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Topic: Consumer 4K Flat Screen Demo Paramus NJ

Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 02-28-2013 03:26 PM

Tomorrow March 1st, regional electronics big box store PC Richards is presenting demos of the LG 84" 4K 3D flat screen. This is a long way from actually coming to market, but coming it is.

PC Richards 4K Demo, Paramus NJ

quote: PC Richards

Discover Ultra HD Resolution on the Gigantic 84" Class Screen

Ultra HD, the future of high-definition TV resolution, destined for your living room. The new level of Ultra HD (3840 X 2160) picture quality makes Full HD (1920 X 1080) look like standard definition. Boasting a pixel resolution 4X higher than Full HD, its detail is so vivid and crisp, even when viewed from close distances. From its magnificent screen comes superb picture quality, some say even better than the cinema. With picture quality this clear, you'll feel like you're living, not watching, your favorite shows. Prepare yourself for the ultimate home entertainment experience with the LG 84-inch class (83.9"diagonal) Ultra High Definition TV

Next-generation cinema 3D technology

If you thought 3D at the movie theaters was amazing, wait until you experience the immersive and cinematic 3D of the LG 84-inch class (83.9" diagonal) Ultra High Definition TV. LG's Cinema 3D TV can bring it right into your home. Enjoy easy to use & share 3D glasses, superior picture quality and amazing 3D effects - that's what you get with an LG Cinema 3D experience on your LG Ultra HD 3D TV.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 02-28-2013 06:27 PM

I've seen quite a few of those huge 4K screens for sale at some of the bigger retailers around here already. For home use, it's pretty much useless right now, because there is just no content available... For professional use, it could be a good alternative for a projector or video wall solution.

But what really struck me at a trade show recently, was a 'small' 32" 4K screen (from Sharp if I remember correctly), that was playing 4K JPEG2000 content. That looked really amazingly sharp and detailed. I've not yet seen another 'small' TV screen with such a high resolution, something like that could easily replace my current desktop monitor, if it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive.

But after all, it's a pity they now already start pushing 4K TFTs instead of improving the current OLED technology.

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Frank B. McLaughlin
Film Handler

Posts: 76
From: Denver, CO
Registered: Dec 2011

posted 03-02-2013 06:27 AM

I've seen the new Sony projector and flat screen units. The picture is beautiful but there isn't any content or an adequate delivery system. If you want a $25,000 toy to show off to the neighbors this is it.

Seriously this is the future and when you get a far superior presentation in the living room vs the local overpriced cineplex then you know the reason for the decline in paid attendance.

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Kenneth Wuepper
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1026
From: Saginaw, MI, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 03-02-2013 07:16 AM

There will ALWAYS be a difference in the appearance of the flat screens to any projected image. It is that you are seeing a light source instead of a reflected image.

I have tried to describe this difference to the students that like their designs on the laptop but think they are dull and unreadable in print.

The worst case is the sponsor slides from the computer being shown on a small screen projection before concerts. Red lettering on a black background doesn't work. DUH!

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-02-2013 08:05 AM

quote: Frank B. McLaughlin
I've seen the new Sony projector and flat screen units. The picture is beautiful but there isn't any content or an adequate delivery system. If you want a $25,000 toy to show off to the neighbors this is it.

A lot of satellite and cable TV companies are cutting the bitrates on their programming to fit more channels into the same bandwidth. While channels such as ESPN are delivering content at bitrates of 28.8kbps, cable companies are cutting that bitrate down, sometimes under 10. Channels that aren't broadcast in H.D. are 2kbps and, occasionally even lower.

Then you have to consider that ESPN broadcasts 720p. Your TV has 4K resolution. So, your TV has three times the resolution of the signal that's being broadcast to it and the bitrates are being cut almost in half.

Isn't the "best" thing for watching video at home supposed to be Blu-Ray? Doesn't Blu-Ray max out at 1080i? That's only half of what your TV can do.

This tells me that, either 4K TVs are going to fizzle out and disappear or that there is going to be a new home video format to replace Blu-Ray.

I'm glad I didn't buy a Blu-Ray player!
I certainly won't be paying thousands of dollars for a TV that I have no programming for!

Even now, the regular, TVs you buy at Best Buy or Walmart are overkill for the programming that most people see.

If I was going to spend that kind of money just to show off to the neighbors, I'd rather have a gold plated toilet seat.

That's about what these super-duper Hi-Def, 4K TVs seem like to me... Gold plated toilet seats! [Wink]

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 03-02-2013 12:25 PM

quote: Randy Stankey
While channels such as ESPN are delivering content at bitrates of 28.8kbps, cable companies are cutting that bitrate down, sometimes under 10. Channels that aren't broadcast in H.D. are 2kbps and, occasionally even lower.

I guess kbps is supposed to be Mbps? Or else there is some magic compression going on and we could all go back to dial-up modems [Wink]

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Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003

posted 03-02-2013 01:47 PM

I'm still content with LaserDiscs. Who needs 4K!

AJG

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-02-2013 01:53 PM

Marcel, you're right. I got mixed up. Mbps it is.

It happens to me more than it should. [Frown]

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 03-02-2013 02:51 PM

I agree 100% with Randy's overall point about cable/satellite bitrates and the fact that noting is delivered to home with remotely the resolution needed for a 4k display.

However, one thing is that at least with DirecTV, ESPN delivers the channel in MPEG2. DirecTV re-compresses in MPEG4 for distribution. They also use cross channel bitsharing to utilize the bandwidth more efficiently while maintaining quality. The MPEG2 to MPEG4 conversion supposedly maintains the same quality while using much less bandwidth.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-02-2013 02:53 PM

quote: Randy Stankey
Isn't the "best" thing for watching video at home supposed to be Blu-Ray? Doesn't Blu-Ray max out at 1080i? That's only half of what your TV can do.

Blu-ray content is typically 1080p not 1080i. The vast majority of all Hollywood movies on Blu-ray are encoded at 1080p/24fps. No 3:2 pull down nonsense, particularly if you have a 120Hz or 240Hz TV.

Movies on Blu-ray are typically encoded at much higher bit rates than what is seen anywhere else in home video. The video bitrate under the current Blu-ray spec can run at up to 50 million bits per second. Over the air broadcast operates at a nearly 20 Mb/s constant bit rate (in MPEG-2). Cable and satellite HD runs at much lower bit rates, but in MPEG-4. Netflix and other streaming services run even lower than that.

In short, Internet-based delivery of 4K video is NOT happening anytime soon -at least not in any sort of manner where the 4K resolution claim will mean anything at all. The Internet for far too many people is still way the hell too slow. And there's little progress being made to improve that. The various telcos out there are putting all their money into upgrading cell phone towers for the much more profitable smart phone market. They don't give a tinker's damn about residential Internet service.

Sony and other electronics companies are still working on improving disc-based technology, despite all the media claims that physical media is dead. Blue-violet laser technology can record a terabyte of data onto a CD-sized dual layer disc. If 4K is going to be sold in the home video market anytime soon an upgraded version of Blu-ray or an entirely new physical media format will be needed to make it practical at all. No one is going to want to wait days for a 4K movie to download, at least not one where the movie is running at a bit rate than can actually deliver 4K resolution.

The only practical way I can see selling 4K movies to the public right now is by way of hard discs. The movie would have to be played back by either a fast single hard drive or a RAID-based setup. The upcoming Playstation 4 is expected to be able to play 4K resolution video (but not games). The movie could be stored on multiple optical discs and "ingested" by a hard drive-based playback system. But I doubt the studios would go for that given the copy protection concerns.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 03-02-2013 04:04 PM

quote: Lyle Romer
The MPEG2 to MPEG4 conversion supposedly maintains the same quality while using much less bandwidth.

Going from MPEG2 to MPEG4 will never yield the same quality, you're going from a lossy compression format to another lossy format. Going from an uncompressed source to MPEG4 will get you about the same quality as MPEG2 with a far lower bitrate.

quote: Bobby Henderson
In short, Internet-based delivery of 4K video is NOT happening anytime soon -at least not in any sort of manner where the 4K resolution claim will mean anything at all.

Maybe some kind of CDN, peer-to-peer distribution model could work. If people would be willing to accept that it could take several hours or even longer to download the movie to your local storage. Last time I checked, RED was even working on something like that. Still, most people just prefer to "point-and-shoot", that would require instant delivery and at the required bitrates, that's simply not possible yet. Maybe in a few select FttH setups with the content servers on or near that same network, but not in a mainstream setup. Things might look different in a few years though.

quote: Bobby Henderson
The movie could be stored on multiple optical discs and "ingested" by a hard drive-based playback system. But I doubt the studios would go for that given the copy protection concerns.

Why actually? An encrypted file on a bunch of Blu-Rays is safer than an encrypted file on your local disk? I wonder why they even would bother to go that route again. In the end, they spent shitloads of money on DRM in every new delivery technology, but every mainstream DRM scheme has been broken after a short time.

The reason I don't see this working is: I just spent boatloads of money on the latest ultra-hipster technology, but I still have to manually feed my player like 4 discs.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-02-2013 04:55 PM

DRM is here to stay as far as movies on home video formats and streaming services are concerned. The only way I could see studios splitting a 4K movie across multiple BD-R discs (to be dubbed onto a 4K movie player's hard disc) is if the complete movie itself had to "phone home" and be activated -kind of like how DCPs have to be unlocked with KDMs in order to play.

Gigabit ethernet is fast enough to stream compressed 4K content on a local area network. The best residential Internet connections can't even match the bandwidth capabilities of 1080p/24 Blu-ray, much less aspire to do 4K -which has four times the pixel count of 1080p.

A few years ago I figured download speeds of 30 million bits per second or even better would be relatively common by 2015. Now I don't think those speeds will be commonplace until 2020, if not later.

I'll start getting more optimistic about improvements in residential Internet speeds after the "bloom comes off the rose" with smart phones & tablets. At some point, perhaps in the next year or two, the smart phone & tablet market is going to get saturated. Not nearly so many people will need to have the latest, greatest smart phone or tablet and won't be so keen on upgrading to the newest model every year or two. At the point the electronics companies and telcos will have to stop pretending the personal computer and residential Internet doesn't mean anything. We're not there yet obviously.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 03-02-2013 06:32 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
DRM is here to stay as far as movies on home video formats and streaming services are concerned. The only way I could see studios splitting a 4K movie across multiple BD-R discs (to be dubbed onto a 4K movie player's hard disc) is if the complete movie itself had to "phone home" and be activated -kind of like how DCPs have to be unlocked with KDMs in order to play.

"Phone home" is the new standard today, so any new DRM scheme will probably feature "phone home" somewhere. But there are plenty of DRM schemes that could feature local storage without compromising security as such. No keys need to be stored on that harddisk.

Still, maybe someday those studio execs realize that all their consumer DRM efforts have just been a waste of money and only helped to frustrate the people that actually bought their products...

quote: Bobby Henderson
Gigabit ethernet is fast enough to stream compressed 4K content on a local area network. The best residential Internet connections can't even match the bandwidth capabilities of 1080p/24 Blu-ray, much less aspire to do 4K -which has four times the pixel count of 1080p.

Nobody is going to do M-JPEG2000 for 4K at home, not now and not in the near future. Also, there is HEVC/H.265, which makes "Ultra-HD" a bit more achievable using existing distribution methods. The only downside is that H.265 is much more complex than H.264, combined with the massive amount of pixels to account for, you really need a lot of processing power. Hardware acceleration will be crucial.

quote: Bobby Henderson
A few years ago I figured download speeds of 30 million bits per second or even better would be relatively common by 2015. Now I don't think those speeds will be commonplace until 2020, if not later.

The local loop is just a small part of the problem. Around here, 30 MBps is considered a "normal or basic" subscription nowadays. Cable ISPs have been offering 80 MBps or 120 MBps for quite a while. Still, those networks are nowhere near the requirements of doing unicast Full HD or even 4K for everybody during peak hours.

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 03-02-2013 08:07 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
A few years ago I figured download speeds of 30 million bits per second or even better would be relatively common by 2015. Now I don't think those speeds will be commonplace until 2020, if not later.

Also, don't forget that for residential (and most business) ISP accounts, the bandwidth is not dedicated, it's "up to" and shared across subscribers. You can get "up to 20 Mbps" service relatively economically but the cost of dedicated 20 Mbps service is cost prohibitive (I think for that speed it's around $1000 per month). Therefore, even Blu-Ray quality 1080p streaming isn't going to be economically practical for many years, let alone any kind of 4k (with real quality).

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 03-02-2013 11:29 PM

Be funny for the owner, when just after the year's guarantee runs out, that the power supply takes a dump and costs more to repair than the price of the unit itself.

Wait a few years when the price comes down.

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