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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Topic: Sharp Doubles Down On 8K, Literally
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 02-04-2015 06:59 PM
In Japan, NHK is planning on presenting the 2020 Olympics in 8K "Super HiVision UHD" (love the moniker ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ) Sony is working on the cameras; Sharp is already demonstrating consumer 8K displays. Limited testing is under way in southern Japan (BT.2020 standard). I know I can't afford it, even in five years. But that's what the TV people over there are working on...
quote:
Doddle: Sharp Doubles Down on 8K, Literally
By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)
The ink is barely dry on deals made for 4K TVs and cameras at CES 2015, and Sharp is already setting it’s sights over the horizon and trying to push for 8K TVs. And they’re serious about it.
“Certainly, the bigger the screen gets, people would like to have high-resolution pictures, of course the hardware side must catch up with all the broadcast and infrastructure.” - Sharp spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama
Sharp has been showing off 8K TVs for three years in a row now. Starting back in 2012, they showed off the prototype of an 85-inch Super HiVision TV, which promised a resolution of 16 times that of HD, and 4 times that of ultra high definition. But 4K was so new to viewers back then, that it was considered extremely experimental (plus the push of 3D TVs). Since there wasn’t any content for 4K, much less 8K, nobody really paid attention, other than to the oddity of it.
Set the DeLorean to three years later, and Sharp was still showing off Super HiVision with their 85-inch Sharp Aquos Beyond 4K Ultra HDTV. It really wasn’t fully super-UHD, though, as it just had what Sharp called SubPixels that quadruples the 4K image, providing for an virtual 8K presentation. Why their persistence? Well, NHK is serious about 8K in Japan and has been conducting limited broadcast tests in and around southern Japan.
Then there are the companies who are developing 8K cameras along with NHK, including Sony. Sharp’s current Aquos Beyond 4K TV meets the adopted 8K standard known as BT.2020. The TV also received an award recently from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which has been helping NHK promote Super Hi-Vision, which could start broadcasting by 2018, with full adoption by the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020.
So, will we see 8K TVs within 5 years? Maybe, but also maybe not. While 4K TVs are only now starting to be affordable, there’s still an issue of content, and only recently at CES did a formal 4K standard for dynamic range and color gamut finally get adopted.
So we should see 4K Blu-rays and broadcasting in ultra high definition within the next year or so. So I rather doubt that 8K will make its mark anytime before 2020, and probably after that. The goal to have 8K broadcast for the Olympics is a worthy one, but they did that at the London games in movie theaters in 2012. Frankly, I think I’d rather see better dynamic range and color than an overly life-like image.
Thoughts? Would you be an early adopter of an 8K TV, or is 4K good enough? Frankly, I’m still fine with HD in the home and 4K in the movie theater. But then again, that 8K movie I saw at NAB last year had 22-channel sound and it was pretty fantastic.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-05-2015 12:07 AM
quote: Paul Mayer
I know I can't afford it, even in five years. But that's what the TV people over there are working on...
How expensive was a 4K UHDTV 5 years ago?
That doodleNews article, like many reports on this year's Winter CES show, tries to pass off 4K UHDTV sets as something brand new. They're not. The big news this year is really the fact 4K UHDTV sets have become affordable, mainstream items. They're replacing standard 1080p HDTV sets in multiple product tiers, not just the very high end. My girlfriend's daughter recently bought a 55" 4K UHDTV for $1500.
Lots of screens in other devices have native resolution well beyond 1080p. A growing number of notebook computers have 4K or near 4K resolution displays. Apple's latest iMac has a 5K display.
Digital technology is continuing to advance and it is pushing TV sets, computer displays and portable device displays to better standards.
The year 2020 is still a pretty considerable distance in the future. There is a whole lot that can change and improve in digital technology between now and then.
By the year 2020 the technology in TV sets and other displays should be a great deal better. I expect displays to be even thinner, due to OLED and/or quantum dot technology becoming a lot more popular and perhaps a whole lot more affordable by then.
I'm optimistic 8K resolution TV sets could be affordable by 2020, but that's only if movie and TV productions actually start producing shows in that resolution. Digital technology may have no trouble with the bandwidth and storage requirements of 8K by then. The real problem is the talent in front of the cameras. Youth conscious actors do not like HD at all. Sharper images reveal more flaws and evidence of aging.
I recently watched a stand up comedy special by Ron White, a show he made a couple years ago. But he deliberately had it shot in standard definition and made jokes about it in his routine. He mentioned various actors he knows hating HD specifically over what I just mentioned.
One thing on the side of 8K: premium big screen movie theaters. The generation of 4K laser-based digital projectors is just now arriving in select theaters. It's a sure bet technology companies will not stop there. They have to keep selling product and developing new reasons for customers to upgrade.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 02-05-2015 06:27 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Now if I see something like a TV commercial that is window-boxed I just change the channel. I mean that's pure ignorance and bad standards of practice right there. It's a spot that was produced in HD, but down-rezzed to SD and then re-broadcast in HD, but with letter-boxing and pillars. And that's probably because somebody somewhere couldn't bother sending a proper HD version of the spot.
Or it is just another cheap trick trying to get your attention? I've seen quite a few of those, like cutting a line mid-sentence or an entirely silent commercial, so if you were not watching your TV, you will look at it to check what's wrong with it...
As for 8K, right now I don't see any market for home consumers, not now and not in a year or 3. Let them first get the price for OLED screens down, because frankly, this LCD technology is rather outdated. The only reason why they started pushing 4K is because they can do it with minimum investments into their existing LCD production plants, whereas OLED mass production requires entirely new production facilities.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-05-2015 09:58 PM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
As for 8K, right now I don't see any market for home consumers, not now and not in a year or 3. Let them first get the price for OLED screens down, because frankly, this LCD technology is rather outdated.
OLED-based displays are better in principle than Quantum Dot based displays. Nevertheless Quantum Dot is a pretty big step above the current standard in LED-backlit displays. The big question is whether the companies backing OLED production methods can get their display sizes scaled up big enough and prices scaled down low enough to compete with Quantum Dot.
Consumers are demading ever larger TV sets but at less than extreme price points. Very few people are going to shell out $8000-$10000 for a standard sized yet paper thin OLED TV set. And that's kind of where OLED is stuck for now. The standard for what passes as a "big screen" TV set today is well beyond the 52" level of just a few years ago. The 65" to 70" size range is just the starting level now. By the year 2020 it may be fairly common for people to install TV screen panels up to 120" on their living room walls. Is OLED going to have any chance of fitting in with that. Or will quantum dot take over the market?
quote: Steve Guttag
The 4K craze is big in the A/V market too. To believe some claims, to not put in 4K stuff is to be way behind the times. Again, where is this 4K content coming from?
There is at least a decent number of movies made over the past decade with 4K resolution digital intermediates. Those masters could be sourced for H.265 HEVC encodes to use in the next version of Blu-ray disc coming later this year. Sony and other companies selling 4K hard disc media players already must have a supply of 4K-based content.
Most movies shot on film could be remastered in 4K. The movies really stuck at 2K are digitally shot and rendered movies made specifically for 2K and/or 3D.
The biggest problems for 4K (and 8K for that matter) are Internet streaming and broadcast. The data bandwidth demands are too great.
Perhaps if Internet service providers go through a technology renaissance and up their download speeds to much higher levels it might make streaming real 4K truly practical. But not until then.
I'm pretty skeptical about broadcast. There's only so much data you can squeeze into a 6MHz channel over the airwaves. Current HDTV broadcast is stuck in old-world, inefficient MPEG-2. It has been years since cable and satellite providers switched over to MPEG-4. The HEVC standard is quite a bit more efficient than MPEG-4. I expect cable and satelite providers to start shifting their customers onto new HEVC-based receivers and set top boxes to maximize bandwidth. But that may not necessarily mean 4K-based cable channels. It may mean cable providers just giving us even more shitty channels in 1080i/720p packed with reality TV garbage not worth watching.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Or it is just another cheap trick trying to get your attention? I've seen quite a few of those, like cutting a line mid-sentence or an entirely silent commercial, so if you were not watching your TV, you will look at it to check what's wrong with it...
If someone is going to deliberately use shitty looking window-boxing of content to get my attention he is getting it in a very negative way. It's like wearing a shit-stained T-shirt and soiled baby diaper to a black tie dinner. That equals me taking a very negative review of the product being sold in the TV commercial and deliberately choosing not to buy it.
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