4K isn't enough to nudge broadcasters beyond 720p [yet...!]

[trey31]

To be honest I've been planning to wait until 2015 to buy a large panel 4K TV because hopefully by then there will be an 80" 4K with actual TV features for under $4,000 on the market. But from what I've read, glasses-free 3D on 4K panels will be the next big thing at next year's CES, and for that I will probably end up waiting until 2016 to purchase. At which point the dilemma will be whether or not I wait another year for the inevitable 8K panels, which should have been what Manufacturers focused on pushing instead of 4K anyhow...

The problem is 4K isn't a big enough change to push media companies into changing the way they broadcast. Literally there is very little news of any major media companies planning to begin airing or broadcasting 4K content outside of movies. And even then their only focus is on streaming it. I'm in an area close to where Google has already rolled out fiber, but its not yet available to me in the burbs. As soon as it is, I'm on board no question. But I am lucky enough to have access to halfway decent cable broadband. Typically 3.5-3.7 MB/s down (roughly about 29-30 mbps). Not good, but better than probably 25% or more of North America even has access to. Before switching I was on at&t, payed for 18 "mbps" (the max I could get in my area) and got about 9-12 "mbps" even on wired connections and off peak times. And I'm in the outer edge of a top 25 size metro area in the US. That was a terrible speed considering there is close to two million people in the metro area I'm in. What are the people with worse speeds than me supposed to do to get 4K quality? Start a movie and then immediately let it sit idle for an hour just to let it buffer long enough to watch uninterrupted?

Ok, movies are great, but what about TV in 4K? According to the cryptic talk of DirecTV, its basically not happening anytime soon, nor do they sound like they want it to. 8K is likely going to be what it takes to get broadcasters and media companies to finally change over from pushing 720p/1080i content to actually offering something new. It won't all be 8k, heck most of it won't be. But the 8K panels will likely finally be enough to entice the media companies to at least start offering 1080p as the bare minimum for TV viewing content and 4K as a standard "UHD" format. Much like how 1080p televisions are typically only used for 1080p content as a small percentage of the overall total viewing time of the TV, the rest of the time (TV content) its compressed 720p and 1080i.

Unfortunately after DirecTV and ESPN abandoned their 3D channels prematurely (they were doomed to fail when consumers realized ESPN had no plans to air any major sports events live in 3D, or even as re-plays. I'm looking squarely at you, whoever it was that decided to keep almost all of your NBA and MLB events in 2D only, and none of your NFL events in 3D at any point ever... X-Games in 3D was great, and the NCAA football games that were actually good matchups were too, but you never gave 3D a chance when you decided to only feed it events that only got small market share in 2D) it has made broadcasting in anything other than 720p/1080i "risky." Give me a break.

But in any case, if broadcasting in 1080p or 4K is risky, then I can't wait for 8K. I can't image it coming to the market and not having an impact on finally getting the media companies to come to their senses and realize that the market, the consumers, want better content than 720p and 1080i.

[TheRulesLawyer]

I'm not sure 4k will ever be a 'thing'. The TV size needed to be able to realize a benefit at normal viewing distances with average visual acuity is prohibitively large. The band-width needed to bump up to 4k is a big investment. You're talking a lot of money for a very very small group of people. If we get it, it will be because of marketing and you'll probably have such a low bit-rate for 4k that it will barely be better than 1080p. 8k wouldn't be any better. Might see movies, etc released on physical media or streamed for enthusiasts over time. Trouble is I know plenty of people who have told me they can't tell the difference between SD and HD already. I find my wife watching the SD version of a channel I know we have in HD. Those are the average customers for cable and they just don't care enough to make it happen.

[Chief Blur Buster]

To be honest I've been planning to wait until 2015

2020 is a more realistic year for 4K. We had HDTVs in the 1980s in Japan (MUSE HDTV, also known as Hi-Vision), they were insanely expensive. Took until the 21st century before HDTV became popular.
4K is coming, just not quick.

I'm not sure 4k will ever be a 'thing' anytime soon.

Fixed it for ya.

The cost premium of retina displays is becoming small on smartphones, and SEIKI 4K displays show that it is possible to sell 4K HDTVs for less than $1000. They've been very popular among people like us because of their low price. Today, 1080p is standard even in cheap HDTVs (where 720p used to be the standard and 1080p was insanely expensive).

4K still benefits even 10 feet from a 50" TV
Also, during extreme cases such as http://www.testufo.com/aliasing you can tell the difference between 1080p and 4K from 10 feet away from a 50" 4K HDTV, due to effects such as moire on unfiltered material (e.g. computer based games and mater, rather than television/movie material where they are often pre-filtered). The game industry is becoming more valuable than the Hollywood industry, you know... Some of us run HTPCs with our televisions now, and we've got XBox One and Playstation 3. In ten years from now, boxes will the horsepower to play 4K 60fps, and do it all with AA turned off -- and this is where 1080p versus 4K can make a
noticeable difference just as http://www.testufo.com/aliasing shows...

4K 15Mbps still outperforms 1080p 7Mbps
There is also the fact that 4K 15Mbps streaming using HEVC actually looks pretty impressively good. Darn better looking than 1080p 7Mbps H.264 streaming -- I'd say about 4x better looking. Compression artifacts become half-sized at 4K than at 1080p, and compression artifacts are bigger than a pixel. Sure, there are some limitations that make a well-mastered Blu-Ray (25Mbps H.264) look a bit more artifact-free at close (5-feet) viewing distances than 4K online stream, but there is a balancing point that occurs where compression artifacts (which are half the size during 4K than during 1080p).

4K is more universal than 3D
You can downconvert 4K easily to any display. 4K is on the Moores Law path of the existing 2D television as the resolutions continues to increase, without needing to add any other things special (stereoscopic support). 4K is supported by more cameras than 3D. 4K is already in some smartphone and POV cameras costing under $500 and will become cheap/ubiquitous like 10 megapixel photos. 8K cameras will be similarly consumer-cheap someday, too. The NOKIA Lumia 1020 smartphone camera is 41 megapixels, enough to do 8K video footage -- once Moores' Law catches up. Especially if terabyte memory cards are available for 10 dollars at Walgreens. Why the hell not? Let's look at Fox, often broadcasting sports at 720p. Someday, Fox will have to replace 20-year-old HDTV equipment, and the only cameras they can buy are ultra-high-resolution cameras. They'd already have huge amounts of bandwidth then anyway, memory cheap anyway, and competing against everybody else, there would be no cost to forget 720p and just go higher def (whether it 4K or similar). Unless the only reason leftover to downconvert to 720p for broadcasting is to increase stadium ticket sales, but that doesn't affect Foxs' bottom line (and if it does, I wonder what labyrinthe framework allows that).

We're slowly moving away from the traditional channel metaphor
As we move away from the "antenna/cable-to-television" metaphor with the boom of boxes, converters, streaming, DVRs, and more -- we are essentially slowly (over time) moving towards a resolution-independent television world, where you can pretty much send any resolution, over any media, to any resolution display. We didn't have this luxury to easily watch PAL on an NTSC television in the 1970s, like today where some models of HDTVs have become essentially fully multisync (refresh rates in 1Hz increments, resolution in 1 pixel increments). Obviously, we have the scaling problem, but still 4K HEVC 15Mbps downconverted to 1080p actually looks better than 1080p H.264 7Mbps displayed natively, and is totally usable.

Streaming providers are more likely to bump up bitrates at 4K
Sure, we can do 1080p 15Mbps HEVC streaming to get to Blu-Ray quality over the Internet, more purer for 1080p displays, and that satisfies purists and videophiles I myself, used to work in the home theater industry and used to have a CRT projector 15 years ago (old page). So I understand where you are coming from. However, industry is more likely to do 4K 15Mbps HEVC streaming (to satisfy 4K users) even if it's watched on some 1080p displays. In this order, viewed at 1080p:
1080p 15Mbps HEVC > 4K 1080p 15Mbps HEVC downconverted to 1080p > 1080p 7Mbps H.264
Fortunately, the first two are closer together, than to the last one.

Traditional channel based TV will eventually become extinct in the next humankind generation
It is possible within 20 years in the western world, we will have no traditional "channel"-based broadcast television (at least at the pipe level). Already, switched digital video and IPTV is starting this migration, and eventually, all television becomes all random-access. Sure, user friendly boxes will still "map" them to channel numbers to keep old guys happy even twenty years from now, but it would no longer be channelized on a cable or radio waves anymore (and it is no longer, for IPTV). There would no longer be specific resolution standards, Fox could keep broadcasting at 720p if they wished, while the premium channels could stream 4K cheaply over the Internet to your television box, mapped as a specific channel on your box. Some DVRs now even let you press a button and it shows a VOD list of previous episodes of the show you are watching, and you can switch to them, Netflix/ITunes style! This ain't broadcast territory anymore. Channel-less media is going to explode in 4K choices, leaving broadcast behind in the dust.

We are now entering the infinite channel-free universe
There is no longer any limit to the number of channels a television can receive, if you count Internet-based services. There is no longer any need to push channels off the dial to add more popular content. Television is the analog phone, while YouTube/IPTV/Netflix/iTunes/VUDU/HBO Go/ESPN Online is the modern smartphone of television. Some of those non-broadcast services are now beginning to offer 4K shortly. In Canada, 1 in 7 people is dropping cable or indicated plans to drop cable. Even my dad, 79 years old, does not have cable, but figured out how to watch CBC News on his HDTV, by connecting a cable between his Mac and his HDTV. (He already has an AppleTV, a Netflix box that one of the stepsons got). My dad, a person who has difficulty learning how to use a new computer, is a cord-cutter! Can you believe it? I never told him to cut the cord, he just figured it out, and did it. He doesn't care what resolution he watches in, some of the stuff shows up blurry and some of the stuff shows up sharp. (his Apple products, including AppleTV, correctly automatically detected 1080p and has switched to that). Likewise, when the boxes start supporting 4K, his TV is going to benefit anyway, due to 4K 15Mbps looking better than 1080p 7Mbps anyway. Dad becomes 80 this March. Broadcasters, alarm bells. Pay attention.

We are becoming resolution independent
Likewise, the same thing is about to start happening to resolutions of broadcast material -- we are on the cusp of it. So 1080p, 720p, 4K, 8K -- it becoming less and less rigid. We watch 1080p material on our Retina IPADs, YouTube added a 1440p video mode, smartphones are now increasingly used as TV devices but they dont match TV resolution. New streaming material occasionally pops up that are not of the traditional resolutions. Our digital cameras almost never takes pictures exactly the same resolution as our TV; but the pictures still display well anyway! The same thing is gradually happening to video today. Oh, and some sub-$500 cameras can now do 4K today (e.g. GoPro Hero3) and some smartphones. Eventually, it'll be ubiquitous to the point where we have all-4K cameras and televisions where 4K is only $50 more. People start posting 4K videos. Broadcasters grab 4K footage from consumers for reality stuff or news (e.g. capturing a fire disaster, or citizens taking pictures of a war scene). Still photos now far exceed 1080p, too, and the same will be for video.

Moore's Law
Enough said. Far more slowly than chips, but still progressing.

New generation of kids
The pre-smartphone/pre-Internet people won't care a hoot, but little kids growing up on Retina displays today, are today more frequent complainers of low-quality video. Just play VHS at them all day long and see how they react (this might be a form of forture -- it looks worse than crappy phone camera footage).

Bigger vision coverage for cheaper
Computer monitor viewing distances is where 4K benefits a lot (1:1 screen width). People are using televisions less and viewing screens at arms lengths more often nowadays. The day will be coming when people stream 4K to their 4K tablets, and it definitely will look better than 1080p. Those that use televisions will get bigger and cheaper televisions -- average size of TVs are much bigger today than the average size of TVs 20 years ago. There is no reason to see this progress stop -- for example, if 80" pin-up rollable TVs becomes available in the bargain bin at Walmart for $100, that is a route to bigger sizes at less inconvenience. Wearing Google Glass / Oculus VR / etc product where you can get the apparent look of a 100" TV 10 feet from your retinas -- 4K would benefit such eyewear/VR/etc (if such devices become popular). Traditional television will probably still be popular, but let's observe TV store of the 2010s (all flat panels) looks very different from the TV store of the 1990s (small boxy tubes and big projection boxes), and with lower numbers attached to their price tags. 4K is a minor jump compared to the 1990s versus 2010s.

Broadcasters now have to compete with Average Joe Users
Eventually, it becomes cheap for Mom & Pop to start a 4K streaming station with cheaper bandwidth (20 years into the future), and any of the hundreds of brands of boxes in the future can decide to pick up that and feature it (e.g. assign it a channel number on their display, or assign prominent icon, etc). And it would cost almost nothing to run your own 4K television broadcast. In fact, it's already sort of happening now -- YouTube is built into your TV. You're watching Mom & Pop Channel Today already, via the YouTube feature. Wake up world: Some popular YouTube channels have more viewers than half of the TV channels on your Comcast settop box!

Average Joe Users can cheaply upload better quality video than broadcasters today
Now imagine this in the 4K era, where mom & pop can broadcast better quality video than the television broadcasters. We can do this now, today. Some of us are putting 4K material online today, reasonably cheaply, and broadcasting them cheaply, bypassing traditional carriers. Obviously, sharp, good video, doesn't make a good program/movie/show, but as you've witnessed, there is a boom of YouTube stars being moved to broadcast television too as well. Niche stuff such as Video Game High School, a television-style show that will also become available as 4K downloads. The kickstarter campaign has gotten 33% of its goal in just only the first 3 days of campaign, and at that rate, it's a sealed deal. Have this happen 100 times more, and broadcasters are _definitely_ going to wake up regarding 4K. Kickstarter funded television shows (that has more viewers than many TV channels do) will eventually force the infinite channelless universe upon us.

Evolution of television interfaces welcomes 4K easily
Now imagine floating 20 years into the future. Descendants of YouTube, Netflix, Cable, etc -- merging into the same infrastructure -- you buy 5 channels from Comcast, 7 channels from Verizon, and 3 channels from ESPN, and use your SuperBox2030 to view them along with SuperNetflix and UltraApple or whatever they will call them. Maybe channels numbers will still exist in that box. Or maybe it'll all be mostly menu driven (e.g. Comcast might even someday earn more money from menu-driven Internet television interfaces, ala Netflix style) with a live broadcasts section and a non-live section. We don't know how television interfaces will evolve over time, but one just need to turn their head to Netflix, and the early rumblings of cable companies making certain channels available on the Internet, and glimpse the future. Obviously, legal and regulatory barriers apply, but now of a sudden traditional television have to complete against tons of cheap, better 4K content that are equally as easily streamed over the Net, and prone to "Apple-ization" (not necessarily by Apple). As in parlance of "Forget AMCE Cable. Our TV service is Retina quality!!!". There are market innovations waiting in the wings, too.

You honour, I rest my case. I think I have hereby proven that 4K (or similar-league resolutions) is coming. Just not quickly, and just not in the way you think.

[spacediver]

To be honest I've been planning to wait until 2015 to buy a large panel 4K TV because hopefully by then there will be an 80" 4K with actual TV features for under $4,000 on the market. But from what I've read, glasses-free 3D on 4K panels will be the next big thing at next year's CES, and for that I will probably end up waiting until 2016 to purchase. At which point the dilemma will be whether or not I wait another year for the inevitable 8K panels, which should have been what Manufacturers focused on pushing instead of 4K anyhow...

Why do you think they should have been pushing 8k instead of 4k? Why do you think 2160p isn't a big change from 1080p?

What size screen were you thinking of when you had your 8k dream screen in mind?

And what would you be using it for?

[trey31]

You honour, I rest my case. I think I have hereby proven that 4K (or similar-league resolutions) is coming. Just not quickly, and just not in the way you think.

I think you are absolutely correct. I just want it here faster. Big business has been taking too long to embrace new ideas. Look at the music industry and how radically different it was in 2010 than in 1998. The traditional power companies in that industry almost killed themselves by placing digital music on a stake and crying out "witchcraft!" rather than embracing the new medium. And now look at how far they've come in 10 years since the Napster trials... more music is released, and monetized, than ever before.

The same is already happening to film and broadcast media right now.

[trey31]

Why do you think they should have been pushing 8k instead of 4k? Why do you think 2160p isn't a big change from 1080p?

What size screen were you thinking of when you had your 8k dream screen in mind?

And what would you be using it for?

2160p is a big change. But apparently the extra 6 million pixels wasn't enough to push media companies to produce more "UHD" content, nor the broadcasters/cable companies to push the distribution of it. 4K is over 8 million pixels of resolution. 1080p is 2 million. 720p broadcasts aren't even 1 million pixels of resolution. And technically 1080i can be many different formats, none of which are even close to the 2 million pixels per frame of 1080p. So new panels can display more than 8 times the pixels of the typical broadcast sports event or nightly news, yet the cable/media companies are mostly not making plans to change that, at least not any time soon. Whether its 4 years, 8 years, or 18 years; whenever the average consumer's 2 standard choices for a new TV at a big box store becomes a decision of either 4K (the "cheap" TV) or 8K (the "best available" TV), broadcasting in 720p and 480p will finally be a thing of the past. I can't imagine broadcasting 900,000 pixels will even be an option when new TV's are capable of displaying 33 million pixels. If it is, broadcast media will have surely died a slow and painful death by then, as the majority of consumers will have moved beyond it and onto whatever the future Netflix or YouTube has evolved to become by then. For me, it just can't come soon enough.

And to be honest, I'd like to see something come along in the next 10 years that can display screens the size of projectors, but without having to be projected from a light bulb, and also be capable of producing realistic motion without lag or pixelization artifacts.

And what would I use it for? Well everything of course. I already use my TV to watch broadcast television, movies, surf the web, read the news, play video games, and do video calls. It helps having my PC connected to it. One box, wireless peripheral inputs, minimal cables.

[Chief Blur Buster]

The jump to 8K may actually sorta make sense, if interpreted in a certain way.

It's much like the jump 60Hz->120Hz is big but 120Hz->240Hz is subtle while 120Hz->960Hz(1ms persistence via non-strobe technique) is big and 120Hz(non-strobed)->120Hz(1ms strobed) is big in panning tests such as http://www.testufo.com/photo.

The diminishing points of returns begins to require bigger jumps to increase the odds of noticing benefit. It'd be much easier to tell apart 1080p and 8K on a living-room-sized TV 10 feet away than 1080p versus 4K. Even as we go to pixels smaller than photoreceptors, we got various indirect effets like moire effect, aliasing effect, compression artifacts (bigger than a pixel), twinkle-star-versus-planet-disk dot effect (differing behaviors of dots of lights tinier than human photoreceptors), and other subtler side effects of finite resolution.

[spacediver]

2160p is a big change. But apparently the extra 6 million pixels wasn't enough to push media companies to produce more "UHD" content, nor the broadcasters/cable companies to push the distribution of it.

That may have more to do with the fact that UHD standards aren't even set yet. There are a whole host of issues such as bit depth (e.g. 10 bit/12 bit) , color gamut (e.g. rec 2020 primaries), dynamic range (e.g. allowing for specular highlights with high luminance), frame rates (e.g. 48, 60, 96, 120), etc. all of which have to be carefully balanced in order to fit through current pipelines (e.g. HDMI ).

[TheRulesLawyer]

I don't disagree that 4k tech will come out. I don't doubt that it will have some success with niche markets. I just think you're wildly optimistic about the consumer base at large.

First

For video material 1080p is right on track for normal TV sizes and viewing distances. Monitors are another story.

For the masses that have a hard time telling SD from HD and *might* buy a TV every 10 years 4k will be a hard sell. It'll be 16:9 still, digital still, flat still and probably not much larger due to space and or budget constraints.

I think its just as likely that the market at large by passes 4k entirely to get on whatever display tech comes after 4k. You're right the 4k is likely to come from an IPTV source first. Your right about a movement of cord cutters (Though its almost statistically insignificant. The only real fear is kids not ever getting hooked on the cable teat.) Cable companies move at a glacial pace. They've barely got settled in with HD. That only really happened because the FCC forced the broadcast changeover. There isn't going to be any similar mandate to make 4k look appealing.

Looking way beyond the horizon in 10-20 years something is going to replace 1080p. I'm just not sure 4k is it.

[Chief Blur Buster]

First

I've seen this chart many, many times.
It's a good general guidelines chart based on common principles, but not a scientific guarantee. There are exceptions.

I can tell apart 1080p and 4K far beyond the chart you indicate, when testing http://www.testufo.com/aliasing-visibility due to an indirect side effect. Try it yourself -- more than half of population could tell, on that specific test. There are extreme cases that can go beyond -- e.g. more highly compressed files (compression artifacts at 4K is smaller), to other indirect side effects to consider like moire effect, aliasing effect, various kinds of compression artifacts (bigger than a pixel), twinkle-star-versus-planet-disk dot effect (differing behaviors of dots of lights tinier than human photoreceptors), and other subtler side effects of finite resolution. Now, this will usually not matter, but I must hereby point out that the chart is not a bible / gospel, but simply a good guideline.

That overrated chart doesn't even record what material it covers (well compressed video? poorly compressed video? videogame graphics with no AA?) And it doesn't specify which percentiles of human population. It could reach >99% of population for say, well compressed/filtered video, but it can fall to <50% population for shallow non-AA angles in certain video games (as proven by http://www.testufo.com/aliasing-visibility ...)

And for timing, 2030, 2050, 2100 or even year 10,000 -- some form of a resolution much higher 1080p will be universal rather than a niche market. The question is when. I am guesstimating 2030, but you did say, I'm not sure 4k will ever be a 'thing'. which seems to imply that no further resolution improvements would happen in humankind. It may not be called 4K (or even 8K) but something of a resolution beyond four times 1080p.

Perhaps we are arguing for the same thing (something with higher apparent resolution eventually) except maybe we disagree whether it's called "4K" or if the world will simply skip to "8K", or that it's called another name -- just that we agree something more than 4x resolution is going to happen eventually in humankind. I actually don't interpret "4K" as being necessarily called "4K", but as continued progress in video resolution.