Why 4K Might Not Be the Best Way to Attract Consumers

Barry_Green said:
The question isn't (or shouldn't be) "will anyone buy one?" but the question is (or should be) when will there be enough market saturation that it becomes a viable option for delivery? As for 4K HDTVs, surely we're a decade away from that.
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I'd be surprised if main stream adoption of 4K TVs is a decade away. My guess is it's 5-7 years out.

As an aside, I swear every other "hey will you edit my no-budget short for free?" ad on Craigslist says they shot at 4K. Why? Why not, I guess. 4K cameras are common enough that usually a 'friend of a friend' can hook you up, NLE's support 4K and Resolve Lite 10 supports up to UHD resolutions. Even on more tech-centric sites I visit the video sub-forums (mainly students, amateurs and/or hobbyists) have people asking how to handle 2K or 4K workflows. Not a ton of threads, but a surprising amount IMO. It's overkill, there are more import considerations when it comes to image quality than just resolution but bigger numbers and cutting edge tech make it appealing. When the PS4 and Xbox One announcements happened earlier this year 4K support was one of the most talked about things.


-Andrew
 
4k was common in 2007 (for acquisition). 6 years later its nothing new, only that more and more camera makers are starting to push it.
 
adkimery said:
I'd be surprised if main stream adoption of 4K TVs is a decade away. My guess is it's 5-7 years out.
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Consider that it took HD 13 years to go from the point of first over-the-air broadcast, to 50% adoption. And that was with the support of broadcasters, and with the transition from 4:3 to 16:9, and with the transition from analog to digital, so there were a lot of reasons for consumers to actually want to upgrade.

4K has none of that going for it.

No possible way will 4K be mainstream adoption (for televisions and broadcast) within 5 years, I still say it's at least 10.
 
I'd really like to see all the movie theaters go 4k with 4k content more than I'd want to watch the local news in 4k. That said, how many of the movies being shown now are really 4k? Correct me if I'm wrong here as I don't work on 4k releases (yet), but it seems like even the movies that are shot on 4k are then cut and finished in 2k, and even when projected in the few theaters that support 4k they are just upscaled versions. Are there many films out in general release that are 4k start to finish?
 
Andrius Simutis said:
I'd really like to see all the movie theaters go 4k with 4k content more than I'd want to watch the local news in 4k. That said, how many of the movies being shown now are really 4k? Correct me if I'm wrong here as I don't work on 4k releases (yet), but it seems like even the movies that are shot on 4k are then cut and finished in 2k, and even when projected in the few theaters that support 4k they are just upscaled versions. Are there many films out in general release that are 4k start to finish?
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I work at a very large post facility, and almost none of the films we deliver are finished at 4K. I think there might have been 1 or 2 in the last year out of dozens of films (and these are high-end studio films I'm talking about).

Just the most expensive projects aimed at IMAX releases might be finished at 4K.
 
adkimery said:
Try explaining 'nits' and 'better pixels' to a middle-America focus group and watch their eyes glaze over. Easily marketable bullet points sell products. What a better computer? Buy more Ghz. Want better pictures? Buy more megapixels. Want a faster car? Buy more horse power. Hell, how many consumers will buy a 240Hz TV because more Hz must be better, right? Actual improvements and marketable improvements aren't always the same thing.
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Truth. If only we could convince consumer electronics makers that solution to this problem is pouring money into improving the country's education system, not pouring money into developing cameras with more megapixels and TVs with more Hz.


Barry_Green said:
Consider that it took HD 13 years to go from the point of first over-the-air broadcast, to 50% adoption. And that was with the support of broadcasters, and with the transition from 4:3 to 16:9, and with the transition from analog to digital, so there were a lot of reasons for consumers to actually want to upgrade.

4K has none of that going for it.

No possible way will 4K be mainstream adoption (for televisions and broadcast) within 5 years, I still say it's at least 10.
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Agree 100%
 
starcentral said:
4k was common in 2007 (for acquisition). 6 years later its nothing new, only that more and more camera makers are starting to push it.
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I think we have different ideas of "common". I don't remember many hobbyists, amateurs and/or budding filmmakers shooting and editing no-budget shorts in 4K in '07.

Barry_Green said:
Consider that it took HD 13 years to go from the point of first over-the-air broadcast, to 50% adoption. And that was with the support of broadcasters, and with the transition from 4:3 to 16:9, and with the transition from analog to digital, so there were a lot of reasons for consumers to actually want to upgrade.

4K has none of that going for it.
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I saw all of that as confusion and hurdles for consumers to over come. Like you said in a previous post, many didn't know the difference between a flat screen SD TV, "HD Ready" and "HD Capable". Not the mention the confusion over the analog to digital switch (which so many people thought was an end to SD transmission all together). On the other hand buying a 4K TV is as easy as buying an HDTV.



No possible way will 4K be mainstream adoption (for televisions and broadcast) within 5 years, I still say it's at least 10.
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I said 5-7 years and 4K is going to come via streaming first. Sony already has a 4K streaming service. Netflix plans to start offering 4K streaming sometime in 2014. YouTube started experimenting with 2K and 4K a few years ago. All of this happens completely in the background to the consumer and utilizing computer networks that are significantly more flexible than the broadcast infrastructure. People very much noticed when broadcast went from analog to digital and HD TVs replaced SD TVS. How disruptive was it as YouTube went from 240p videos to 4K videos? Or when Netflix rolled out its Super HD streams? We are headed towards a world where everything comes via a single, flexible pipe and delivered to multipurpose devices that have more in common with computers than with the radios and TVs we grew up with.

4K broadcast is going to be an expensive, clunky changeover similar to the analog to digital switch and I don't know if that's ever going to happen. B'cast revenue is on the decline and although I see it leveling off at some point I don't see it rising back to previous highs. Due to bandwidth and broadcast limits I think HD and 4K will coexist for a long time but changing is coming and it's on an accelerated pace as the physical limits of past format changeovers no longer apply. For example, look at how quickly camera tech is changing now that the physical limits (and costs) of being tape-based are gone. Now new codecs and cameras are popping up like weeds. My first industry job was in the machine room of a local facility and we had everything from 1" to Digibeta to VHS decks all racked up and ready to bring in, or send out, whatever clients wanted. Now that's quickly being replaced by just installing the right codec and/or driver directly onto your NLE. Format changes have gone from expensive hardware rollouts to software updates.


-Andrew
 
adkimery said:
As an aside, I swear every other "hey will you edit my no-budget short for free?" ad on Craigslist says they shot at 4K. Why? Why not, I guess. 4K cameras are common enough that usually a 'friend of a friend' can hook you up, NLE's support 4K and .........
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:) I think a lot may be down to "4K" being loosely used to describe a lot more than just resolution - and in the situations you mention, a lot of the answer to "why?" may be that it wasn't just 4K they wanted as much as RAW.

And to get decent 1080 final resolution, then if a Bayer sensor, it needs to be something like 2500 photosites horizontally, preferably a bit more.

So if you want to end up with full 1080, you need at least 2500-2600 RAW. And whilst you may get that with something like an Alexa, that's expensive. But there are a lot of far more affordable cameras around with 4K chips that also offer a RAW option, at least with an appropriate recorder - maybe the best example is now the FS700. So for the no-budget short, they really want RAW for post flexibility, that tends to mean 4K by default, so well - if there's extra resolution as well, why not have it?

And I still feel that broadcast format is one thing, acquisition another. In the UK, for terrestrial broadcast, there are still only the main 4 channels that get broadcast in HD (though others on satellite, cable). They may make up the bulk of the audience (together with their SD simulcasts), but there are many more channels which are still SD only. But that's for transmission - AFAIK pretty much all new acquisition is in HD.

And I see that being the way we'll go with 4K. Acquisition becoming increasingly 4K, whatever happens to transmission. And a move to enable 4K is likely to hasten the SD-HD migration of the remaining channels. The introduction of new, more efficient, standards will be not just an enabler for 4K, but also mean HD via a more efficient codec will be feasible in the same bandwidth currently used for SD.
 
David Jimerson said:
Why not skip it entirely and go to 8K?
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I'd say law of diminishing returns. 4K is possible now for many people, 8K is still a struggle for even the big broadcasters. And the argument now is already that for home display, how much better will 4K really look, unless you turn an entire wall into a screen? And whilst there may be a case for 4K, is the huge extra effort and bandwidth going to be even remotely worth it for 8K?

That said, I do think 8K will have important niche markets in the future. Scientific, industrial and live broadcasting to theatres for a few. In which case, maybe it will be beneficial if at the very least it is taken into account when any new standards for transmission etc are being set?
 
starcentral said:
^ I'm with him. I'm selling my F55 and going for the F65. Screw all of this! :thumbsup:
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But the F65 is not an 8K camera! (Not by most definitions anyway.)

Some people say that 3840x2160 sensors aren't 4K (even 4096x2180) - as the resolution after deBayering will be quite a lot less.

I'll give that the benefit of the doubt - but it should follow that for any camera to be called 8K, the minimum number of photosites the sensor should have is 4x3840x2160 - about 33 Megapixels. The F65 doesn't - it "only" has half that number.

Now the F65 is a very fine camera, and is one of the very few that really does deliver true and full 4K resolution after decoding - but it's stretching things to call it an 8K camera.
 
I do agree that the push to 4k will improve normal HD transmission etc... The compression on my DirecTV is getting worse and worse. Blocking is showing up on a lot of fancy transitions and graphics. H.265 will be a big help.

But none of this applies to my business as many folks will not move past DVD and rest are watching stuff on their cell phone!
 
People better start mutating to develop better skin if the world wants 4k that bad. It is going to be murder for those with not so perfect skin.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I do agree that the push to 4k will improve normal HD transmission etc... The compression on my DirecTV is getting worse and worse. Blocking is showing up on a lot of fancy transitions and graphics. H.265 will be a big help.

But none of this applies to my business as many folks will not move past DVD and rest are watching stuff on their cell phone!
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I can't stand the compression that comes over "HD" cable tv. I prefer to watch soccer (aka futbol) in my office with a cheap rabbit ear antenna plugged into one of my little HD client monitors rather than from the comfort of my couch on the big screen that has a cable box. Over the air broadcast HD looks quite nice, but the compression that cable mangles the feed into is another story.
As far as 4k content being pushed over the internet, we also have to remember that not everyone has the bandwidth. Rural areas, DSL customers, a lot of people just can't sustain the bit rates.
Don't get me wrong, I like 4k and more can be better, but I just don't think it's going to be that big of a deal for most consumers in the end. 3D is all but dead only a year after it was being hailed as the next big thing that everyone must have. I don't think 4k will suffer exactly the same fate, at least on the acquisition side, but I'm somewhat skeptical of 4k being widely adopted as a distribution method.
 
Just went to Interbee (Japan's NAB) yesterday, and let me tell you: it was ALL about 4k, at any level of production.
On the broadcaster side, it is a reality happening in the very near future, everybody seems to get ready.
At Canon, they even had a 8K display and i saw a roadmap from NHK aiming 4K broadcast by 2015 and 8k for the Olympics in 2020...
Also an incredible new 4k pro-display at Sony, who had by far the most impressive booth.

Whatever is the real "need" for 4k in real life, if the broadcasters and manufacturers push so much for it, we will have to adapt sooner or later, period.
I was hearing around me from many visitors how they should upgrade their equipment and workflow to adapt accordingly...
 
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