Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition
June 3, 2004
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER
HIGH-DEFINITION television may be only just beginning to
catch on, but researchers at the Japanese national
broadcaster NHK are already working on a successor. The
format, called Ultra High Definition Video, or UHDV, has a
resolution 16 times greater than plain-old HDTV, and its
stated goal is to achieve a level of sensory immersion that
approximates actually being there.
At a picture size of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels - that works out
to 32 million pixels - UHDV's resolution trounces even
high-end digital still cameras. HDTV, by comparison, has
about two million pixels, and normal TV about 200,000 (and
only 480 lines of horizontal resolution versus 4,000 with
UHDV).
Add to that UHDV's beefed-up refresh rate of 60 frames per
second (twice that of conventional video), projected onto a
450-inch diagonal screen with more than 20 channels of
audio, and you've got an impressive home theater on your
hands.
Of course, UHDV's current dimensions make it impractical
for most homes. The NHK researchers are investigating how
to squeeze all those pixels onto smaller screens.
But the project aims to do more than just make home
entertainment more realistic. The UHDV standard may someday
find applications in museums, hospitals, shopping malls or
other places where a keener representation of detail might
be desirable.
All of that is a long way off, however, because the
standard is still in the early stages of development. UHDV
"will take many years," said Fumio Okano, a researcher with
the network. But NHK is familiar with long-term projects:
it began developing the HDTV standard in 1964, and the
first high-definition content arrived only in 1982.
The pixel count of UHDV may be impressive, but as anyone
who has tried to watch TV on a sunny beach knows, pixels
are not the whole picture. "Resolution is only one of the
key measurements," said John Lowry of Lowry Digital Images,
a company in Burbank, Calif., that digitizes films at the
highest possible quality for archival purposes. Perhaps
even more important than pixels, he said, is the dynamic
range of an image, which is measured in terms of contrast
ratio. The eye can perceive contrasts between the brightest
white and the darkest black of roughly 100,000 to one,
whereas today's best projectors can only muster levels of
about 4,000 to one.
To achieve truly realistic images, Mr. Lowry said, "the
blacks have to be really black, while still seeing the
glint off a diamond."
So while current projection technology cannot meet the
demands of UHDV, the standard excels in other crucial
areas, for example breadth of view. While both UHDV and
HDTV use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio (standard TV uses
4:3), HDTV offers only a 30-degree field of view
horizontally, whereas UHDV's massive screen size expands
this to about 100 degrees, said Mr. Okano, who said his
research indicates that this angle is where "immersive
sensation" peaks.
In developing UHDV, NHK has also focused on sound. The
standard calls for 22.2 sound: 10 speakers at ear level, 9
above and 3 below, with another 2 for low frequency
effects. It is a setup that is well beyond the level of the
multichannel systems currently in vogue, like the 5.1
surround system.
All those sound channels and all those image pixels add up
to a lot of data. In test, an 18-minute UHDV video gobbled
up 3.5 terabytes of storage (equivalent to about 750
DVD's). The data was transmitted over 16 channels at a
total rate of 24 gigabits per second, thousands of times
faster than a typical D.S.L. connection.
The realism creates other complications. The NHK is
studying the physical and psychological effects of UHDV on
audiences. One concern is a kind of motion sickness, which
researchers attribute to a combination of the wide viewing
angle, the massive image and the on-screen motion.
There are other reasons to shy away from maximum reality,
some of them aesthetic. "There is a very common practice,"
Mr. Lowry said, "of putting a filter on a camera just to
soften the image, to reduce the resolution." Movie stars
are now learning the hard way that high-definition is hard
on human imperfections: blemishes and bad makeup invisible
to conventional TV suddenly jump to the fore when filmed in
high-definition format; how will aging celebrities fare
with UHDV?
But UHDV's developers do not intend the standard
exclusively as a vehicle for Hollywood, or even for sports
or news, where HDTV has flourished. They point to
potentially useful applications in medicine, education, or
art appreciation. The new format has also been designed to
be compatible with other standards - unlike, for example,
IMAX, a 70-millimeter film format that has unsurpassed
quality but a unique infrastructure that limits its
mass-market potential.
Are audiences even warming up to high-definition
television? While sales of HDTV sets are gradually
increasing, the growth remains less than spectacular. With
only 15 million to 18 million HDTV sets currently in the
United States, "we haven't even scraped the tip of the
iceberg yet," said Vamsi Sistla, an analyst with the
research firm Allied Business Intelligence.
Navigating the jungle of standards and terminology remains
confusing, and a complete high-definition set (including
tuner) costs several thousand dollars. Consumers, Mr.
Sistla said, "are not too keen on the nitty-gritty. They're
looking at the price point, at sexy flat screens.''
The NHK is still years from having to worry about how to
sell UHDV to consumers. Perhaps the format will always be
out of reach for most consumers. However, while it took 40
years, HDTV eventually gained a foothold.
"I applaud them," Mr. Lowry said of the NHK. "They are
reaching off into what a lot of people might call
never-never land at the moment. But why not?"
June 3, 2004
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER
HIGH-DEFINITION television may be only just beginning to
catch on, but researchers at the Japanese national
broadcaster NHK are already working on a successor. The
format, called Ultra High Definition Video, or UHDV, has a
resolution 16 times greater than plain-old HDTV, and its
stated goal is to achieve a level of sensory immersion that
approximates actually being there.
At a picture size of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels - that works out
to 32 million pixels - UHDV's resolution trounces even
high-end digital still cameras. HDTV, by comparison, has
about two million pixels, and normal TV about 200,000 (and
only 480 lines of horizontal resolution versus 4,000 with
UHDV).
Add to that UHDV's beefed-up refresh rate of 60 frames per
second (twice that of conventional video), projected onto a
450-inch diagonal screen with more than 20 channels of
audio, and you've got an impressive home theater on your
hands.
Of course, UHDV's current dimensions make it impractical
for most homes. The NHK researchers are investigating how
to squeeze all those pixels onto smaller screens.
But the project aims to do more than just make home
entertainment more realistic. The UHDV standard may someday
find applications in museums, hospitals, shopping malls or
other places where a keener representation of detail might
be desirable.
All of that is a long way off, however, because the
standard is still in the early stages of development. UHDV
"will take many years," said Fumio Okano, a researcher with
the network. But NHK is familiar with long-term projects:
it began developing the HDTV standard in 1964, and the
first high-definition content arrived only in 1982.
The pixel count of UHDV may be impressive, but as anyone
who has tried to watch TV on a sunny beach knows, pixels
are not the whole picture. "Resolution is only one of the
key measurements," said John Lowry of Lowry Digital Images,
a company in Burbank, Calif., that digitizes films at the
highest possible quality for archival purposes. Perhaps
even more important than pixels, he said, is the dynamic
range of an image, which is measured in terms of contrast
ratio. The eye can perceive contrasts between the brightest
white and the darkest black of roughly 100,000 to one,
whereas today's best projectors can only muster levels of
about 4,000 to one.
To achieve truly realistic images, Mr. Lowry said, "the
blacks have to be really black, while still seeing the
glint off a diamond."
So while current projection technology cannot meet the
demands of UHDV, the standard excels in other crucial
areas, for example breadth of view. While both UHDV and
HDTV use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio (standard TV uses
4:3), HDTV offers only a 30-degree field of view
horizontally, whereas UHDV's massive screen size expands
this to about 100 degrees, said Mr. Okano, who said his
research indicates that this angle is where "immersive
sensation" peaks.
In developing UHDV, NHK has also focused on sound. The
standard calls for 22.2 sound: 10 speakers at ear level, 9
above and 3 below, with another 2 for low frequency
effects. It is a setup that is well beyond the level of the
multichannel systems currently in vogue, like the 5.1
surround system.
All those sound channels and all those image pixels add up
to a lot of data. In test, an 18-minute UHDV video gobbled
up 3.5 terabytes of storage (equivalent to about 750
DVD's). The data was transmitted over 16 channels at a
total rate of 24 gigabits per second, thousands of times
faster than a typical D.S.L. connection.
The realism creates other complications. The NHK is
studying the physical and psychological effects of UHDV on
audiences. One concern is a kind of motion sickness, which
researchers attribute to a combination of the wide viewing
angle, the massive image and the on-screen motion.
There are other reasons to shy away from maximum reality,
some of them aesthetic. "There is a very common practice,"
Mr. Lowry said, "of putting a filter on a camera just to
soften the image, to reduce the resolution." Movie stars
are now learning the hard way that high-definition is hard
on human imperfections: blemishes and bad makeup invisible
to conventional TV suddenly jump to the fore when filmed in
high-definition format; how will aging celebrities fare
with UHDV?
But UHDV's developers do not intend the standard
exclusively as a vehicle for Hollywood, or even for sports
or news, where HDTV has flourished. They point to
potentially useful applications in medicine, education, or
art appreciation. The new format has also been designed to
be compatible with other standards - unlike, for example,
IMAX, a 70-millimeter film format that has unsurpassed
quality but a unique infrastructure that limits its
mass-market potential.
Are audiences even warming up to high-definition
television? While sales of HDTV sets are gradually
increasing, the growth remains less than spectacular. With
only 15 million to 18 million HDTV sets currently in the
United States, "we haven't even scraped the tip of the
iceberg yet," said Vamsi Sistla, an analyst with the
research firm Allied Business Intelligence.
Navigating the jungle of standards and terminology remains
confusing, and a complete high-definition set (including
tuner) costs several thousand dollars. Consumers, Mr.
Sistla said, "are not too keen on the nitty-gritty. They're
looking at the price point, at sexy flat screens.''
The NHK is still years from having to worry about how to
sell UHDV to consumers. Perhaps the format will always be
out of reach for most consumers. However, while it took 40
years, HDTV eventually gained a foothold.
"I applaud them," Mr. Lowry said of the NHK. "They are
reaching off into what a lot of people might call
never-never land at the moment. But why not?"
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