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

jdv said:
Yup.
4k (or 3D for that matter) is fine for a $300 million movie, but for daily home use, not so much. Panny bet a large part of the farm on 3D over the past 3 years and has paid a dear price for it flopping.
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Well, Panasonic seemed to think you'd want to make 3D with only one interocular distance. This is like shooting a feature with one lens. Can be done but not easy!
Why they never put genlock on a cheap cam you could use in a mirror rig is beyond me (cough, AF100, cough!). So of course their 3D stuff failed. Hard.

On the other hand, 4K won't be hard to make when processing power improves. It's the same stuff at just higher resolution. It doesn't cost much more to manufacture a 4K screen than an HD one. So, yes, I think there will be 4K out there.

Will 4K resolution be required for everything? No. I agree with you there. I just don't see people seeing the difference much.

One factor though: a lot of "HD cameras" don't really resolve to the full capability of HD.

Part of the reason I'm excited about getting cheap 4K cameras is at least they will make an excellent full HD image.

I do think that people will be able to tell the difference between current-day 720p-like "HD" and something better. Which for marketing purposes will be called 4K.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Agree Barry, but it's more then convenience - Doesn't 1080p look pretty pretty darn good? Aren't sets already vastly slimmer/lighter then the tube models they replaced? Won't true 4K footage mean a horribly overburdened internet? What TV station wants to upgrade? Heck, what movie theater - many of which just put in new projectors - wants to upgrade?

Sure, in 10 years when compression codecs are better and when your TV is also your internet/computer, then sure - but next year? Laughable.

No one wants to feel like they're getting snookered - but I'm telling you right now that's how the "man on the street" would feel if they were told they had to upgrade sets. In their minds, they just upgraded. One other factor - how many of the 77 million some odd baby boomers are going to feel an overwhelming need for a hundred inch 4K set? Almost half of all Americans are 40 or older. The percentage of 20 and younger - about a quarter of the population - have grown up never having to pay for music or movies. Perhaps more importantly, they're used to watching that content at 1080 or less, much of time on a crappy cellphone or other small SD device. Are they as a group - most of whom will be starting families in the next 10 years - going to clamor for 4K sets?

No, nope, nada, zero chance. So, that's about 75 of the population that, on paper, would seem to have little reason to upgrade. Other countries mileage might vary, but as you said Barry, much of the world still watches the tube/internet in standard def.
 
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noirist said:
Amazon does stream in high definition. Don't confuse demand (what consumers want) with artificially limited supply (what your friends, internet providers, and other monopolistic businesses are currently willing to provide).
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A few it's true - but the vast amount of their films are standard def. Not sure what your 2nd statement means. The failure of 3D happened for one reason - the guy on the street wasn't willing to pay the bones to get it. If by "monopolistic businesses" you mean every TV station in the nation, then yeah, what they think matters. More to the point, the formats they broadcast in are dictated by Congress and the FCC.

And no - nobody is writing their Congressman screaming for 4K. No network is asking for it. No independently owned TV station is asking for it. No internet provider is asking for it. In fact, is anyone - other then Japanese tech companies - even suggesting it as a possibility? That pretty well closes any chance of it happening any time soon, no?

And Bruce, you bring up a great point - how many of our 1080 cameras currently even record true 1080? I too love the notion of 4K cameras, but for everyday use, it would seem to be a long long way off for a myriad of reasons.
 
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noirist said:
How large was your previous display? And how much resolution did it have? You may not be on the leading end of the larger-display more-resolution wave, but you are swept along with it like everyone else. Can you even imagine replacing your monitor with a smaller one with less resolution???
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Old one was 46" 1080p and the only reason I was replacing it was because my son let video games burn in on it. The new 55" unit I got yesterday was cheaper than the old one I had as prices have come down.

For what it's worth I am one of the original Red One owners and have a pretty good knowledge of working in 4K. I ended up selling the Red and going back to a mainly HD workflow. I now own 6 different in-house HD cameras that each have their place depending on the shoot. When we do rent higher end cameras, it's very seldom that we rent a Red Epic. As a matter of fact the last 4 gigs we rented the Alexa.
 
Yes convenience and cost are big selling points but your thesis can't account for the incredible rise of display quality in the smartphone/tablet market. By your argument, the original iphone should have been good enough for everyone and no need for any tablets. The new ones don't offer any more conveniences, but they offer much greater display quality. It also can't account for the increase in display size and quality in the home theater market. By your thesis, everyone should have been happy with compact 34" 720p LCDs from 2004 and be done with it.

Blu-ray offers an increase in image quality but it comes at additional cost and with significant additional inconveniences (long load times, inability to skip through advertisements, copy protection, less resistant to scratches, and an endless treadmill of firmware upgrades). If the industry had offered 1080p24 with all the conveniences of DVDs at no additional cost, blu-rays would be a runaway success.
 
What I mean is that existing content distribution businesses have a financial interest in preserving the status quo. Ideally they would all like to reach an agreement among themselves to continue providing the same services to the same customers for the same fees. Unfortunately for them that's illegal but they do the best they can to make it happen anyway. But if they won't provide the services that consumers want - higher quality at a lower price - then someone else eventually will and they will be out of business. It won't happen as fast as RIM or Nokia imploded, because the existing content distribution business is quasi monopolistic, but it will eventually happen. Youtube has provided 4k content distribution since December 2011 (a year ago) and RED is starting now, so 4k content distribution is already here, whether the cable companies and broadcast networks like it or not. It's not happening soon, it's already happened.

jdv said:
A few it's true - but the vast amount of their films are standard def. Not sure what your 2nd statement means. The failure of 3D happened for one reason - the guy on the street wasn't willing to pay the bones to get it. If by "monopolistic businesses" you mean every TV station in the nation, then yeah, what they think matters. More to the point, the formats they broadcast in are dictated by Congress and the FCC.

And no - nobody is writing their Congressman screaming for 4K. No network is asking for it. No independently owned TV station is asking for it. No internet provider is asking for it. In fact, is anyone - other then Japanese tech companies - even suggesting it as a possibility? That pretty well closes any chance of it happening any time soon, no?
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bruceallen said:
Well, Panasonic seemed to think you'd want to make 3D with only one interocular distance. This is like shooting a feature with one lens. Can be done but not easy!
Why they never put genlock on a cheap cam you could use in a mirror rig is beyond me (cough, AF100, cough!). So of course their 3D stuff failed. Hard.
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The failure of 3D had nothing to do with what cameras were offered. It had to do with that the customer doesn't want it, doesn't like it, and won't pay for it. 3DTV sets failed hard. 3D channels failed hard. ESPN 3D has already slashed its programming because there's nobody to broadcast it to, because nobody bought 3D sets, because the customer doesn't like it and doesn't want to pay for it.

And having notices in the Nintendo 3DS saying "don't let kids use this or it'll screw up their vision" and Samsung warning "pregnant women, the elderly, people under the influence of alcohol" shouldn't watch 3D at all, and issuing warnings to not watch for long lengths of time, saying "Watch TV three dimensions using three-dimensional glasses for long periods can also cause headaches or migraines" didn't do a whole lot to instill confidence in the buyer either.

3D had a lot more problems with adoption than whether some manufacturer put on genlock on a 2D camera or not.

Now, let's change it to where 3D can be seen in its 3D glory with zero glasses, zero cables, zero additional expense, zero induced headaches and migraines, no scary warnings of developmental difficulties, just simple free and easy 3D that can be seen anywhere in the living room from any angle with no glasses and no additional expense, and yeah, it might catch on. Until then, no, it'll flop, just like every time it's been tried.
 
jdv said:
Agree Barry, but it's more then convenience - Doesn't 1080p look pretty pretty darn good? Aren't sets already vastly slimmer/lighter then the tube models they replaced?
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Well, yeah, that was the other part of my argument -- what they've got now is good enough. So why be in a rush to upgrade it? Unless there's some massive convenience factor that revolutionizes the way they experience it (aka the iPad), the customer is simply not going to bother. Very few will shell out more money just because it's higher quality, because truthfully, the quality they have now is good enough for them.
 
Barry_Green said:
Now, let's change it to where 3D can be seen in its 3D glory with zero glasses, zero cables, zero additional expense, zero induced headaches and migraines, no scary warnings of developmental difficulties, just simple free and easy 3D that can be seen anywhere in the living room from any angle with no glasses and no additional expense, and yeah, it might catch on. Until then, no, it'll flop, just like every time it's been tried.
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Flop like Avatar, yep. Big flop is how I'd describe it.

The content has to be spectacular to make people want to put on the damn glasses. If the content is sufficiently awesome, 3D has historically succeeded.

But you can't use Pansonic cameras to make spectacular 3D content for their own 3DTVs. I'm not sure why you defend their lack of Genlock when GoPro has 3D sync in their cameras!

Anyway, back to 4K: a workable 4K production system will be more accessible, unlike Panasonic's pathetic attempt with 3D. And I think that will be a factor.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
noirist said:
Yes convenience and cost are big selling points but your thesis can't account for the incredible rise of display quality in the smartphone/tablet market.
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Well, largely, yes it does. Because cell phone screens were very small and low-res, so there wasn't much you could do with it. Going to a larger screen and higher res gives you additional capabilities. When that starts to impact what you can do, that's when the customer starts to take notice.

By your argument, the original iphone should have been good enough for everyone and no need for any tablets.
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But such a statement ignores developments such as Siri or whatever other things have been brought to the iPhone that prior models didn't have. So here's a question -- if you offered the exact same product, exact same features, exact same everything, but one has a higher res screen and costs more, how do you think sales would break down between those two products? Let's isolate the display alone, and not all the other improvements (like 3G, and now 4G, and faster processors and more memory and all that stuff that differentiate an iPhone 4S or 5 away from an original). Let's say that Apple offered the iPhone 5 as-is, for $199. And they offered an iPhone 5S, which is the identical same model, but with 30% more resolution on the screen, for $299. No other changes, just screen resolution. Do you think the majority of people would go for the 5S? My vote is that 90% of the sales would be the $199 iPhone 5, because it's "good enough", and only 10% would spend for the higher-res model, all other things being equal.

Note, this argument is only true presuming that the existing model is "good enough". If we're comparing a Nokia 40-character text display against an iPhone Retina display, obviously that's such a very different product that it's not comparable.

It also can't account for the increase in display size and quality in the home theater market. By your thesis, everyone should have been happy with compact 34" 720p LCDs from 2004 and be done with it.
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Well, I would argue that lots of them are. Interesting that you pick 2004, since that's nearly a decade ago. 10 years ago, Sony had a market capitalization of $120 billion dollars. Over the course of the last decade, they have shrunk by 90%(!!!) Their market capitalization today is $10 billion (which is down nearly a billion from when I was writing about them last week). Read up on why Sony's in such a disastrous shape, and you'll come across one factor repeated over and over -- the collapse of the TV market. Panasonic's in just about as bad a shape.

Nobody's buying TVs anymore.

Hence the hail-Mary pass to try to shove 3-D down our throats. And that didn't work. So now they're scrambling for anything else, and so now they're saying "4K! 4K!" Well, it's the manufacturers saying that, not the consumers. And isn't that the point? Isn't it what the consumer wants and is willing to pay for, that is ultimately the determining factor? Is the consumer asking for 4K? Or 8K, as NHK proposes? I don't think so. Really, I don't.

If the industry had offered 1080p24 with all the conveniences of DVDs at no additional cost, blu-rays would be a runaway success.
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Well, hold on though -- how many customers do you think would go out and re-buy all their old movies in 1080/24p DVD format? Sure, people would buy all the new stuff in your proposed effortless 1080/24p, but would they actually look through their collection of a hundred DVDs and say "yep, this has all got to go, we're going to re-spend all this money to buy high-def versions"? I don't think they would. And I'm really very sure they wouldn't, because I haven't re-bought anything on blu-ray at all, and I'm one who actually does care about image quality... no way would Joe Sixpack re-buy his whole collection.

And yet, that's what the manufacturers are asking us to do with new TVs. Toss out what you've got, that's perfectly good and perfectly working, and spend a lot of money to replace it with this new 4K thing, because it's "better". I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that marketing tactic simply isn't going to work. Might possibly have worked in the go-go 1980's when the economy was on fire and people had money to burn, but in the 2010's and later, I just don't see it working at all.
 
bruceallen said:
Flop like Avatar, yep. Big flop is how I'd describe it.
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Avatar was successful in the theater. That was not what was under discussion.
3-D has been a disastrous flop for the manufacturers. An epic fail of epic proportions. And that was what was under discussion.

If the content is sufficiently awesome, 3D has historically succeeded.
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Succeeded where? Certainly not in the home, in the mass market, which is what I'm talking about. 3-D has been tried repeatedly and has never "caught on" (even in the theater) for more than a few years.

I'm not sure why you defend their lack of Genlock when GoPro has 3D sync in their cameras!
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I'm not sure how you took my statement as "defending their lack of Genlock". I would rather see genlock included on all cameras, if it can be done affordably. What I said was, the lack of genlock on a low-cost camera had zero to do with how the manufacturers utterly failed to penetrate the mass market with 3DTVs.
 
Thread title made me chuckle a little. Im just going to say +1 to everything Barry said on 4k. I'll add that the manufacturers of 4k panels are fully aware of the landscape for the 4k market (go figure that they arent that stupid)- and the fact that no ones going to be broadcasting 4K for years. I think you may get some niche channels trying it like ESPN that shows American little league baseball games in 3D - in AUSTRALIA? Yeah seriously, no wonder no one watches that here. What the manufacturers have done is quite clever though IMO and theyve brought with them some really nice tech. So much so that when 4K panels drop in price to a consumer price Ill be picking one up and it wont be in the hope that 4K is going to come to any channels I have.

I think they will be a great client tool actually. Heres why. The manufacturers have built these very clever algorithms into their sets which basically uprez's your incoming 1080 signal to 4K. Sounds kind of cheesy right - something like exporting a 1080 file from your NLE to 4K. Doesnt really work terribly well. Well its not like that at all. The resulting image is remarkable. The screens are huge and the conversion the set does is equally as impressive. Plug that into your edit suite and blow your clients socks off. Cant wait for the prices to plummet, I might be waiting awhile for that however. Go check one out for yourself when you get the chance.
 
Barry_Green said:
As for customers ALWAYS being willing to pay more for more resolution -- for displays maybe, but in media that hasn't really worked out for blu-ray. I've made this point several times but -- "quality", in and of itself, isn't a compelling reason for people to buy. People, in general, seem content with "good enough" (witness the proliferation of discount stores, cheapo brands, knockoffs, McDonald's, etc). What they will pay for is "convenience". Convenience is a big seller. And lack of convenience is a deal-killer. Hence why 3-D was and always will be a huge flop, as long as it keeps the glasses -- it's less convenient, and therefore people won't do it. McDonald's is a big hit not because of its quality, but because of its convenience. DVD, I would argue, was successful not because of its quality, but because of the conveniences it allowed over VHS: it eliminated rewinding, it eliminated tape jams, it allowed for an innovation like NetFlix because it was convenient to mail. Blu-ray, on the other hand, offers no such convenience advantages over DVD; its sole improvement is in "quality" and, therefore, the public has been lukewarm in their reception to it.

What convenience did HDTV offer over SD? Big huge screens that take up little space. I had one of the largest tube HDTVs, a Sony XBR 34", and it was ridiculously massive and over 200 pounds and two feet deep, took up most of the corner of a room, and still had a relatively small 34" screen. Meanwhile, Best Buy was offering 46" HDTVs that took up three inches of space. You could hang it on a wall. It opened up options. People loved the flat screen. Did they even KNOW they were buying "HDTV"? I would argue lots of them, at the time, didn't know or care. And I can make this argument off of my observations of how many times I saw people watching SD on their HDTVs, and not only that, but 4x3 SD that they'd stretched out to 16x9, distorting the image by 33%, and they didn't even notice.

But they sure did notice that they had a fancy flat screen and it was huge...
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I was going to say the same thing about DVD and HDTV, they brought a lot more to the table than just high resolution.

I just bought my first HDTV last month. Along with my first blu-ray player. Love it! I love 3D! Even post processd 3D movies have gotten better and they're growing on me. I understand that people who get headaches hate it, understandable, but otherwise I don't accept the excuse that "the glasses are uncomfotable." People wear sunglasses for hours in the summer and corrective lenses all day long if they need them. So wearing 3D glasses for 2 hours should be no big deal and it isn't.

I think 3D is just getting started. I think we are more likely to see the glasses stay and TV sets disappear.
 
Barry_Green said:
Customers -- at least, the masses -- will vote for convenience over quality every time. Sure there are some tech-heads who value quality, those are the guys who bought SACD.
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And even more conspicuously, they were the same guys (myself included) who bought into Betamax instead of VHS back in 1979. Just how well did that work out? And it was a classic convenience-over-performance tradeoff, too, since in their original versions, VHS could record a whole two-hour feature on one tape, and Beta was limited to one hour. How many consumers did all their recording at the slowest tape speed offered on their VCRs?

- Greg
 
Greg Smith said:
VHS could record a whole two-hour feature on one tape, and Beta was limited to one hour. How many consumers did all their recording at the slowest tape speed offered on their VCRs?
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EXACTLY!!!

Excellent example, and now I"m annoyed that I forgot it... people chose the six hour convenience of VHS EP mode, over the "quality" of 2-hour SP, I would bet in like 90%+ of the cases. Six hours on a tape vs. two hours? No-brainer, right? Did they care that the quality suffered? Not as compared to the cost of tapes... VHS offered longer play, and that was game over for Beta.
 
red killer, 7d killer, now hd killer, oh damn were doomed.I love how people even take this guy serious haha.
 
it's funny as someone brought up that people will pay for high res large flat screen's, but won't pony up for Blu-Ray(Barry I think). That is what makes me think the push for 4k's infrastructure to be built, people will buy the TV's cause they look amazing in the store only to find that they have no content of that quality to show at home. But they will defend it to the death as it cost them so much and won't admit it's faults... okay that's a very specific example but hopefully you get the point.

yeah all this your camera will be dead or pointless or throw out you HD stuff is just FUD. But I do find at times people who are involved in the capture of and creation of content can get a little removed from the reality of the situation when it gets down to the uninformed consumer level.

The first 4k demo TV's have started to hit at shops near me and my friends dad was blown away by the 4k TV on display, if it wasn't 20k we most likely would have left the store with yet another new flat screen. Now is he the average consumer most likely not, but it will start with them and avalanche from there.

it's all trus that yes the vast majority of the world is only on SD but the reality is you don't need to sell to the whole world to make a product or new twechnology viable, heck if you got north America and parts Europe to switch over that would more than recoup your investment cost.

I don't know I just find sometimes these arguments of not wanting 4k confuse me comming from people workling in the audio visual world. Now if we were all bewing forced to switch to only a 4k pipeline and had to update our who workflows I would understand your resistance, but on the personal level the entertainment level I can't imagine why people would not welcome higher quality display devices. Though to be honest I would prefer greater color depth in my home display but that is just me.
 
I went to my friends house and watched a football game in 1440x1080i interlace and it just doesn't do it for me even though its on a 1080p screen. That 1080i format is only using a third of the televisions potential. Now a 4K football broadcast may be overkill for a 1080p television but I would rather have overkill than underkill.
 
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