4K displays announced at CES 2011

[Crossbar]

That's because a significant amount of broadcasters have chosen to broadcast at 1080i which can actually make good use of those pixel. That's why the vast majority of all CRT tv remained at 480i/576i even though by the mid-90s the technology was available for cost-effective higher resolution CRT televisions.

Significant? Probably in the single-digit percentage range of the total market, it also transforms nicely to 720p.
Hardly the reason why 100% of the TVs turned 1080p.

I'd say that manufakturing costs takes a back seat to milking the consumers. Didn' t you notice how, for instace, HD capable 1920x1200 screens for a long time cost twice as much as the 1680x1050 ones? Despite being driven by the same electronics?

Consensual market segmentation rules pricing of consumer electronics.

In principle I agree, but I´d argue that they hardly sell TVs below production costs. Don´t you agree?

 

[MarkoIt]

The transition to higher resolution will be much different from the transition from SD to HD. I would say that the latter it's much more of a paradigm change, like B&W to colour television.
Transition to 4k will be just a slow update, rolled before in the high-end market. Considering how much native 4k content is out there, good electronics will be needed for the upscaling. I'm actually kind of scared at the thought of an SD movie upscaled to 4k!
So..I don't see 4k behind widely adopted in this decade, at the least on the television side.
As for the PC market, the transition to higher DPI screen (which Apple may lead) could change the scenario quite a bit and 4k resolution may become available on 24-27 inch screen soon. Sure.. no more jaggies in games!

 

[fellix]

Is there any working dedicated HW acceleration for 4K streams with sufficiently high bit-rate? Today's best software decoders are easily choking even a high-end CPU. My 4GHz Nehalem could barely keep smooth playback of a 243Mbps H.264-encoded 2160p stream.

 

[Entropy]

In principle I agree, but I´d argue that they hardly sell TVs below production costs. Don´t you agree?

Of course. My observation was more general, and applies just as much or more to cameras and other consumer elektronic goods. (And cars, and...) No cartel needs to be formed when it is in everyones common interest to maintain certain market strata. In the absence of a cartel, eventually such strata may succumb to the forces of market competition, necessitating a market shift. HD-ready resolution was introduced to have a step up to 1080p, 3D was pushed when that marketing trick had run its course, and since that hasn't really worked out according to expectations, 4k (nice shift there, implying a factor four improvement) is brought forward to induce consumer techno lust, and provide a next step up, somewhat ahead of its time. There has to be a number of these steps up for the consumer to choose from, and what he has to pay for such a step doesn't necessarily have much relation to its actual cost.

 

[Grall]

I'm actually kind of scared at the thought of an SD movie upscaled to 4k!

Why? It will look no different than it does on current displays.

 

[3dcgi]

Significant? Probably in the single-digit percentage range of the total market, it also transforms nicely to 720p.
Hardly the reason why 100% of the TVs turned 1080p.

Are you saying not many TV signals are broadcast in 1080i? In the USA at lot of stations broadcast at 1080i including I believe CBS and NBC. I agree 1080i still looks nice on a 720p set as that's my setup and it looks good to me.

I think the transition to 4k will be slow because of cost and a lack of content. To me it makes the most sense to bring it to PCs first because the high end gamer and workstation markets are less price sensitive and already have content.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why? It will look no different than it does on current displays.

4k implies larger screens. No-one's going to waste money on a 40" 4k set because the resolution improvement will be imperceptible unless you sit a couple of feet from the display. But for anyone used to larger screens or projectors, you're right - SD upscaled to won't look any worse than stretched to other oversized displays.

From CES 2012:

LG spokesman John Taylor added a more practical consideration: On a very big screen, 1080P doesn't provide enough resolution. 4K probably won't come to 42-inch sets because it's not needed in that size, Taylor said. But over time, U.S. consumers have gravitated toward ever-larger sets, attracted by thinner and lighter designs and plunging prices. So while 42 inches may be the sweet spot now for many buyers, especially those who grew up on 25-inch analog sets, the demand for bigger displays is likely to grow.

 

[Arwin]

4k works well with passive 3D which I reckon will be another reason LG is interested. I think 4k will be good with PCs, video (3D or 2D) and photos, which should benefit right away as well.

Games however should be fine with sticking to 1080p.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Games however should be fine with sticking to 1080p.

Provided they incorporate some AA.

 

[fellix]

The various post-AA methods should actually work much better with such high resolutions, so there would be no need for any super/multi sampling and gobs of wasted video memory.

 

[Grall]

You still couldn't get rid of actual fine-detail aliasing though without super/multisampling, and this won't just go away because the game runs at 4k resolution sadly. It didn't go away for me when I upgraded from 1920 to 2560 rez...

The best post-AA can do is muddy up the image enough to try and hide the aliasing, and that's not ideal by a long shot. Besides, with the gobs and gobs of video ram cards are getting these days I'd rather spend RAM than shader unit clock cycles to AA the image.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You still couldn't get rid of actual fine-detail aliasing though without super/multisampling, and this won't just go away because the game runs at 4k resolution sadly. It didn't go away for me when I upgraded from 1920 to 2560 rez...

Resolution doesn't matter in a case like that. Pixel density does. Hence when you went from 1920x1200 to 2560x1600 you likely only had a small almost impercetable increase in pixel density. Assuming 24" monitor to 30" monitor.

High pixel density will make aliasing less noticeable but can't on its own reduce all aliasing artifacts. Although most artifacts may become imperceptable to most as the pixel density increases.

The best post-AA can do is muddy up the image enough to try and hide the aliasing, and that's not ideal by a long shot. Besides, with the gobs and gobs of video ram cards are getting these days I'd rather spend RAM than shader unit clock cycles to AA the image.

Erm. All forms of AA just blur the image in one way or another as they feature blending of adjacent pixels or subpixels to find an intermediate color for a pixel to better blend in with the surrounding pixels, thus eliminating the rough jagged appearance of a sharp line as it traverses multiple pixels rows or columns for example. Post process AA is no different than MSAA in this respect. MSAA however has a clearly defined area within which it is commonly applied. So instead of blurring more pixels than generally needs to be blurred it only blurrs pixels along the line of the edge of a polygon.

Of course, the drawback is that only polygon edges can be AA'd with MSAA leaving plenty of other aliasing artifacts untouched. It's a compromise between the full screen SSAA's performance requirements and MSAA's limited scope. But since it reduces the most glaring and noticeable AA artifact (jagged lines that crawl when you move) it's an effective compromise between speed and effectiveness for the entire scene.

Either way. Higher pixel density will help with some of the perceivable aliasing artifacts. Of course, the cost will be higher rendering power requirements.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

High pixel density will make aliasing less noticeable but can't on its own reduce all aliasing artifacts. Although most artifacts may become imperceptable to most as the pixel density increases.

Has anyone seen a game running on a Retina display? Does that have any visible artefacts? I'll be most upset if 300 dpi still isn't enough to cure display artefacts!

 

[hoho]

Has anyone seen a game running on a Retina display?

Haven't tried it but it's relatively trivial to emulate by just stepping back far enough from your monitor to have similar kind of pixel size.

 

[wco81]

Seems like a lot of effort just to please those 3 people that actually care about 4k.. It's really nice the industry found another buzzword but lets be realistic for a moment. Who cares? There are still plenty of people who don't even have flatscreens. Plenty of people still use analog tv or digital tv even below 720p. Lots of stuff isn't even recorded in HD yet. Besides, on a 40~50 inch tv, which is what most people will have as there just isn't a whole lot more room in most houses, are you really going to notice a big difference? It's not going to be much of a benefit for games either. As I said, you won't really see the difference so why spend all that extra power on pixels most people wont even see just to get the same image? I rather see them render at 1080p and use any extra power to actually make the game look better instead of just upping resolution.

The world shouldn't bother with 4k for atleast another 20 years and just make sure everything is 1080p first.

That's what people were saying back in 2006-2007 about 1080p, that few people cared or would buy it.

At least in the US, 1080p installed base is pretty high. You can get 40-inch 1080p sets for $500-750 easily and Blu-Ray players for under $100, with more expensive players going up to $200 or so. DVRs don't record in 1080p but installed base is again pretty high.

And now there are some streamed 1080p services too.

If 4k displays have the same price curve over time that 1080p displays had, its adoption rate should be comparable.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

That's what people were saying back in 2006-2007 about 1080p, that few people cared or would buy it.

At least in the US, 1080p installed base is pretty high. You can get 40-inch 1080p sets for $500-750 easily and Blu-Ray players for under $100, with more expensive players going up to $200 or so. DVRs don't record in 1080p but installed base is again pretty high.

And now there are some streamed 1080p services too.

If 4k displays have the same price curve over time that 1080p displays had, its adoption rate should be comparable.

Your forgetting that a big reason for people buying flatscreens was, well, that they are flat. Just look at the amount of people that are still watching SD content on a HDtv and you'll know that most people really don't care so much for the IQ.

All 4k will do is higher prices, broadcast networks that need to make large investments not long after the investment they did in HD (just compare that to the decades they did with SD), which means higher prices for consumers buying content/cable and also higher prices for tv sets. And for what? On a 40~50 there isn't going to be much of a difference.

Back to gaming, the above just makes it useless for gaming. We are not going to get 4k gaming from a 2013 console. Lets just focus them on bringing out true 1080p games first.

4k might have a place in the future, but for now it's just another moneygrab attempt trying to make people crazy about something that isn't really going to offer a real benefit for now. Just like those failing 3d sets they are trying to shove down people's troaths. Nobody wants to watch tv while forced to wear glasses and get a headache after 5 minutes.

 

[temesgen]

Your forgetting that a big reason for people buying flatscreens was, well, that they are flat. Just look at the amount of people that are still watching SD content on a HDtv and you'll know that most people really don't care so much for the IQ.

All 4k will do is higher prices, broadcast networks that need to make large investments not long after the investment they did in HD (just compare that to the decades they did with SD), which means higher prices for consumers buying content/cable and also higher prices for tv sets. And for what? On a 40~50 there isn't going to be much of a difference.

Back to gaming, the above just makes it useless for gaming. We are not going to get 4k gaming from a 2013 console. Lets just focus them on bringing out true 1080p games first.

4k might have a place in the future, but for now it's just another moneygrab attempt trying to make people crazy about something that isn't really going to offer a real benefit for now. Just like those failing 3d sets they are trying to shove down people's troaths. Nobody wants to watch tv while forced to wear glasses and get a headache after 5 minutes.

Pretty much agree with this post, 1080p is the standard ATM and more than likely it will be with us for some time. The infrastructure laid out to support 1080P isn't even done yet and it is highly unlikely that we will see everyone go back and add 4k or 3D or whatever else is on the horizon anytime soon. All that 4k does is allow hardware manufactures the opportunity to charge more for products in an attempt to create value and hopefully avoid the commoditization of their products and the corresponding drop in margins.

 

[wco81]

I'm not so sure it's as true now that a lot of people are watching SD content on HD sets.

I get HD content on just about every channel except a couple. Blu Ray players an discs are heavily advertised at retail as well as online. Blu-Ray disc sales aren't up to the peak of DVD sales but their climbing.

One thing that would help is to lower the price delta but then plenty of older titles are discounted months after initial release. You can buy a lot of BD movies at $10 or less now.

Again, these arguments against higher resolution displays echo similar arguments when the PS3 was first intro' and Sony talked up 1080p. People said 1080p won't become a factor before the end of the decade. Whether most 1080p sets are big enough or play enough HD content to matter, the fact is that they've penetrated a lot more households than the skeptics thought they would back 5-6 years ago.

You are right that 4k content would be a huge bar for TV networks to overcome. US govt. is more likely to license spectrum for mobile data networks than TV and the broadband infrastructure likely won't support 4k content.

At least not now.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I'm not so sure it's as true now that a lot of people are watching SD content on HD sets.

I get HD content on just about every channel except a couple. Blu Ray players an discs are heavily advertised at retail as well as online. Blu-Ray disc sales aren't up to the peak of DVD sales but their climbing.

One thing that would help is to lower the price delta but then plenty of older titles are discounted months after initial release. You can buy a lot of BD movies at $10 or less now.

Again, these arguments against higher resolution displays echo similar arguments when the PS3 was first intro' and Sony talked up 1080p. People said 1080p won't become a factor before the end of the decade. Whether most 1080p sets are big enough or play enough HD content to matter, the fact is that they've penetrated a lot more households than the skeptics thought they would back 5-6 years ago.

You are right that 4k content would be a huge bar for TV networks to overcome. US govt. is more likely to license spectrum for mobile data networks than TV and the broadband infrastructure likely won't support 4k content.

At least not now.

It's probably different in the US where I suppose it's true 720p+ is probably fairly common (judging by all the US series available). However in Holland for example it's still not so common.

You could say 1080p still isn't there standard these days. Isn't most HD stuff that is broadcasted 720p? Console games don't really do 1080p either so that leaves blu ray movies but last I heard blu ray sales weren't doing that great either.

I'm sure 4k has its uses but I don't see what the point is right now when 1080p still isn't the basic standard for all media available.

SD to HD is what VHS to DVD is. Not only better IQ, but a lot of other advantages as well. 4k is DVD to Blu ray. Better, but not that much.

 

[wco81]

It's probably different in the US where I suppose it's true 720p+ is probably fairly common (judging by all the US series available). However in Holland for example it's still not so common.

You could say 1080p still isn't there standard these days. Isn't most HD stuff that is broadcasted 720p? Console games don't really do 1080p either so that leaves blu ray movies but last I heard blu ray sales weren't doing that great either.

I'm sure 4k has its uses but I don't see what the point is right now when 1080p still isn't the basic standard for all media available.

SD to HD is what VHS to DVD is. Not only better IQ, but a lot of other advantages as well. 4k is DVD to Blu ray. Better, but not that much.

Found this article on HDTV and Blu-Ray sales in 2011:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-10/blu-ray-sales-2011/52473310/1

DVD sales are dropping but Blu-Ray sales are rising, to between 1/4 and 1/3 of DVD sales. Digital movie sales are increasing too. Article also notes 74.5 million homes with HDTVs.

Just about every show as well as every major film is released on Blu-Ray. I'm not sure if every Blu-Ray disc of a show is 1080p though. Some shows like Mad Men definitely are 1080p even though it is broadcast in 720p or 1080i

Gradually, more and more shows are viewed through either DVD, Blu-Ray or digital streams or downloads as opposed to viewing around the time they're broadcast.