Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
The future
or
It's all a pipe dream
Jason Perlow
Best Argument: It's all a pipe dream
Audience Favored: It's all a pipe dream (58%)
Closing Statements
4K is unstoppable. It really is
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
The shift to a new TV technology doesn't happen fast. Sometimes TV evolution takes side-tracks such as HD-DVD and Super-VHS. Eventually, though, the new technology catches fire. First, with video fanatics and then with everyone else. It's going to be the same way with 4K.
It's not going to happen tomorrow. But, late this year, high-end TV fans will be switching to 4K, and by late 2014 it will be moving into the mass-market. And, by 2016, Jason and I may be having a similar debate about whether the world is ready for 8K. The answer, by the way, will be yes.
4K will arrive but the content won't
Jason Perlow
I agree with him that videophiles will jump to 4K like flies on poop and will happily throw tens of thousands of dollars away on these displays.
The problem is that for the rest of us, even when the prices of these units come down to commodity levels (and they will sooner rather than later) our broadband infrastructure, the TV production studios as well as our frequency spectrum that is allocated for digital TV broadcasting are nowhere near being ready to accommodate 4K UHD let alone the 8K UHD that will almost certainly replace it in less than a 10-year timeframe, and will have even more serious bandwidth and data moving demands.
Indeed HEVC and SONY's new recording formats will make the data streams smaller, but even at a (highly optimistic) 100 megabits per second for acceptable video quality, that's a good ten to twenty times larger than what most American homes can reliably transport from content distribution networks today.
The FCC has put out a request for all 50 US states to be ready to deploy Gigabit broadband in at least one selected community by 2016. That's nice, but when was the last time the FCC was able to achieve anything that ambitious in such a short timeframe? The FCC makes the United Nations look like an effective legislating organization by comparison.
The previous DTV transition was stalled and took over 10 years to execute, and in some markets it's not even completed yet. Getting gigabit to residences is not like freeing up spectrum, it will require dealing with municipal governments and convincing communities to jackhammer streets and bring fiber and high speed copper in to the home, or alternatively gigabit wireless which will have its own unique challenges.
So yes, we'll see affordable 4K TVs and monitors and tablets within five years. Being able to distribute content to them? That's a whole 'nuther ballgame.
It's a pipe dream
Andrew Nusca
Predicting the future isn't easy, but both participants in this week's debate about 4K TV technology made great points. Jason Perlow's more nuanced take on the subject -- acknowledging that it will soon be a reality, yes, but not for most, and not in the best way -- was more convincing. Because nothing says "pipe dream" like the hollow feeling of a brand new 4K television set playing a 480i broadcast signal.
Talkback
Is it a big enough difference?
I'm sure that I'll likely notice a difference - but I'm not so sure that most people will care.
Especially the tech press who claims that the difference between 720p and 1080p is indistinguishable (although I personally beg to differ - I can tell the difference). I can see similar claims popping up with 4k.
There's also the issue of we have nothing that supports it. We'll likely need a new optical media format to fit an entire movie (increasingly unlikely as more people just use the internet for video), and it would require even larger internet bandwidth. Nevermind that it's currently really hard to get an internet connection that can handle 1080p.
And of course it will likely require we do something to how changing channels works on both broadcast and cable. And I don't think there are very many channels that go the whole 1080p even now.
It's the chicken and egg problem all over again. Except this time I don't think people are really gonna be convinced to move to the new format.
I'm sure I'd personally love it. But selling to to the public and the tech press may be hard.
Similar to Retina
Beyond crunching the numbers on pixels and 20/20 (or less) visual accuity, there is something inherently satisfying about a display that looks great close up even after you step away from it. At around 50 inches or bigger, which isn't rare these days, even the John Q Publics will want one.
A note about that 20/20 thing . . .
. . . it's not a maximum.
20/20 is basically "you don't need glasses or contacts." It's not the maximum possible vision for humans. Some people have vision as good as 20/10, and possibly as good as 20/8. I'd imagine that before age starts deteriorating their vision, most people likely had better than 20/20 vision at some point in their lives. There are of course exceptions. Most doctors will simply stop the test at 20/20, and most people won't bother to ask their doctors to test their vision beyond 20/20.
On my iPhone 4: In 3D games (and yes, at a comfortable distance, at about 10 inches which the phone is designed at), I can see the stairstepping effect from a lack of antialiasing - that means even on a so-called "retina" display, it's still possible for some people to still see the pixels.
Stair steps
There is also a bit of the, "I just spent $2500(well, $800 today) on this new tv, of course it looks better!", going on as well!
In the next 2 years? Pipe Dream! in the next 20? I don't have a crystal ball!
on an iPhone, they are the same.
On an iPhone, they are the same, unless it's a really old game that never updated to add retina support. iPhone games generally don't render at a different picture resolution than the display resolution.
The "stair step" effect is caused by a lack of antialiasing, and I very much know it when I see it, as somebody who has played games for years. I can certainly tell the difference between upsampling and aliasing. Photographs and live action videos are naturally antialiased, but game images aren't, due to the way that rendering technology works for 3D games.
The Wikipedia article on "Aliasing" shows the stairstepping effect I am talking about.
While the screens are simply gorgeous, content will be a serious issue.
The move to 4K will be even slower.
Much bigger than 50
I don't think 2014/15 is going to be the coming out year though. 10 years maybe? We'll see. Bandwidth must get much bigger and much cheaper for this to gain traction.
4k TV
much of the information content of TV broadcasts is carried by the sound channel but lapel mikes are commonly used which lead to very muffled speech also there is an increasing tendency to deliberately blur pictures to prevent people being recognised.
The only things that would benefit from higher resolution are adverts where no expense is spared to get the best sound and picture quality.
Talkbacks need to keep in mind the subject of the debate
4K is about movie distribution - or not
This will play out again: no serious use or driver to the larger displays without media content, and the question becomes: when/how will Hollywood agree to near-theater-quality material being distributed? I feel the encryption and protection will take many years to sort out. In any case it is not about the technology or Internet bandwidth, it is about the content protection.