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Displays Hardware

Enter The 2160p HDTV 154

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.""
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Enter The 2160p HDTV

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  • How about (Score:5, Funny)

    by DJ.Flecktarn ( 1028326 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:08AM (#17538620)
    High end industrial pr0n?
  • Great!! (Score:1, Funny)

    by TheMadcapZ ( 868196 )
    Just in time for me to junk my HD CRT TV.
  • I believe (Score:5, Funny)

    by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:10AM (#17538646) Homepage Journal
    I shall make a case for my living room viewing to be a "high end industrial application" :-)
    • Good luck finding content for that thing though! Could even a high-end gaming PC push that resolution at a decent rate? Is there even a monitor cable with that much bandwidth?
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by prefect42 ( 141309 )
        Yawn. This isn't even that monstrous (if the summary spec is correct). IBM T221 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T221 [wikipedia.org] gives you 3840x2400 and can give you 48Hz off a single card (using both connectors).
      • by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
        There will always be a market for a display capable of displaying more than two 1080p images at once at full resolution. A nonlinear editing station for HD video is an obvious one (if not already using multiple >HD displays).
      • We have a bunch of things with this kind of resolution. IBM makes a nice medical imaging series that has about 8mp (2k x 4x?) and sony has a new projector that will do this as well. Qmp series. We do it with multiple projectors tiled.
    • Re:I believe (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:22AM (#17538806) Journal
      Save your money for a UHDV living room. :)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHDV [wikipedia.org]

      Super Hi-Vision's main specifications:

              * Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels (16:9) (approximately 33 megapixels)
              * Frame rate: 60 frame/s.
              * Audio: 22.2 channels
                          o 9 -- above ear level
                          o 10 -- ear level
                          o 3 -- below ear level
                          o 2 -- low frequency effects
              * Bandwidth: 21 GHz frequency band
                          o 600 MHz, 500~6600 Mbit/s bandwidth

      Hot damn!
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ACMENEWSLLC ( 940904 )
        >>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: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jackbird ( 721605 )
        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.
      • by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
        Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels (16:9) (approximately 33 megapixels)

        Just think how much of that gets lost for typical 10% title-safe regions. That's practically the equivalent of 32 SD DVD images worth of screen real-estate thrown out for overscan estimation! (You could fit 8 720x540 full-screen images on each of the left and right sides and another 8 720x432 letterboxed images each above and below!)

        If you assume no overscan loss, that's 16 1920x1080 HD images in a 4x4 grid.

        "OK, I want channels 18,
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by takev ( 214836 )
        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 coul
  • How to feed it ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rastignac ( 1014569 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:11AM (#17538674)
    What can one use to feed this beast ? Where to find very-very-HD contents ? (And what about the huge bandwidth and the huge storage needed ?).
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Erwos ( 553607 )
      Content will always catch up. I remember when HDTVs first came out, people would whine constantly about the lack of even native 720p source material - you had your computer's output, and that was about it. But, after a while, content did catch up, and you can easily find 720p and 1080p source material - even streamed over the net. Same thing for this - for now, it'll be driven with dual-link or quad-link DVI. But in the future, if this hits the consumer-space, we'll see full-res content for it - I'm somewha
      • You haven't seen the UK recently then. There's a big push for HD-Ready TVs at the moment (We have one, sans HDMI interface) but bugger all content. Sky provides a few bits with a specific package (I believe), but you can't get anything over Freeview despite the capacity being there. All they need to do is, say, reduce the number of shopping channels by a factor of 5.
    • by AxminsterLeuven ( 963108 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:30AM (#17538930)

      What can one use to feed this beast ? Where to find very-very-HD contents ?
      Hook up four DVD players, with each disc containing a quarter of the movie's image. Then lign up your remotes on the coffee table and use the index and middle fingers of both your hands to press play.
    • by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:33AM (#17538954) Homepage
      They say it's not really a consumer device, so I would assume, if you had any use for a display like this, you would also be generating whatever content it would be displaying. The use that comes to my mind most easily would be people editing films. If you're working with a very high-def version of a movie that will eventually be transferred to film or projected with a very high-def digital projector, then it would be nice to see what the film is really going to look like with the definition those formats will have.

      Another thing though is that media always lags behind the hardware to utilize it.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Or display screens in a plant environment showing process flows, meter values and such. We have setups like this in the plant I work in and they use a wall of monitors (plasma screens running 1024x768, I think) to get all the information to a viewable state. The limiting factor appears to be just raw pixels - you can only make a font so small before it becomes unreadable, for example. With a higher resolution output device, the same information could be presnted in a smaller area, or use the same area to
    • Looks like everyone will need to buy Red cameras [red.com] to get the resolution needed.
    • An architect could easily fill up a 2k by 2K image with a building plan.
      Oil geologists look at seismic data 10K by 10K by 10K samples.
      Astronomers have had 100 megapixel images for some time.
    • I have a Nikon DSLR. It's frame size is 3000 x 2000. It would be nice to see my photos in full resolution on the LCD screen. It would make a great computer monitor As for industrial use. I'm thinking of an X-ray machine's view screen. This is not for watching Hollywood movies but there is plenty of content
    • Where to find very-very-HD contents ? (

      your rendering software puts it in the output folder

    • Where to find very-very-HD contents ?

      Ummm... IMAX ?

      (And what about the huge bandwidth and the huge storage needed ?).

      Lossy compressed video should be no problem.

      HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs are only 25-30GBs. Figure you can double that for the same quality at 4X the resolution.

      For actually decoding the high bitrate h.264/VC-1 video, you'll want a very high end multi-core system for sure... if not a custom-build ASIC.

  • I assume medical diagnosing, business presentations,




    and the one 20-something intern that plugs in his game system to play some video games.
    • Since consoles are usually at a set definition (and none are or will be higher than 1080p for the next decade at least) it'll make little difference versus a regular HDTV - all other things being equal.

      It'd be a cool computer monitor though:)

      But sadly, this thing is insane as a TV anyways - asides a computer - no media can take advantage of it and the channels are already slow as it is to adopt HDTV programming. Maybe I'll have one by the time I'm a grandpa in 30 years....
      • and none are or will be higher than 1080p for the next decade at least

        Although it *may* be a safe statement, a decade is a long time in the tech industry. I'd be careful with absolute statements...but since your not backing/betting/advocating a specific product, then I hope for all of us, your wrong.


        2008 - Quantum Computing breakthrough
        2010 - Virtual Reality nears reality
        2012 - Mulit-TB personal storage
        2013 - 3D Displays begin to go mainstream
        2015 - Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft ready 4th gen consol

    • Interesting enough, the display unit [tomshardware.com] was demoing geological information and other applications for the Oil industry.
  • by Bacon Bits ( 926911 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:13AM (#17538692)
    "[D]oes not really target the consumer market, but high-end industrial applications." Translation: "It's damn expensive right now, and we can't produce enough of them at consumer prices to make a profit."
    • by TheRealFixer ( 552803 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:29AM (#17538912)
      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.
      • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @11:08AM (#17539456) Homepage
        But even with that, DirecTV cripples their HD by dropping the 1920x1080 picture down to 1440x1080 so they can fit more content.

        Check out the following WP quotes:

        "HDV 1080i uses a pixel resolution of 1440×1080, but when displayed is scaled to an aspect ratio of 1920×1080 = (1440 × 1.33)×1080."

        "HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is a HD version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440x1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes."

        "DVCPRO HD downsamples native 720p/1080i signals to a lower resolution. 720p is downsampled from 1280x720 to 960x720, and 1080i is downsampled from 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 for 59.94i and 1440x1080 for 50i."

        Unless you have some extremely fancy gear, you're not doing more than 1440x1080 anyway. But hey, it's nice to think you're getting 1920x1080 footage.
        • by TheRealFixer ( 552803 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @11:39AM (#17539956)
          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.
          • by flimflam ( 21332 )
            Actually no, the majority of the HD you see on DiscoveryHD is acquired on either HDCAM or DVCPROHD. A lot of it is actually acquired at 720P. Discovery mostly doesn't accept HDV origination, but HDNet certainly does (HDNet being about cheap above all else). You'll see a bit of stuff here and there acquired on HDCAM SR, mostly aerials, but keep in mind that there is no camcorder yet that acquires in that format - and it's ungodly expensive (think over $200,000 for a camera and recorder, sans lenses, or $6,00
      • by bigpat ( 158134 )
        At such a high resolution this is primarily a computer monitor, not primarily a tv for all the reasons you state. But since it is 16:9 aspect ratio, then you can also conveniently show HD movies without stretching or letter boxing like you get on my Dell 24" monitor which is at a 16:10 aspect ration. It should be mentioned that 30" Wide screen LCD monitors are already selling at 2560x1600 resolutions, so 3840x2160 is a nice jump up from that but not a ridiculously big jump up in resolution at least comput
      • by iantri ( 687643 )
        But even with that, DirecTV cripples their HD by dropping the 1920x1080 picture down to 1440x1080 so they can fit more content.

        FWIW, they also downsample SD to 480x480.

  • by Thansal ( 999464 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:17AM (#17538752)
    Yah.

    right.

    Who wants to predict howlong it will take for those old fashion 1080P sets to become outdated, and that you really must have one of tese new 2160p sets if you want to even THINK of keeping up with the jonses.

    As a quick note. I am actualy finaly ditching the first, and only, TV I ever had (making it around 14 yrs old now I think), a 20" CRT that had some sorta funky colour burns on the sides...
    I am replacing it with:
    My boss' old 20" CRT that works!
    • by kfg ( 145172 )
      Who wants to predict howlong it will take for those old fashion 1080P sets to become outdated, and that you really must have one of tese new 2160p sets if you want to even THINK of keeping up with the jonses.

      I won't be happy until I have a 4320p Jumbotron in my media room. All I need to do is figure out where to get a half kilometer long media room so I can watch the thing.

      KFG
    • Who wants to predict howlong it will take for those old fashion 1080P sets to become outdated, and that you really must have one of tese new 2160p sets if you want to even THINK of keeping up with the jonses.

      As a quick note. I am actualy finaly ditching the first, and only, TV I ever had (making it around 14 yrs old now I think), a 20" CRT that had some sorta funky colour burns on the sides...
      I am replacing it with:
      My boss' old 20" CRT that works!

      I'm to busy playing games in 2D to bother with games that are HD

    • Who wants to predict howlong it will take for those old fashion 1080P sets to become outdated

      I would be interested to know if there is any provision for HDTVs handling higher resolution/bandwidth signals. I.e. is it possible for the broadcasters to transmit 2160p signals and for all the current (1080 and 720) systems to be able to receive it and down-scale? I imagine this isn't possible (decoding 1080p H.264+ takes enough CPU already, I dread to think how much CPU it takes to decode 2160p), but when broad
      • I would be interested to know if there is any provision for HDTVs handling higher resolution/bandwidth signals. I.e. is it possible for the broadcasters to transmit 2160p signals and for all the current (1080 and 720) systems to be able to receive it and down-scale? I imagine this isn't possible (decoding 1080p H.264+ takes enough CPU already, I dread to think how much CPU it takes to decode 2160p), but when broadcasters eventually want to go beyond 1080p it seems like an awful waste of bandwidth to transmi
        • I imagine the supported broadcast resolution is quite open-ended, since you can pretty much define any resolution you want using MPEG2.

          But it takes more CPU to decode higher resolution videos - if your HDTV doesn't have the decoding horsepower, it's not going to be able to decode and downscale a higher resolution video unless you do some magic to split the data up so it doesn't have to know or care about the extra resolution.

          If you could use a more advanced encoding scheme, or change over to .h264, you coul
    • It can't make 1080p obsolete fast enough. Why? 'Cause then I can get a 1080p for peanuts. And I'll be happy with it, since I happen to know I can't see much more than that in anything I can fit into my house. Kind of like finding an audio codec that sounds ABX like the original at 48kbps. Who cares how lossy it is if I can fit my entire library on last year's flash device, as long as _I_ can't tell the difference!
  • PS3 drivable? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mgabrys_sf ( 951552 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:23AM (#17538820) Journal
    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.
    • Well ...

      In theory the PS3/XBox 360 and Wii could all handle a 2160p TV, but with the extra processing power required to do generate the pixels the quality of the 3D images they could produce would be greatly reduced. Think of it this way, if you increase the number of pixels by 4 times you reduce the ammount of pixel processing per pixel to 1/4 the original ammount; so the PS3 could produce images at this resolution but they would look far worse.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by RicoX9 ( 558353 )
      Doubling the horizontal and vertical resolution gets you 4 times the number of pixels. Even if it could drive 4 1080p screens, that doesn't mean the timing logic is there to actually make a picture that makes sense. Most likely you would end up with a completely scrambled picture off a separate set of signals meant to drive 4 1080p screens.
    • Re:PS3 drivable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by joshetc ( 955226 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:38AM (#17539034)
      No, 2160p is essentially four 1080p displays. Hence them calling it "Quad HDTV"
    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      It's too bad the PS3 didn't accept an HDMI input. The thing would make a very cool pvr. It might still be possible with a USB dongle and MythTV running on it, but not as elegant.
    • if only the vertical resolution is doubled to 2160, then the PS4 would (in theory) be able to drive it if it can support 2 1080p displays. If the horizontal resolution was also doubled, to 3920, the number of pixels would increase by 4x, not 2x. It would require much more processing than simply driving 2 displays.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      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 FO
    • Haven't RTFA, but the name part "Quad" seems to imply that not only is the horizontal, but also the vertical resolution doubled in 2160p, so that would probably require four PS3s, unless a single PS3 can handle 1080p and double the resolution vertically. Unlikely.
  • 1280x1024 (1.3 MPix)
    1920x1200 (2.2 MPix)
    2560x1600 (4 Mpix)
    3840x2160 (8 MPix) => would be nice for our current 8Mpix Nikon photowork


    See, from the photographer's point of view any current consumer LCD is inferior (safe to rare Mac/Dell 30" 2560x1600 displays), but this Westinghouse offering would be really nice.
    • by temojen ( 678985 )
      10040x10040 (100 MPix) => Would be nice for my current 100MPix 1973 Mamiya TLR photo work.
      (I currently run my CRT monitor at 1920x1440, but it's not enough)
  • Will I be able to display what I want on it in that resolution or just DRMed junk? Let's talk business here, I don't care for displays that decide for me what they want to display.
    • by Surt ( 22457 )
      I'm pretty sure they're using HDMI 1.3 for the input, which will play nice with both DRM and non-drm material.
  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @11:02AM (#17539360)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I actually saw a few prototype HDR plasma screens at Siggraph this year.

      They were being pushed by some proprietary software that seemed to playback OpenEXR files in real time, but they certainly were some purty images.

      One thing I noticed is that HDR on highlights makes some hotspots unbearable to look at on the screens currently (ie sun flares, etc), which is accurate, but not particularly comfortable for viewing content.

      Another thing I noticed is that the prototypes seemed to be mods of off-the-shelf equip
  • This is only 3840 x 2160 pixels, which is shy of the 4096x2304 pixels needed for the in-camera recording modes in RED ONE www.red.com, and quite a way below what is needed for the full sensor 4520x2540.

    Given the RED is the only thing on the horizon that has the resolution to feed this screen, why stop a few pixels short with your design??
    • by Hadlock ( 143607 )
      ...Because it's 4 HDTVs smooshed together? The film industry has no problem with using a higher resolution format and then cropping it down. All 35mm flat (16.9 widescreen) films actually are filmed on 3:4 film stock, and then cropped down on the projector to widescreen. I don't see why digital could be any different.
      • Dont they use anamorphic lenses?
        • by Hadlock ( 143607 )
          Actually, they use both. I'm a projectionist at an art house theater, BTW. We use two standard types, flat (standard 1.85:1 widescreen) and scope, short for cinema scope, which is a brand of anamorphic lens, which, I believe, is 2.35:1. Of the films I get at my theater, I'd say roughly 1/5th of the films are scope, while the rest are flat. Scope films do in fact use the entire 4 perforations. If you're at a really good theater, they'll focus the bulb differently for scope, and you'll get a fantastically bri
    • The Westinghouse monitor is also, unfortunately, just a little too low for digital mastering/cinema applications. With the current paradigm being "master at 4K distribute at 2K" the monitor does not have the resolution for the mastering phase (4K = 4096x2160). That doesn't even begin to talk about the pixel bit depth, color space, gamma, etc. Also when the paradigm changes to "master at 4K distribute at 4K", then the film industry will really want 4K monitors for proofing.

      Since it is very close to the re
  • Four shows at once? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adenied ( 120700 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @11:53AM (#17540228)
    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.
    • by Secrity ( 742221 )
      With the proper input equipment, yes. It would be similar to PIP, only with 4 1080i pictures. Isn't ESPN a chain of restaurant/bars with lots of TVs?
    • ...I bet dollars to doughnut holes the damn place would have the aspect ratios screwed up -- the perennial squish-o-vision.
  • by inviolet ( 797804 ) <slashdot&ideasmatter,org> on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @12:14PM (#17540576) Journal
    Westinghouse has stated that the Quad HDTVs, like the 52" on display, "does not really target the consumer market, but high-end industrial applications."

    They make statements like this in order to position themselves at the high end of the consumer market. After all, the overmonied folks in the high end of the consumer market invariably fancy themselves "above the consumer market".

  • 1080p ought to be enough for anybody?
  • wow! think of the lucky people who bought a Windows Vista Media Center HD-ready box! [microsoft.com]
    (CES, Las Vegas, Jan 2006) [microsoft.com]

    As the first high-definition format to reach the U.S. market with support on Windows Vista, HD DVD will offer consumers unrivaled picture and sound quality, extending the entertainment experience far beyond that of today's DVDs. HD DVD will offer new levels of interactivity and the ability to stream HD DVD movies across a home network or enjoy them on portable video devices...

    .... ops .

  • The application in this screenshot [tomshardware.com] appears to be GeoProbe [lgc.com]. So according to the PDF, it does indeed work with Linux;)

  • It turns out that this would make a perfect digital drafting table. The height is just over that of a D sized architectural print (25.5" tall, Arch D is 36x24), which allows for a title bar and icon row at the top, plus flyouts/menus on the side in the extra 9" on the side. MAke this completely flat with a senstised surface for a mouse or stylus, and it would be a very cool item for an Architect. Bonus points for writing a driver interface to match pixel density to drawing scale for 1:1 scale editing (yes,

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