What is coming after 1080p?

[IHateMyJob2004]

I was curious of this.

I thought I heard of something called 4X (Quad Full High Definition (QFHD) (3840×2160)) and there are products out there that do a 4000x2400 or so resultion.

But in terms of standards, are there any new standards coming out that will not require line doublers and such?

I foudn this interesting but this is more liek a leap to 2030 as far as I am concerned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television

Interesting read that covers pretty much everything:
http://www.techradar.com/news/television/hdtv/after-1080p-all-you-need-to-know-about-ultra-hd-467085

 

[JAG87]

I would say 2160p in 3D without glasses is the next likely step, in about 10 years or so when we get BluRay's successor.

After that the market will saturate, for the simple reason that there is no need for anything greater because we don't have the space for it. The world is already at 7 billion, cities are becoming more dense and real estate is becoming more expensive. Hardly anybody has the room for bigger displays, so after 2160p which already won't provide any benefit over 1080p unless you sit very close or get a really large screen, we need a step in another direction, i.e. smaller devices that will generate a holographic image, or at least a projected image that doesn't require a background. Otherwise technologies like UHDTV will never pick up, nobody has the space for IMAX sized displays in their homes, only a rich minority.

 

[micrometers]

I don't see the benefit of going above 1080p, unless you have a stadium sized screen.

Can I suggest some sort of head-tracking 3d system? That way you can peer around the screen like it's a window. Otherwise, 3d causes neck pains.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Something has to come beyond 1080p. Computers (forget movies) warrant it.

I guess the issue will become what drives the monitor market. Computers, TV or soemthing new?

 

[Railgun]

4k will be next.

The benefit is sharpness. The best example I can use is the iPhone 3G`s screen to the 4`s screen. The screen doesn`t have to be huge to benefit from an increase in pixel density.

QFHD is more PC based, not film/TV based.

It`s been around for several years now, but needless to say, there`s no real content. But I think it`s closer than anyone will realize. The tech exists, it`s just getting costs down.

After that? Who knows. Depends on how good 4k really looks. What they need to do then to make it worth while is get Blu-Ray, or its successor, a high enough density to be able to hold the data necessary to have that film or what have you uncompressed.

That`s the killer for beautiful video...compression.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

People with upscaling DVD players say the image quality is much better than DVD. One guy I know (software engineer if that matters) says he can't tell the difference between upsacled DVD and Blu Ray.

Based on this, let's make an assumption. There will be a future media called Purple Ray 4X that is 4X compatable. Now, would Blue Ray upsacled be alot better than plain ol' blue ray i nthe same way that upsacled DVD is better than DVD?

With DVD and HD, alot of early adopters bought upscaling DVD players for their TVs. So, the TV came first. So the chicken and the egg issue had a solution. Will the chicken and egg solution for 4X be a similar path? 4X TVs and upscaled blue ray first? Then Purple Ray 4X?

 

[Oyeve]

Fiber directly connected to the optic nerve.

 

[chucky2]

Unless studio's are taking a quality hit when viewing 1080p material on a 1080p display from Blu-ray lacking bit rate or something like that, I think what's going to have to come first is better displays...whether that's 4k or 8k who knows.

Once you've got say 4k TV's being sold in enough density, probably the same year, or 1/2 - 1 year after that happens, you'll have 4k "Purple Ray" or WhateverTF they'll all market it as hit for the media devices.

Personally I'd rather see a move away from optical disk and towards flash memory, but that flash is going to have to get pretty cheap given 50GB Blu-ray and now BDXL drives and media available (120GB on a Blu-ray disk).

I doubt we'd ever need anything more than 8k though...I don't think the human eye, even at close distances, could resolve more than that (that's my SWAG, never reseached that)....

 

[Matt1970]

You can't even see HD unless you wear these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKYKyIObXyM

 

[JackBurton]

Well, since studios can't even get 1080p right, I don't see the point of any higher resolution.

 

[The-Noid]

I have one of these http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL102124 coming before Christmas.

Will be interesting to see how everything looks...

 

[Railgun]

Unless studio's are taking a quality hit when viewing 1080p material on a 1080p display from Blu-ray lacking bit rate or something like that, I think what's going to have to come first is better displays...whether that's 4k or 8k who knows.

Once you've got say 4k TV's being sold in enough density, probably the same year, or 1/2 - 1 year after that happens, you'll have 4k "Purple Ray" or WhateverTF they'll all market it as hit for the media devices.

Personally I'd rather see a move away from optical disk and towards flash memory, but that flash is going to have to get pretty cheap given 50GB Blu-ray and now BDXL drives and media available (120GB on a Blu-ray disk).

I doubt we'd ever need anything more than 8k though...I don't think the human eye, even at close distances, could resolve more than that (that's my SWAG, never reseached that)....

Taking resolution out of the picture for a moment, the studios are, and always have been taking that hit out of the theater. About three to four years ago, we did a lot of research on digital in the movie industry and at the time, a typical 120 min movie, uncompressed, would be about 500GB. I don`t recall the specifics, but for the sake of argument, we`ll call that from Panavision`s format (which is about 3Gbps.) Varying cameras/formats will have varying bitrates, up to about 6Gbps. That, with audio and whatever is added or subtracted from post will be a big ass file. Until that uncompressed film hits our TVs though, I suppose the resolution race is just something for consumers to argue over.

BTW, District 9 and the Social Network were shot in 4K. I never saw either in the theater (or the latter at all) but the Social Network was supposedly shown in 4K as well.

 

[Rubycon]

The next quantum jump in optical media will be x-ray. Literally! The wavelengths of the LDs will get so short they will be in realm of x-radiation. We talking what 300TB or so per layer in a 5cm disc?

I say focus on sound and psychoacoustics. The real high definition sense is your hearing. Your eyes miss so much that your ears don't.

 

[imagoon]

Something has to come beyond 1080p. Computers (forget movies) warrant it.

I guess the issue will become what drives the monitor market. Computers, TV or soemthing new?

Computers have been beyond 1080[p] for years. The recent pile of 1080p LCD monitors is actually a recent phenomena.

There are panels out there that do 2560 x 1600 native. My old FP2001 Dell monitor does "1200p" and it is like 8-10 years old.

 

[micrometers]

Would it even be perceptible?

This is pretty amazing. Take a look

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

 

[chucky2]

Taking resolution out of the picture for a moment, the studios are, and always have been taking that hit out of the theater. About three to four years ago, we did a lot of research on digital in the movie industry and at the time, a typical 120 min movie, uncompressed, would be about 500GB. I don`t recall the specifics, but for the sake of argument, we`ll call that from Panavision`s format (which is about 3Gbps.) Varying cameras/formats will have varying bitrates, up to about 6Gbps. That, with audio and whatever is added or subtracted from post will be a big ass file. Until that uncompressed film hits our TVs though, I suppose the resolution race is just something for consumers to argue over.

BTW, District 9 and the Social Network were shot in 4K. I never saw either in the theater (or the latter at all) but the Social Network was supposedly shown in 4K as well.

That's pretty interesting. So maybe it's not the actual screens that are the limitation, it's been the transport mechanism of the media. A USB 2.0 128GB flash drive is $150 on NewEgg, a USB 3.0 128GB flash drive is $240. Obviously a studio could buy in bulk and cut out the middlemen and get those for cheaper, but, going on your data size, one would need one big @ss custom USB flash drive, or some standard that would string multiple drives together, to support a 500GB movie. And really, if studios and equipment manufacturers were going to go through all that trouble to switch, then they mine as well just go whole hog and design the new system to support something crazy, like 8K 3D 22.whatever 60p...then at least the theaters could 'buy once never again' type of thing.

I wonder how much something like that would cost, vs. a normal theatre setup they'd put in now (forget the actual speakers, just the system to take and decode and present the media)...I'm guessing it's one large amount of $$$...

Chuck

 

[swanysto]

Say they came out with 2160p. I don't have a very good understanding of this sort of stuff, but what kinda bandwidth would it requires to up the pixels like that? Maybe I am thinking about it the wrong way, but could an upgrade like that cause the cable companies to charge us more cause their bandwidth is higher?

 

[chucky2]

I think the problem is, even though they'd deliver 2160p to you, so as to say/market they've got 2160p, they'd compress it even more than say the 1080p they'd assumingly already be providing.

So you've have really compressed 1080p, and then really really compressed 2160p...but since consumers don't know enough to even ask about compression, let alone understand the explanation, the cable providers would be able to run around trumping up their TrueHD Plus 2160p support/feature.

I wonder what uncompressed 720p would look like vs. the overly compressed 720p/1080i most of us get now...?

 

[Anarchist420]

4k will be next.

The benefit is sharpness. The best example I can use is the iPhone 3G`s screen to the 4`s screen. The screen doesn`t have to be huge to benefit from an increase in pixel density.

QFHD is more PC based, not film/TV based.

It`s been around for several years now, but needless to say, there`s no real content. But I think it`s closer than anyone will realize. The tech exists, it`s just getting costs down.

After that? Who knows. Depends on how good 4k really looks. What they need to do then to make it worth while is get Blu-Ray, or its successor, a high enough density to be able to hold the data necessary to have that film or what have you uncompressed.

That`s the killer for beautiful video...compression.

I agree. I hate how the resolution will just keep getting higher, but we'll never see everything lossless. The detail may go up, but the artifacts will remain the same or increase. 1080p lossless is plenty just like 5.1 channel 24bit 48Khz lossless is plenty. The artifacts bug the hell out of me and I'd gladly sacrifice an increase in detail to eliminate the compression artifacts.

Hell, I'd be happy to get 2 channel 16 bit 44.1 KHz lossless in computer games. I mean, we used to have it (and that was when no space was saved through lossless compression) but then they just had to take us a step backwards.

Lossy compression is one of the most overrated and worst tech inventions of all time.

 

[Anarchist420]

4k will be next.

The benefit is sharpness. The best example I can use is the iPhone 3G`s screen to the 4`s screen. The screen doesn`t have to be huge to benefit from an increase in pixel density.

QFHD is more PC based, not film/TV based.

It`s been around for several years now, but needless to say, there`s no real content. But I think it`s closer than anyone will realize. The tech exists, it`s just getting costs down.

After that? Who knows. Depends on how good 4k really looks. What they need to do then to make it worth while is get Blu-Ray, or its successor, a high enough density to be able to hold the data necessary to have that film or what have you uncompressed.

That`s the killer for beautiful video...compression.

I think the problem is, even though they'd deliver 2160p to you, so as to say/market they've got 2160p, they'd compress it even more than say the 1080p they'd assumingly already be providing.

So you've have really compressed 1080p, and then really really compressed 2160p...but since consumers don't know enough to even ask about compression, let alone understand the explanation, the cable providers would be able to run around trumping up their TrueHD Plus 2160p support/feature.

I wonder what uncompressed 720p would look like vs. the overly compressed 720p/1080i most of us get now...?

It would look a lot better to people concerned about artifacts. It wouldn't even have to be uncompressed, it could just be losslessly compressed.

I swear, I don't know how they market lossy shit with a straight face. Most people can tell the difference since I can.

 

[Modelworks]

The next big thing is 3d without glasses. There are billions of dollars being invested in research right now to overcome the hurdles of doing 3d without making the viewer have to wear something or be within a narrow field of view. Higher resolutions don't impress people enough to justify the expense of doubling the current 1080P. The jump from DVD to HD was significant but the more you increase resolution above 1080P the less you get in return for a wow factor, and that wow factor is what pays the bills for all the research money spent. Compare 4096x resolutions to a 42" display that is in 3d at 1080P and ask yourself which you would buy ? Sure eventually 3d and resolution will be enhanced but it takes baby steps of what will bring in the most cash the quickest.

 

[Modelworks]

I wonder what uncompressed 720p would look like vs. the overly compressed 720p/1080i most of us get now...?

It looks great but the file sizes are huge, 66 MBytes per second of video. Roughly 237GB per hour of video.

 

[Insomniator]

Most people just finished upgrading their old tubes to 720p tv's and 1080p if they are lucky. We aren't going to see an higher res become main stream for a long long time... and even then its pretty pointless.

Its just freakin' TV... two and a half men would still be terrible even in 8k resolution. And avatar would be an annoying film no matter how many dimensions its in.

 

[Oyeve]

Most people just finished upgrading their old tubes to 720p tv's and 1080p if they are lucky. We aren't going to see an higher res become main stream for a long long time... and even then its pretty pointless.

Its just freakin' TV... two and a half men would still be terrible even in 8k resolution. And avatar would be an annoying film no matter how many dimensions its in.

True. But at least I laughed when I saw avatar. Wow, what a waste of tech.

I think (hope) the tech and res stay put for a while. I stopped going to movies because its all in 3D which just sucks and doesnt make any movie worth watching, and I refuse to pay even more $$$ when I just want to see a good movie. Im glad the new sherlock holmes movie is in good old 2d. In NYC most theaters only show the 3d or have only 1 or 2 showings of 2d a day. 3d needs to die or come to the point that the same showing is in 2d and 3d, ie, the tech will allow you to wear glasses capable of seeing the movie in 3d but also be able to see it in 2d if you want. That would be cool. I wear normal glasses all the time and watching a movie with a pair of glasses on top of the glasses I already wear just plain sucks.

 

[sdifox]

I'll be happy with 1080p with ZERO compression artefact.