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Displays Graphics Television Upgrades Hardware

4K UHDTV Hardware On Display in Berlin, And On Sale In Korea 137

First the spec, and now the hardware: MrSeb writes "After five years of trying to convince us that 3D TVs are the future, it seems TV makers are finally ready to move on — to 4K UHDTV. At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Sony, Toshiba, and LG are all showing off 84-inch 4K (3840×2160) TVs. These aren't just vaporware, either: LG's TV is on sale now in Korea (and later this month in the US), Sony's is due later this year, and Toshiba will follow in the new year. Be warned, though: all three will cost more than $20,000 when they go on sale in the US — oh, and there's still no 4K Blu-ray spec, and no such thing as 4K broadcast TV. In other display-related news, Panasonic is showing off a humongous 145-inch 8K (7680x4320) plasma TV, and some cute 20-inch 4K displays — but unfortunately neither are likely to find their way to your living room or office in the near future."
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4K UHDTV Hardware On Display in Berlin, And On Sale In Korea

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  • 4k Monitor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SETY ( 46845 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @08:36AM (#41199087)

    How about a 4k or 8k 27" monitor? They can market it as a TV if they want too.

    • For me a 24" one at that resolution please!

      27" is a bit too big for my desk.

      • Re:4k Monitor (Score:4, Insightful)

        by strack ( 1051390 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @08:59AM (#41199187)
        get a better desk.
        • Or hang it on the wall above the back end of the desk?
        • Seriously, that is insightful? My desk is fine, I just like to put a lot of stuff on it. It has two desktop computers, both with a monitor. Also, a 27" monitor would be so wide that at the close distance I'm sitting from it it'd make no sense. I do think that makers of consumer electronics should adapt to the furniture of the consumers, not vice-versa.

      • I've been thinking lately that at some point in the future, I might buy a big, high-res TV and mount it to the wall for use as my monitor...

        • I've been thinking lately that at some point in the future, I might buy a big, high-res TV and mount it to the wall for use as my monitor...

          Do it. You won't be disappointed. Most PC monitors are 1080p anyway (so you won't lose any resolution) and if you use a HDTV instead, the text is large enough that you don't have to crank up Windows' DPI setting, which can break badly-behaved software. I have used a 32" 1080p TV as my monitor for a couple years and it works very well. More recently, I've been somewhat

          • by otuz ( 85014 )

            Why don't you fix your eyesight instead? People with normal vision or glasses shouldn't have any issues distinguishing content on any consumer displays.

            • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

              Why don't you fix your eyesight instead? People with normal vision or glasses shouldn't have any issues distinguishing content on any consumer displays.

              there's no such thing as normal vision and there's plenty of consumer displays.

              I have to keep the dip setting cranked up all the time on my laptop, if I use the laptop screen then fullhd resolution on 15" display just needs that. it just does, every ui element is too small to hit comfortably otherwise.

              then when I'm at home, like now, I also need it cranked up because it's attached to a 55.5" fullhd tv. sure it's bigger but I do sit ~2meters away from it and again need the dpi setting to be turned up. I just

              • by otuz ( 85014 )

                Well, I'm writing this on my retina-macbook pro without any upscaling, 2880x1800 and perfectly readable. I've used a ViewSonic VP2290B with its 3840x2400 @ 22.2" resolution (a bit over 200ppi) for years in a similar fashion. I think upping resolution is the greatest thing ever, because I can fit so much more content on the display without wasting time on scrolling and zooming, and for reading full-screen documents, everything is as crisp, or crisper than printed media.
                However, I've needed eyeglasses since 7

          • by Sir_Sri ( 199544 )

            The biggest challenge with 2560x1600 is that you start pushing your luck on graphics cards that can connect to, and effectively drive that resolution, you usually need two DVI connectors. I'm not sure on 2560x1440 - it's close enough you might not need two.

            I would expect to see a 'retina' display from Apple some time soon. But for the next couple of years that sort of tech is going to be more trouble than it's worth.

            • by Jaime2 ( 824950 )
              My 2560x1440 needs dual DVI. But, my cheapo GeForce 250 card has no problem driving it.
              • by Sir_Sri ( 199544 )

                Try running a decent game at that resolution.

                Being able to run a desktop, and being able to run a game, or decode a video stream at that resolution are not the same problem.

    • Re:4k Monitor (Score:5, Interesting)

      by justforgetme ( 1814588 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @09:04AM (#41199213) Homepage

      How about, instead of constantly trying to push even higher bandwidths, trying to compete on who makes the most long living devices. I'm not talking about TVs being passed on from father to son, but living a couple of times longer than the guarantee would be nice for once.

      • by swb ( 14022 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @11:08AM (#41199815)

        I've only bought 4 TVs brand new since 1990, and they all worked fine when I got rid of 3 of them, including the 22 year old Trinitron. I got rid of them not because they broke, but because they were all functionally obsolete in some way.

        I think what's needed isn't really longer life but coming up with some way to eliminate as much of the intelligence as possible from the display. Set top boxes kind of do this, but they're not really meant to be "display controllers" and don't perform some of the intelligence functions of the TV itself.

        We need a "controller" and a "display" with an interface between them that is high resolution/bandwidth enough to handle at least 3 generations of future TV (ie, 4k, 8k, 16k..).

        The controller should do everything that the built-in controller on a TV does now: switch between inputs, providing scaling, upconvert/downconvert for input sources to match the display itself, ATSC tuning (perhaps with cable card capability), P-I-P and other alternative display modes, provide basic audio functions and some of the "smart TV" functions you see cropping up now everywhere.

        You can do this now with a combination of maybe a tuner with HDMI switching and a DVR, but it's kind of a compromise. Even a $1200 Pioneer receiver won't downconvert HDMI to a component-connected TV (or, more maddeningly, digital audio to analog).

        With a controller designed to actually replace the intelligence and features within a TV, replacing your display would be easier and have no impact on the devices that send you video signals.

        • I suspect that this would not go over well as the upgradeability of this prototelevision would be suspect. The business case for manufacturers neglecting upgrading in favor of upselling is too strong. See, for example, the sad tale of cell phone providers upgrading Android on a regular basis.

    • This actually sounds like something Apple would do with it's 'Retina' displays and it would fit the 27" iMac with Retina.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      640 pixels ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates

    • by Anonymous Coward

      A 4k 27" monitor would rock! Making monitors bigger only goes so far without adding more pixels to effectively use the extra real estate. Many power users use two smaller displays, effectively doubling the resolution, but it comes with the downside of managing two desktops. With todays monitors all using cheap TV "full hd" panels, we have been robbed of truly useful displays. We are seeing high dpi on small screens, and consumers are eating it up. It is way past time to take high dpi to the desktop as

      • Re:4k Monitor (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zero_DgZ ( 1047348 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @10:08AM (#41199483)

        I concur. The killer thing is, you USED to be able to get normal-sized, high density computer displays and not pay a whole hell of a lot more for them versus similar sized LCD's. But then the HDTV thing happened and went mainstream, and now it's next to impossible to find a monitor that's any higher than 1920x1080, and a lot of the smaller 16:9 ones are much worse resolution that that, and lower resolutions than they were 4 or 5 years ago.

        It truly, absolutely, makes no damn sense. Except that manufacturers just want to recycle cheap HDTV panels manufactured in bulk (often with lousy 6 or 7 bit color depth as well) and try to pass them off as "premium" computer monitors.

        • by bLanark ( 123342 )

          I have a Hanns G HZ 281 - 28" 1920x1200 and less than 250 GBP (400 USD). So bright I have to wear sunblock.

      • That is so, so true and the issue has become obvious to me now that my HTC phone has the same HD resolution as my second desk monitor. No other screen looks quite sharp enough since I got the new phone. I don't much like Apple but we are lucky that they keep pushing the envelope and forcing the others to compete with them.
    • How about a 4k or 8k 27" monitor? They can market it as a TV if they want too.

      That sounds like what they're actually doing. There's no tv broadcast available for these things. They're basically selling monitors advertised as televisions. It's a shame I won't be able to afford one for another 5 years after they become mainstream.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Panasonic make a 4k 20" display for consumers. You can get 4k displays around the 27" size but they are marketed as "professional" products and cost fantastic amounts of money.

    • Re:4k Monitor (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mattsson ( 105422 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @11:11AM (#41199851) Journal

      WQUXGA [wikipedia.org] (3840×2400) computer monitors, which is a little higher than the 4K UHD [wikipedia.org] resolution (3840 × 2160), has been around for quite a while.
      For instance the 204 PPI 22 inch IBM monitor T220/T221 [wikipedia.org] from 2001.

      Hopefully there will come high density monitors at a price point reachable by us mortals soon, since there seem to be a trend towards high density monitors in mainstream computing.
      Also, since WQUXGA (barely) fits into the specifications of Displayport, it won't be required to use quad single-link DVI or dual dual-link DVI to support the resolution at reasonable refresh rates any more. =)

      • WQUXGA [wikipedia.org] (3840×2400) computer monitors, which is a little higher than the 4K UHD [wikipedia.org] resolution (3840 × 2160), has been around for quite a while.
        For instance the 204 PPI 22 inch IBM monitor T220/T221 [wikipedia.org] from 2001.

        Being around for quite a while is a strong claim even if we were something more than mere mortals. The T220 hasn't been sold for god knows how long and a search on WQUXGA or the actual resolution only results in forum links with people asking where they can buy such a beast and coming up empty. A few minutes of searching yielded some obscure Viewsonic display which I can't find on sale anywhere either.

        So are there any 3840X2400 displays currently on the market? Regardless of cost?

        • Re:4k Monitor (Score:4, Informative)

          by galanom ( 1021665 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @08:22PM (#41202991)

          Yes, many. Google for "medical displays".
          Eizo has produced a 36.4 for $40-50k, Barco also, etc.

          Still IBM T221 can still be sold on eBay or in higher quantities and better prices on Chinese Taobao (you will need an intermediary agent).
          They cost less than a $1k including complex cabling.
          Viewsonic is just a rebranded IBM.

  • i got tired of paying for cable and don't even care that most of my stuff isn't HD anymore. i plugged the cable coax into my TV and i still get the free channels at barely SD resolution

    am i missing anything?

    • by enjar ( 249223 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @08:50AM (#41199153) Homepage

      You should try plugging the coax into an antenna, and you can get all the free channels (and probably sub-channels of the free stuff) in HD. There are a lot of DIY designs out there using very basic materials (lumber, tinfoil, coat hangers, wire), or you can spend well under $100 for a pretty decent pre-made antenna setup where you literally have to just make the cable connections.

      Check out antennapoint.com to see where your nearest transmitters are and what you can get from your home. You might be pleasantly surprised. Most places you'll get the major networks and a few independents, plus PBS. In my area we get something like 20+ channels of programming in HD using an OTA antenna I built myself. We supplement with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, DVDs from our library, etc.

      Truth be told, a lot of what is on cable nowadays is low-budget "reality" crap. IMHO the only bright spots are on HBO, and I'm not shelling out money for a cable subscription plus HBO on top of that. I can wait for DVDs. The networks and PBS actually still do quite a OK job with scripted stuff and science/educational programming.

      • Not all OTA broadcasts are HD. In my area, only one OTA channel is in HD. The rest are in SD, but have multiple streams on multiple sub-channels.

    • Dude has a point. I recall Jay Leno quipping about "Twisted Sister on CD" when that format was relatively new. He wondered if there was some fine aural nuance he was missing in other formats.

  • With the right person doing it, $20k can 'buy you' a lot of life experiences that you'll never forget. Or it can buy you a 'super high def' television set.

    I always thought I was a technology fan, but as I find myself becoming older, I keep thinking: "This is insane.".

    Who would honestly consider spending $20k on a television?

    • Re:$20k, wow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zuriel ( 1760072 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @08:45AM (#41199125)
      Very, very few people. The point is, it wasn't really that long ago that 1080p screens were up around that price point.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        4k displays have been available for a while and are well under the quoted $20,000. The Toshiba 55ZL2 was the first released (last year) and is about £7,000 in UK, where most stuff is a total rip-off anyway. I saw one in Japan in January for about £4,000.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Do you recall the first plasma/lcd efforts with very fancy brands on them in designer shops?
      They looked wonderful with early dvd's and $20k was fine.
    • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      I remember watching the hotel scene (we then skipped straight ahead to the wood chipper scene - we were 13 at the time) from Fargo on DVD in a rich friend of a friend's media room. In 5.1 surround sound. On a projection screen with a RGB projector about the size of a VW bug that hung from the ceiling. Then we watched the intro to Return of the Jedi on Laserdisc. Also in some form of surround sound. It was glorious. It was 1997.

      People with $350,000+ houses and with children can't really leave the sta

    • by Njovich ( 553857 )

      Individuals? Not many.

      For mid to large size companies that need the resolution for something worthwhile, they may buy a screen.

      • The only purpose I can see a company using this for is to show off how much money they have. E.g., replacing the giant, expensive fountain in the lobby with a giant, expensive TV showing a movie of a fountain.

        For any practical purpose, like digital signage, you could get four 1080p screens and stack them together for a fraction of the cost. Sure, you'll see the bezels between the screens, but they've been getting smaller and smaller. And if you save $10k+, it's worth putting up with some lines.

    • I dunno. How many 3-Series does BMW sell at $45K? Any of those people could have bought a Camry for $25K instead - a difference of $20K (and the BMW will depreciate by more than the TOTAL price of the ridiculous TV in 10 years).

      It's not frugal, but it's not really a vast sum of money.

      • by Lumpy ( 12016 )

        " How many 3-Series does BMW sell at $45K? "

        I can get you one right now for $14K. It's even the convertable M3, the REAL 3 series not the 3 series for poor people like the 325i.

        Granted it's used, but they are everywhere. Hell I saw a BMW 740 for sale on craigslist for under $9K.

        • by swb ( 14022 )

          Used M3s are pretty risk unless you know the seller well or you're personally a really good BMW mechanic.

          A late-model, one-owner car might be in pretty good shape, but in any other circumstance you worry about how badly it's been beaten on. And then there's maintenance and repairs -- BMW stands for "bring money with"

          A M3 is stupid expensive to maintain; a friend with a 2009 ragtop paid something like $1200 for a set of tires after he punctured the sidewall. Not including the flatbed tow trip 250 miles back

          • The funny thing about cars like that is it's pretty rare to see ones 10+ years old as daily drivers. While the value of the car drops, the cost of the repairs and upkeep doesn't, and after about 10-12 years it seems most people decide it's no longer worth it and off to the scrap yard they go. Meanwhile you see 10+ year old Camrys all the time.

        • It's a buyer's market for anything 3 litres and up, because nobody wants to put petrol in them. A couple of years back a friend of mine bought a BMW 735i for £100, and about a week before I'd bought a Citroen XM V6-24 (slightly shorter, slightly slower but still capable of twice the national speed limit, 5mpg better on fuel) for £150.
          What a way to go broke!

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Well, not many as the initial production run is 84 units [highpants-technoid.com] in the first month. Even with it going worldwide you're probably looking at hundreds per month and maybe 10000 units a year. Is there a market for 10000 $20k TVs? Quite probably, the richest man I've been in a meeting with was good for over $100m so that TV is a drop in the bucket for him. Remember with 7 billion people on the planet there's 70 million 1%-ers and 700k 0.01%-ers. And the last ones will probably get half a dozen to decorate their other

      • The "1%" on a global scale is not the same thing as the "1%" within western countries. A lot of westerners that most in western countries would consider (upper) middle class fall into the global "1%" and sure as hell wouldnt't just go out and drop 20k on a tv.
    • From what I have seen $15-20k has been the price of the absolute top-of-the-line money-is-no-object TVs for a couple of decades now. Obviously the technology in these sets has continually improved, and generally speaking most of the technology in these sets eventually go mainstream. Someone must be buying them.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    4k denotes 4096 pixels horizontal resolution. These are "quadHD" screens and should be measured using vertical resolution at 2160 pixels.

    I invite everyone who insists on calling quadHD screens 4k to hand me $4096 and I'll hand them $3840 right back.

  • No need for native 4k right away.

    If someone comes out with a box that can combine 4 HDMI video streams, these new TVs will be used in lots of places as video walls. Sports bars, airports, TV editing suites, surveillance posts, etc. Plus all the people that want to have a mess of channels displayed at once. Console video players, maybe?

    For true information gluttons, 16 video streams on 8k monitors.

    • surveillance posts,

      Finally, a slashdotter who appreciates the panopticon!

    • If someone comes out with a box that can combine 4 HDMI video streams, these new TVs will be used in lots of places as video walls.

      Or you could just have a video wall of four 1080p displays for much less money. Sure, you'll see the lines between the displays, but who is so frustrated by the lines that they'll pay a $10k+ premium to get rid of them? And the lines matter even less if you're planning to divide up the bigger screen into four regions showing different streams.

  • $20K+ and there's no 4K content? Yeah, that makes lots of sense. Still no standard broadcast TV @ 1080p, although Directv has some ppv movies at that standard. I just cannot for the life of me figure out how this makes any sense for the companies involved - let alone the consumer. All we need is an additional consumer movie disc format, ughh. How about getting everything up to 1080p standard before we look too far ahead?
    • by cruff ( 171569 )

      $20K+ and there's no 4K content? Yeah, that makes lots of sense.

      Didn't you learn anything from all of the myriad CSI variants? All you need to do is up-sample and details will magically appear, which you will then display on your extra pixels. I think the term formerly used by the ancients used to be called "spontaneous generation", but they applied that to insects and such.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @09:17AM (#41199255) Journal
      8k and 4K content is ready in the form of most movies -very old and new.
      It just a matter of clean up, encoding and selling.
      In the past HD and dvd was the final output target, but the back end went for 4/8k.
      So there is a lot of great 4/8k material waiting, encoded, cleaned and audio ready.
      The real trick is the new medium to sell it back.
      Region coding, encryption, consumer codec payments, release dates and branding will be the fun part.
      Can parts of the world with optical to the home do anything good in an expected movie watching time with this amount of data?
      Terrestial transmission?
      Or the dream of a new dvd/bluray like buy up craze with some strange cube of "data"?
      No moving parts but expensive hyped adaptive networked realtime encryption.
      A movie just for you for one night and not an hour longer.
      If your internet fails, no movie for you?
    • PlayStation 4, basically this should be the selling point of it. Imagine things like Skyrim in 4K.
      • by Lumpy ( 12016 )

        " Imagine things like Skyrim in 4K."

        Oh boy. Low poly count 3d with bad textures in high res! ooohh...

        I would rather see Skyrim done on a good 3d engine using at least 9000 polygon count models and decent textures on a 720P screen before seeing them phone it in on a 4K screen.

        I'll take a console game machine that is able to use the Unreal4 engine and have at least 4 i7 quad core processors so it can do photo realistic rendering in low res first.

    • All we need is an additional consumer movie disc format, ughh?

      Disk? No silly, just stream the content on your 150 Mb/s broadband connection.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        BluRay is massive bandwidth overkill, most put the sweet spot of bits/pixel at around 0.2 bits. For a 2160p24 movie that would be 40 Mbit/s, for p60 an even 100 Mbit/s. HEVC, the new encoding standard coming next year promises to give same visual quality in half the bits so maybe all the way down to 20-50 Mbit/s. I'm sure Sony will tell you that you need their BluRay XXL of 250GB, but reality is that you'll have BluRay-size rips that look damn much better than the BluRay just like today you have DVD-size ri

        • It depends on the size of your screen. If the screen is big enough that your eye can comprehend resolve each individual pixel, you're going to want accurate video that may just include bits of random grain. If your screen is so small that that you have a hard time justifying purchasing the screen, you're going to want a lot of easy to encode edge enhancement.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Saturday September 01, 2012 @09:34AM (#41199323) Journal

    ....where people can afford to buy the highest tech available anywhere in the world, and that tech is actually manufactured there!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I was thinking that North Korea kind of cancels out South Korea in that respect :-)

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's why they have the DMZ in between them - if they let the two countries touch, they would annihilate each other with a flurry of gamma radiation.

    • ....where people can afford to buy the highest tech available anywhere in the world, and that tech is actually manufactured there!

      Actually Samsung and LG do very little (almost none) of their manufacturing in Korea. It's too expensive. The majority of their mass productions lines are in China and eastern Europe (for the euro market)

      • Actually Samsung and LG do very little (almost none) of their manufacturing in Korea. It's too expensive. The majority of their mass productions lines are in China and eastern Europe (for the euro market)

        Actually, that's just a fancy soundbite but it's not true: the majority of Samsung's production is done in South Korea. They'll open a few more plants in PRC next year, and are about to open a large facility in Texas, but even then, most of the production will be in Korea.

        Maybe you should visit Samsung's production facilities in Korea - pretty breathtaking.

    • I mean those new 22nm processors those aren't built in... oh what's that? They are made in Chandler, Arizona? Oh.

      Please, come off the bullshit of "The US doesn't make anything high tech." In fact, the US makes a shit ton of high tech. As I said, all those nifty Ivy Bridge processors are fabbed in the US. That is just one example.

      Countries often specialize in things and get so good at them that few others compete. For example Japan and camera lenses. There are other countries that make them, but the lion's s

  • It's not "Ultra" HD, they should use "Very" HD for 4K then they can use "Ultra" for 8K. Now they have to start calling the next ones XSUHDTV (eXtra Super Ultra) etc ..

    Unrelated question: what connector would you use to feed them 3D at 50/60 Hz (so really, 100/120 Hz) at the native resolution?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fa2k ( 881632 )

      Unrelated question: what connector would you use to feed them 3D at 50/60 Hz (so really, 100/120 Hz) at the native resolution?

      It's in the article. Sorry I didn't see it:

      Perhaps most worryingly, the 55ZL2 only accepts 4K video input through Toshiba’s proprietary “digital serial port” — and the only device that outputs to a digital serial port is Toshiba’s own professional, very expensive media servers. Hopefully the 84-inch model will accept 4K over HDMI, like the Sony and LG UHDTVs.

  • as there is NO 4K content out there, nor will there be any for a long time.

    We had 720P sets for nearly 5 years before people could buy BluRay players or even tune in a HD channel in their area.

    broadcast, CATV and Satellite will NOT broadcast 4K content.

    • 4k content [youtube.com]

      When HDDVD first came-out, it could play half a dozen titles. Granted,one of the disks was Serenity, but still...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      First there will be video games. Then there will be porn. What more do you need?

    • by Animats ( 122034 )

      as there is NO 4K content out there, nor will there be any for a long time.

      Here's a list of major motion pictures available in 4K [sony.com]. There's no consumer medium for this yet, but theaters with 4K projectors can show this content.

      This presents a new problem for the movie industry. They have no delivery format ready to go, yet YouTube can already handle 4K movies. Netflix can probably upgrade. This kills the movie industry's distribution channel.

  • good regular HD? 4K would only mean more expensive service with even worse overcompression.
  • For TV watching, this is probably overkill; even once 4K source material becomes available, the difference is going to be very hard to notice unless you are sitting extremely close to the TV, or are using a front projector with a giant movie screen. (Even then, 1080p looks nice enough with a front projector to satisfy all but the most demanding cinemaphiles.)

    However, they could be far more useful as PC accessories. Once these drop to more reasonable prices ($1000-$2000) and are available in somewhat smaller

  • by Anonymous Coward

    They should spend more time trying to push oled into consumer level displays rather than expand on the lcd model. lcds in the grand scheme of things are 100% temporary garbage displays. We have the ability to do consumer grade oleds today but for some reason display manufacturers don't care. They would rather sell an inferior technology for 100x more than most people will be willing to pay.

  • It took dozens and dozens of years to FINALLY get HDTV out there and available and affordable also also have content. The idea of breaking all the standards yet again is unnerving.

    I can't see any reason for these UHDTV's at all. On smaller sets, consumers can barely tell the difference between SD and 720P. On larger sets they probably can't even tell the difference between 720P and 1080I/P.

    Really, for television, unless you have a 100+ inch TV and are sitting rather close, more than 1080P is just a uber-

    • calculations based on the resolution of the human eye when corrected to only 20/20 [carltonbale.com] suggest that the base model 4K display should have been on the order of 100 inches or so. Less if you're using it as a display for your computer, Considerably less if you're squinting at it like a radiologist.

      A 100 inch display is 7 feet wide-- too large for many homes.

  • Are these gonna be cinema aspect ratio (e.g. 64x27) or just HDTV aspect ratio (e.g. 16x9) or office computer aspect ratio (e.g. 8x5) or legacy TV aspect ratio (e.g. 4x3)? I want 4096x1728.

    • Movies are shot in all kinds of aspect ratios. Just depends on the kind of lens the director chooses for an anamorphic film, or the kind of matte for a spherical. Common anamoriphic ratios are 1.44:1 IMAX, 1.77:1 ATSC, 1.85:1 3 perf, 2:1 SuperScope (also what Red shoots in), 2.39:1 Panavision, 2.55:1 Cinemascope.

      These are just some of the more common ones you see in theaters, and as I said just the anamorphic ones. There are other movies that are shot on spherical glass and then matted down, like Fight Club

  • People don't need bigger screens, they need smaller houses.

  • It makes the whole "new higher resolution every couple of years" thing easy to ignore. My TV is a 27" hunk of glass made in 1997.

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