Sources Say ITU Has Approved Ultra-High Definition TV Standard 341
Qedward writes with this excerpt from Techworld: "A new television format that has 16 times the resolution of current High Definition TV has been approved by an international standards body, Japanese sources said earlier today. UHDTV, or Ultra High Definition Television, allows for programming and broadcasts at resolutions of up to 7680 by 4320, along with frame refresh rates of up to 120Hz, double that of most current HDTV broadcasts. The format also calls for a broader palette of colours that can be displayed on screen. The video format was approved earlier this month by member nations of the International Telecommunication Union, a standards and regulatory body agency of the United Nations, according to an official at NHK, Japan's public broadcasting station, and another at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Both spoke on condition of anonymity."
Re:useless aspect ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that real work is done with lots of text, and text goes from top to bottom far more frequently then scales off endlessly to the right?
We have these stupidly huge 16:9 monitors today that can't even display one page of a PDF without scrolling and yet 2/3 of the screen is sitting empty. It's a terrible aspect ratio for computers.
Very disappointing (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure it's very nice, but these types of things are simply diverting time and resources away from what the true goal should be: sexbots. Anime themed sexbots, porn star themed sexbots, weird fetish sexbots -- sexbots.
Japan, why have you gone astray?
Re:useless aspect ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Not useless for everyone, just you.
Even so - there are monitors that pivot from portrait to landscape. 16x9 is great for office work if you rotate it 90 degrees.
Re:I dont see the point, yet (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont see the point, yet
People buying the TVs subsidizing the economy of scale lowering the price of equally resolant computer monitors. And incidentally releasing us from the purgatory of 1920x1080 low dpi crap that is spun as high-end by CE marketing departments everywhere.
Re:useless aspect ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the GP is referring to the fact that once we had a high resolution TV spec, pretty much all panel manufactuers decided that "what's good for TVs is good for computers" and no longer make any higher resolution than 1920x1080 unless you're willing to spend close to $1000 or more.
I see no reason to expect they'll do otherwise in the future, so any future TV resolution spec has immediate implications on future computer monitor resolutions.
Re:Oh good... (Score:4, Insightful)
We've already got something like that with ATSC standards, at least in the RF modulation schemes -- broadcast used 8-VSB (time domain), and the alternatives considered were OFDM (frequency domain) and 256-QAM (phase domain). Well, the cable industry is using 256-QAM and broadcast is using 8-VSB, last I heard, and I think what edged 8-VSB ahead for broadcast was that it's not sensitive to the phase jitter in antique GEO satellite transponders. So with modulation, at least, yeah, we're already there. (The fortunate thing is that, unlike when NTSC rolled out, TV manufacturers aren't forced to design around just one demodulation standard, and it's not all that difficult to incorporate both 8-VSB and 256-QAM demodulation in modern receivers, even within a single demod chipset, so for the most part you never notice it.)
I suspect as standards get more and more complex, we'll start seeing a lot more of this kind of thing, and it will help rather than hurt, as the TV manufacturers design more and more agile multi-standard receivers that can handle anything the standards folks throw at them. Note that most if not all of them will also still display analog NTSC-M VSB-modulated signals just fine .. because there are still a lot of cable providers offering analog basic cable tiers ..
(<- still thinks the way NTSC-M avoided obsoleting the first-gen monochrome TV's was a cool hack, even if the chroma performance sucked most of the time)
Re:useless aspect ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since TV and computer displays became essentially the same thing, the consumer market has dominated.
Recall, if you will, all the build-up to the "Grand Alliance" that gave us today's ATSC (HDTV) standard. There was politicing on Analog vs. Digital (kind of a no-brainer), on RF modulation (we lost out on that one, here, 8VSB was selected due to Qualcomm lobbying and the fact it interfered less with existing NTSC broadcasts... now that those broadcasts are gone, we still have the problem that the signal isn't worth a damn indoors). And on display resolution.
Hollywood, Inc. wanted a 2:1 aspect ration. The computer industry, savvy enough to understand the impact of millions of consumer displays at higher-than-existing PC resolutions, wanted something more boxy. 16:9 was the compromise widescreen aspect ratio.
The PC industry, naturally, went full steam ahead... at 16:10. Silly PC industry. This lasted for awhile, but ultimately, with all those consumer LCD panels out there, most cried "Uncle" and went 16:9. I have dual 1920x1200 16:10 monitors at home, though I see an upgrade to 2560x1440 in the very near future. At work, they've been 16:9 (dual) for my current and previous job. Hardly useless for real work (and that's more Electronics CAD than video these days, though I did EE-CAD, embedded software, web servers, photography, and video at my last job), and the difference is, if anything, more significant for video work (16:9 monitors don't leave any room for controls on the full-screen video panel, 'cept as an overlay) than "real" work like designing circuitry.
Re:useless aspect ratio (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignoring the non-uniform brightness and viewing angle issues, it's substantially more mouse movement with a screen pivoted. Yes, I suppose I can install some 3rd party software, but most of my work is spent remoting into servers and I can't set them up so they only work well in my environment.
tl;dr: Pivoted monitors sounds like a great idea, but not suitable for my usage pattern.
Re:Anyone seeing the point of this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was lucky enough to see a demo of Ultra High Definition a few years back when NHK was developing it. I didn't think you could get much better than 1080p, but it was actually noticeably better. What people forget is that it isn't simply the resolution that is higher, the colour is better and the frame rate has been bumped to a native 120fps. Everything looked hyper realistic and natural. Not the same level of improvement going from SD to HD, but the frame rate alone was enough to really set it apart.
Having said that I was quite impressed by 4k and have not had an opportunity to compare 4k to Ultra HD. I'm kinda sceptical at how much improvement there would be over 4k/60p, but won't pass judgement until I have seen it. And of course it remains to be seen if 48 or 60 fps will take off for films.
What I really can't understand is people who say they can't see any difference between SD and HD. Even if their eyesight is bad and they can't see the extra resolution they should still be able to see that the colour is better. Well, unless they have set their TV to be deliberately really low contrast, and I know one guy who does. 720p to 1080p is going to be more subtle because it is just a resolution bump, so really it depends on the size of your TV and your distance from it. I used to think a 50" TV was ridiculous, this year I bought one for less than a good 32" CRT set cost a decade ago...
Re:Great! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep - because EVERYONE had the exact same preference/requirements as you ...
No-one could possibly be replacing broken HDTV or buying their first HDTV in the next 5-10 years.
No-one could possibly be using a display size where 1080p is sub-optimal.
No-one could possibly want to enlarge part of a 4K signal on a lower resolution display and still have detail.
No-one could possibly want to have higher resolution for the extra $5 of hardware it will cost to decode.
Re:Great! (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be great if it didn't suffer from overcompression. A couple of months ago I was watching a Canal+ HD broadcast of a Spanish League soccer game in the store (I have the Canal+ SD package at home). When the picture was still, you could see the texture of the grass, but whenever the picture was moving (which was most of the time), the grass turned into a flat green canvas and the players' jerseys were unnaturally flat orange. I mean, what's the point?
Back in the U.S. I used to have DirecTV's HD package. Most programs suffered from pixelation and ugly gray-shade zones. Again, overcompression spoiling the advantages of HD.