Beyond HDTV

The Hub writes "The Economist writes a thoughtful article about the next generation of HDTVs and how they will provide resolutions beyond 1080p. The drive for higher resolution is driven in part by the demands of 3D content. Also, some see streaming higher resolution content to the home as a way to make up for declining DVD sales. This would mean the studios would have to better embrace services such as Netflix or stream directly to the consumer. Mind you, picture quality is driven by more than the number of pixels."

Re:How Good is "Good Enough?"

[iceperson]

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html [carltonbale.com]

3D is NOT a market driver...

[MrWin2kMan]

I attended the NAB show in Las Vegas last year, and speaking with representatives of dozens of television manufacturers and content producers it was clear that 3D, even last April, was already a dead issue with no significant consumer uptake. The only people talking it up were the major studios. It's pretty clear the only group that benefits from 3D is theater operators, who charge higher prices for the showings. The major studios were pushing 3D to the home only to leverage their investment in producing the content. Nobody wants to wear the stupid glasses, and if you have a bunch of people over to watch a special event like the Superbowl, it's either impractical or downright impossible to accomodate everyone. Glasses-free 3D has a problem similar to 1st-gen LCD panels in that the viewing angle is extremely narrow. 3D is not driving the road to 4K and beyond. Military usage, as always is the big driver, as the NSA especially needs higher and higher resolution monitors for their analysis. The other off-shoot that is a big driver is cinema-width TV's. 1920x1080p is insufficient to view many of the CinemaScope and similar titles that were produced in their full glory, at a large enough size to make any difference from DVD resolution. Simply making 1080p sets larger only makes the pixels larger, and produces perceived graininess. They had a wonderful 200" Panasonic LCD television on display, but it was no where near as good as the 40" 4K set directly across from it. The bigger problem is that Joe Sixpack on average doesn't know the differences between 720p, 1080i and 1080p. DVD's look great on 720p sets, but BluRays do not. Even worse, Joe Sixpack doesn't know that there are different HD's at all! Joe Sixpack goes mostly on price, which is why the low-end sets are selling well, but the more expensive 55-70" 1080p 240/480Hz sets are not, and why the manufacturers are struggling right now. And why they're trying to change the focus to 4K sets. HDTV's have become a commodity, and they need to introduce something new to keep their sales momentum. Unfortunately, the consumers haven't been cooperating.

Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right

[PitaBred]

Not at TV viewing distances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HDTV_viewing_distance#Human_visual_system_limitation [wikipedia.org]

Monitors and computer/text use are a different ball of wax. For the video use most people make of their TVs, 1080p is almost overkill as it stands. I don't watch TV with my face 50" from a 32" screen. As for my 61" screen, I need to sit 95" away to not miss any detail. That's 8'. You crank that up to 2K resolution and you need to sit 6.8' from a 61" screen to be able to perceive all the detail. And that's if you have perfect 20/20 vision. 4K resolution you're looking at sitting less than 4 feet from a 61" screen to be able to visually determine at a single pixel. That's just not reasonable. If it were a computer monitor, it would be.

Again, I'm not saying there aren't uses for higher pixel densities. I'm just saying there aren't uses for them with a living-room television.

Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right

[eharvill]

A monitor has a different use case. I'm not watching movies on my monitor terribly often, but I may do video editing. I also have 3 monitors hooked up to my PC. But I only have one big TV for watching movies/TV/console games (media center PC for the video).

Yes, monitors do have much different use cases, but they have been royally screwed over by the TV 1080P standard. I recently purchased a 2nd monitor and could not find a match for my 3 year old 24" 1920x1200 display. I had to settle for a 23" 1080P. Very irritating to say the least. I guess the one good side effect is that monitors are dirt cheap these days.