will our HD cameras meet the shelf as demands naturally meets new heights?

Or do you believe we will see the end of 2013 before we need to get rid of the once so promised gear?
 
Last edited:
I believe 4K will become the new norm...but not in 2013.
I can see Sony offering a true 4K consumer (or prosumer) camera in 2013, maybe 2014. It will be heavily hyped, yet no one will be able to actually use the 4K. Perhaps it can be downconverted to HD for viewing, and the 4K video will be archived for future use.
I know I'd love to own a small 4K camera, although I'm not exactly sure why, since I can't view 4k video. But it's 4k, darn it!

But some will buy a 4K consumer camera because it's the best.
When the VG10s first came out, I went to a Ritz store (RIP) and played with one. A couple was watching me with the VG10 and asked what it was. When I explained to them about the big sensor and interchangeable lens system, they bought it on the spot. Never mind they had no idea how to use it, and didn't really understand the benefits of a big sensor. They wanted it because it was the latest and greatest. I told the Ritz sales guys they should have given the sales commission to me.

I expect a 4K consumer camera will have the same appeal. Imagine the hype - a camera that shoots 4 times the detail as an HD camera! Who cares if a consumer can't actually see the 4k yet?
 
Having provided broadcast content to TV stations across the US for many years now, I don't see 4K becoming a viable delivery format for quite some time, knowing the investment the TV stations would need to make to their infrastructure. Heck, we are still required to deliver our HD product with SD safe titles. Delivery to the big screen theaters makes sense, but in all honesty how many of you are truly shooting for big screen delivery? Of course acquisition and delivery are two different things.
 
Last edited:
But even for acquisition, if you don't specifically need the reframing abilities of shooting in 4k, then you're otherwise going to be downscaling to HD every single time. Time to upgrade all those workstations!
 
Gary Huff said:
But even for acquisition, if you don't specifically need the reframing abilities of shooting in 4k, then you're otherwise going to be downscaling to HD every single time. Time to upgrade all those workstations!
Click to expand...

I tend to agree. As a former Red One owner I'll have to say for our use it just was not a cost effective solution for quick turn broadcast commercials, so we sold the camera.
 
I have a friend who wants to do more Red stuff (Epic 5K)...it's about an $8k investment for him just to do it in any normal span of time. His last project took three days of rendering for proxy files. He works primarily on a 2010 MacBook Pro, a system that has served him well in those two years, but there's no way I'd even recommend thinking about it without a Red Rocket on hand, which means, at the very least, a new iMac or MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt (or a Mac Pro, but it seems like a waste of money to purchase an old one with new ones supposedly around the corner).
 
Acquisition is one thing, but delivery is a whole other ballgame - as evidenced by the glacially slow uptake of HD, and the firm establishment of 2K as the standard for digital film projection.

TV manufacturers are hurting because people aren't buying as many TVs these days - for the simple reason that once you have HD capability and a large screen - you really don't have much incentive to upgrade further (especially since most HD broadcasts are of very poor quality).

So we'll see a big push for 4K as a means for these companies to sell more TVs, but it's going to be a hard sell for the general public.
 
I think 4K (or uprezzed 2K) is going to be important in the next year for digital cinema. Most of the theaters around here have Sony 4K projectors. I think that that TV will follow along much later. I think David is right about broadcasters. The infrastructure necessary to deliver 4K to TVs is years away. Maybe there will be some storage devices that can "download" 4K movies in the next couple of years but where are the protocols? Red just came out with a player but will that be the standard?

RED is collaborating with a high speed delivery network specifically for delivering 4K. Think about streaming 4K especially the necessary bandwidth! Will the local cable company be able to do that? I dunno... movies in theaters will benefit but I think TVs present tremendous challenges. It's coming but I'd guess no sooner than 5 years.

As far as archiving 4K for future worth, hell, I'm chugging now to get people to see it in the first place! It would be a real luxury problem to have to "archive" my stuff for posterity and future 4K TVs ;)
 
Last edited:
Here's what I think... Soon it's not going to be up to the broadcasters what format is mainstream, it will be up to the innovating online distributer that dares give 2K / 4K a push. TV is dying... most of what is on is crap. It wouldn't take much for a bold company with a hefty wallet to slip in and change the game.

4K TVs... why wouldn't it be easy to sell to the public? HD was pretty easy and we didn't even need that. From what I hear from people who have laid eyes on a 4K flat panel, it's supposed to look amazing. Why wouldn't I want that in my living room (up to a certain size ofcourse... otherwise I'd end up looking like a pug).
Don't underestimate technology, and don't overestimate the future of broadcasting... they will suffer the same as the music industry has, because of their inability to follow progress.

We really need the tv / movie version of iTunes...... then I wouldn't give a damn about what broadcasters want or do not want or can't afford.
 
I hear stuff like this all the time from people who have never really worked with 4K footage, only playing back at 1/8th resolution on the fastest of computers.

Think there's crap on TV? The Internet is n even bigger pond of crap to watch.
 
Here's what I think... Soon it's not going to be up to the broadcasters what format is mainstream, it will be up to the innovating online distributer that dares give 2K / 4K a push. TV is dying... most of what is on is crap. It wouldn't take much for a bold company with a hefty wallet to slip in and change the game.
Click to expand...
Agreed about TV no longer being the key driving force; however with an increasing share of online consumption happening on small handheld devices I’m not so sure super high resolutions make much sense.
4k on something the size of a ipad is nuts, I believe distributors will concentrate on vastly improving the quality and streaming speed of regular old HD before looking to bump up the resolution.
 
You say that 4k doesn't make sense on an ipad.... I disagree. The Google Nexus 10 tablet already has a 2560x1600 display. The current ipad has a 2048x1536 resolution, but the next version will have higher resolution to beat the Android competition. Within three years the high-end tablets are all going to have 4k resolution. So 1920x1080 is no longer enough resolution for movies, even on tablets.
 
noirist said:
You say that 4k doesn't make sense on an ipad.... I disagree. The Google Nexus 10 tablet already has a 2560x1600 display. The current ipad has a 2048x1536 resolution, but the next version will have higher resolution to beat the Android competition. Within three years the high-end tablets are all going to have 4k resolution. So 1920x1080 is no longer enough resolution for movies, even on tablets.
Click to expand...

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?
 
noirist said:
You say that 4k doesn't make sense on an ipad.... I disagree. The Google Nexus 10 tablet already has a 2560x1600 display. The current ipad has a 2048x1536 resolution, but the next version will have higher resolution to beat the Android competition. Within three years the high-end tablets are all going to have 4k resolution. So 1920x1080 is no longer enough resolution for movies, even on tablets.
Click to expand...

I don't know about you but I certainly can't distinguish between pixels on the current ipad screens, going any higher on a device of it's size seems like a hard sell to me. Unless you can demonstrate a significant improvement in performance to the general public I don't believe people will be willing to pay more for it.
 
legrevedotcom said:
http://cinescopophilia.com/2013-sony-brings-high-frame-rate-2k-and-4k-to-consumer-cameras/

While Sony has only just announced pricing for their two new mini flagships, they are now also announcing the 2013 prospect of bringing 2k and 4K to the consumer end.

HD has for a while now been the prime delivery for productions big and small, but with these news cameras coming out across the board and Sony putting the 4K TV on the market, along with monitor manufacturers.... are we finally going to see an end to the world of HD?
Click to expand...

Yeah, right. Just like 3D was going to end the world of 2D.

Did that happen? No? So what makes you think this will? Moving from HD to 4k will provide little to no image quality improvement for most consumers, because most consumers' interests top out at around 60" TVs. Where are they going to put 100" TVs? And how much are they going to be willing to pay for the small improvement to their viewing experience?

I ask because the average TV in the US is *still* a 4:3 analog TV being fed by a cable TV converter box. And the average disk delivery is still DVD. And there's an actual visual improvment in image quality from 370 lines analog (what you could get if you were line of sight to the broadcast antenna and reasonably close to it) to 1080 lines digital. And people still won't do it.

I'm just sayin'... don't hold your breath.
 
In an economy that sucks as much as ours does right now, I don't expect the companies treating water (or soon to be) to look to kindly to investing in a complete facelift of their facilities to 4K so soon after the HD boom. People talk about this stuff like it's a flash and BOOM...4K everywhere. No, it is a slow burn. It will take a long time to trickle its way down. As much as people foolishly put things on credit cards when they shouldn't, it's doubtful folks are going to be eating up 4K displays for sale at Best Buy anytime soon. The benefit will have to be clear and at this point there isn't much for the consumer to see.

The HD boom didn't really hit until lots of standard broadcast started going HD, HD became a buzzword, TV's came out and people started seeing the broadcast IQ differences in homes of others who had made the upgrade, then when holidays roll around or whatever people start to give it a shot. Same thing with Blu-ray. Many still say they don't care if it's a DVD or Blu-ray when they buy a movie for their kids or themselves. They might say "yea I sorta see the difference" but us camera/tech nerds make the mistake of thinking the average joes who will really push this into the consumer arena (ie joe schmo consumer) think like we do and care as much as we do.

It'll be a while I think. I'm guessing a nice 4K television with an excellent up-convert algorithm will make anything in 2K like a standard Blu-ray look absolutely gorgeous at the proper viewing distances.
 
Oh and another thing, enough with the "death of X" garbage. It's such a dramatic term and overused. Those sort of statements only cause more confusion and put uneducated and uninformed people on edge about the state of broadcast and camera technology.
 
Let's not forget that the main reason so many people got HD TV's was because of the move to digital from our government.
Had that not happened many people would have keep their SD sets.

To me the market is not calling for 4K like the market didn't call for 3D.
Manufacturers are trying to control the market now and I don't see that working out in the long run...

My 2 cents.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top