Enter The 2160p HDTV

Dr. Eggman writes "The Consumer Electronics Show is kicking it in high gear as Westinghouse shows off its 2160p or "Quad" HDTV. While enthusiasts pine for new 1080p monitors Westinghouse has stated that the Quad HDTVs, like the 52" on display, "does not really target the consumer market, but high-end industrial applications.""

PS3 drivable?

[mgabrys_sf]

There was a lot made of the early specs of the PS3, one of them being it was capable of driving not one - but two 1080p displays in tandem. The potential of this being used in real-life led to it being dropped (so the story goes). If the PS3 was truely capable of driving two 1080p's wouldn't it be possible to drive a single 2160?

I recall that many early 30 inch progessive display cards used two cards in tandem to spit the screen into two vertical halves. If the PS3 video system has the omph, could it be similarly done?

Don't know how BIG the display would have to be to be ideal either. I recall that 1080p is barely perceptible with anything under 37-40 inches. I can only imagine the optimal size you'd need to see the advantages of Quad HDTV.

Re:What he really means to say

[TheRealFixer]

It's not price that's going to prevent this from coming to the consumer market. Plasma 4 years ago was around $30,000 for the larger units, but the prices dropped pretty fast. The real issue for consumer adoption is bandwidth. Cable and satellite providers have enough trouble delivering decent-quality 1080i. And over the air broadcasts? Forget about it. The ATSC standard is 19Mbits with MPEG-2 compression. There's no way you're fitting 2160p in 19Mbits with MPEG-2 and have a picture that looks better than a 1990's era AVI. So unless a brand new broadcast standard is developed and adopted, that's not happening. Cable and satellite have the advantage of being able to go to MPEG-4. But even with that, DirecTV cripples their HD by dropping the 1920x1080 picture down to 1440x1080 so they can fit more content.

Re:I believe

[ACMENEWSLLC]

>>Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels (16:9) (approximately 33 megapixels)

With that resolution, you have more data than you can actually see, unless you have a super large monitor. Even then, you can't focus on everything.

Can you imagine what you could do with zoom? That actor way off set, but still in the focal range, is picking his nose.

Will this bring back those movies that showed split screens with the same scene at two angles?

Re:What he really means to say

[TheRealFixer]

Your information is a little dated, and bit misleading. The Sony HDV 1080i is a consumer product, not a professional one. The Sony HDCAM is 10 years old. The newer HDCAM SR does full 1920x1080. And as I understand it, DVCPRO100 was intended more as an entry-level professional HD tape for news crews and the like, who aren't as concerned about full resolution picture as much as convenience and portability. Almost all modern professional equipment does 1920x1080. Most of what you see on stations like DiscoveryHD and INHD, not to mention film transfers like those on HDNet, are all done in full 1080i these days.

Four shows at once?

[adenied]

I know this is anathema to the Slashdot crowd, but I wonder if one could use this to watch four sporting events at once like sports bars do with big projection screens. There's enough HD feeds on most systems to make this look pretty nice. ESPN, ESPNHD, the various broadcast networks, FSNHD, NFL Network HD, INHD special events, etc. Just switch the audio feed around as needed.

Also would be cool when they do ESPN Full Circle where you get the same game but with different camera priorities on ESPNHD, ESPN2HD, ESPNEWS, and ESPNU. That's a sports geek's dream! Talk about sensory overload.

Re:1080p Monitor

[holt]

I've often wondered why they bother putting speakers on every TV. If you're going to spend $5000 on a TV, you'd probably have a good sound system, so why even bother with the TV speakers.

You know, I agree, but you'd be surprised how many posts I've seen on an AV forum (like AVS Forum [avsforum.com] where someone posts "I just bought a 72 inch HDTV. Can anyone recommend a good surround sound system for under $200?"

I'm not sure that the difference between a descent set of TV speakers and a mid-range surround system is necessarily as obvious as the difference between SDTV and HDTV. For example, when I installed my new HDTV last January, my mom commented on how good the picture looked, but she tells us that she can't really tell the difference between my sound system (Paradigm speakers with Marantz AVR) and her sub-$200 5.1-in-a-box system at her place. Maybe she just has mud in her ears?

As far as your comment about watching the morning news in surround sound, for me it's not the surround sound that makes it worth turning on the AVR. The quality of the sound is much higher than from the TV's speakers (which are actually supposed to be fairly good). If we're going to talk about saving money, I'm sure the sound system (speakers, amps, processors, etc) adds up to a couple hundred bucks in the cost of a TV like mine... and yet the first thing I did when I hooked the TV up was to disable the sound system in the TV menu. Oh well.

Re:PS3 drivable?

[Kjella]

Don't know how BIG the display would have to be to be ideal either. I recall that 1080p is barely perceptible with anything under 37-40 inches. I can only imagine the optimal size you'd need to see the advantages of Quad HDTV.

37-40 inches doesn't say anything without distance. If you're talking field of view, then 1080p is good for about 20 degrees and 2160p for about 60 degrees at 20-20 vision. And even if you have 20-20 vision, you only have that in a very tiny area in the center. Note that a 60 degree FOV means you're sitting closer than 1:1, maybe like 35" away for a 37-40" display. Either you need to sit a lot closer to your TV or have a huge video wall to enjoy 2160p. Of course, if you're used to watching films at monitor distance (not unusual for students in cramped quarters) then 2160p will work for you. That is, if you can find a source with that resolution (and no, 35mm film doesn't have 2000 lines of resolution).

Re:I believe

[jackbird]

Huh? That's a higher resolution than film is mastered at. Even 6k frames are only used occasionally on really complex and detailed shots, and the frames are 4k or 2k by the time they're burned back out to film. Heck, I think that might be more resolution than IMAX film recorders use, although I'm not entirely sure. Ridiculous, and doesn't entirely pass the sniff test.

Re:I believe

[takev]

I've seen the demo of Ultra-HDTV at the broadcasting conference here in amsterdam a couple of months ago
All I can say extremely cool. And all the people who say the eyes can not resolve this resolution, should wait to actually see this demo before passing judgment.

The Japanese do know how to make a prototype, they had all the equipment working, nicely in 19" deskside racks, with pretty equipment inside. They had a camera on the top of the building feeding live (using IP over fiber) to the theater. They could distribute uncompressed, but also compress in real time, scaling in real time (they had a couple of these 2000 line LCD TVs around the building). Record and Playback (they show a 12 minute video of nature, streets in a city, monuments, etc).

Very professional, it looked like you could simply buy it and use it turn-key in a TV studio. Although it may have been a little expensive :-)

The only problem: if you have bad eye sight you experience the world as a blur. If you look at this picture you are focusing on the screen which is closer to you than the image suggest, however the image is completely in focus and thus you see the image much sharper than reality. Even with perfect eye sight you notice this with Ultra-HD. I think people in the CGI industry would call this hyper reality, I am sure if one would make a dramatic production using this technology one would like to use a lower depth of field.