4K Monitors...

[Marc Wielage]

4K monitors are all well and good, but I'm still concerned with the delivery mechanism to get the data to home users. Even in 2012, the amount of compression used in puny 1080 is pretty horrendous. Read what ZDNet writer George Ou says in his essay Don't Believe the Low-Bit HD Lie. The HD you see on most cable systems or downloads is very highly-compressed HD; Blu-ray can be pretty good at high bitrates.

My fear is that if and when we get 4K on cable and/or broadcast, it's going to be compressed so badly, it'll look like crap. 4K is just a number. Guaranteed, by the time iPhone 6 or 7 comes out, they'll have it in the phone -- and it'll look awful. Still technically 4K, but not good pictures.

 

[Jack Shanahan]

4K monitors are all well and good, but I'm still concerned with the delivery mechanism to get the data to home users. Even in 2012, the amount of compression used in puny 1080 is pretty horrendous. Read what ZDNet write George Ou says in his essay Don't Believe the Low-Bit HD Lie. The HD you see on most cable systems or downloads is very highly-compressed HD; Blu-ray can be pretty good at high bitrates.

My fear is that if and when we get 4K on cable and/or broadcast, it's going to be compressed so badly, it'll look like crap. 4K is just a number. Guaranteed, by the time iPhone 6 or 7 comes out, they'll have it in the phone -- and it'll look awful. Still technically 4K, but not good pictures.

I couldnt agree more with this. My Time Warner Cable "HD" looks like complete and utter &#!%. Whata ripoff too. I bought a season of Modern Family on Amazon and streamed it to my 42" Sony and it looked way better than when the show airs on Cable. Whats the deal with that? Can cable companies just compress as they choose? That seems redonk.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

There's a popular sports talk show host here in Boston (Glenn Ordway, WEEI) who talks about 4K quite frequently on his show. He's always into the latest home theater tech. The good news is that he reaches a lot of people in this market and even beyond, so a few more Glenn Ordways preaching this to the masses and you never know where it could go.

 

[Zeb B]

4K monitors are all well and good, but I'm still concerned with the delivery mechanism to get the data to home users. Even in 2012, the amount of compression used in puny 1080 is pretty horrendous. Read what ZDNet write George Ou says in his essay Don't Believe the Low-Bit HD Lie. The HD you see on most cable systems or downloads is very highly-compressed HD; Blu-ray can be pretty good at high bitrates.

My fear is that if and when we get 4K on cable and/or broadcast, it's going to be compressed so badly, it'll look like crap. 4K is just a number. Guaranteed, by the time iPhone 6 or 7 comes out, they'll have it in the phone -- and it'll look awful. Still technically 4K, but not good pictures.

Yup, like cell phones . . . isn't Sprint promoting 6G now?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Dear Jannard,
First you put film in a lead-lined coffin and welded it shut with your astounding invention and now, apparently, you’re stalking HD, with intent.
You are my hero!

Probably not, I came up with a design concept years ago for electronic film potentially much more sensitive and versitile than a Red sensor, maybe any I have heard off (the ones used in scientific research are pretty good). I relised that I could use it as a sensor as it was reusable. Very sensitive stuff, even photons released from mechahical shutter and frame advance mechanisms might be recordable, would be interesting to see what the signal to noise ratio would turn out like in real life.

Sure most large TV manufacturers are making them but they're not going to work their way into homes on a mass scale for a long time. Consumers were just convinced to upgrade to a 1080 TV (hell, most of my DirecTV channels are still standard def) and there's no way the entire TV industry overhalls all their equip for 4K or the consumer market upgrades their TVs in the near future - my guess is a minimum 10 years before we see 4k really take a hold.

In ten years time they might be standard and old with 8k. If they release now, sales in two years can be good given a lower price, as 1080 is going to be old by then and sales dropped off as a lot of people have bought a good 1080p set already. What they are probably interested in is a low volume of high profit margin top end sets al inside the cheaper 1080p sets. It is not like the 1080i fiasco which was way ahead of the technology to deliver it cheap, and was not advanced enough or cheap enough for years. 720p however, offered a lot better lower cost alternative for years before 1080i took off, with 1440p a worthy replacement for TV and film in a similar timeframe to when 1080 finally took off. Apart from that, 4k is overdue in technology terms, so much so you could do a cheap 4k pocket camera today, 8k would still be a challenge to do cheaply (though maybe less so in display panels). The profit margins for 4k as a top end consumer product could be enormous. I suppose the validation is that as they increase yeild on larger and larger panel sizes, 1080 becomes inadequate. All they need to do is start the ball rolling for a whole new profit realm as the world comes out of recession.

it's funny, 10 years seems to always be the magic number with the guesses. fact of the matter is, it's all moving much much faster than anybody ever expected. it's always cinefiles first, and than years for it to make proper penetration into everyday house hold, but where it really starts is when the cine files jump on board. the home theater is like the mid life crisis or new sports car to a lot of people these days. but i think the most important thing is that 4k acquisition will really start having 4k delivery. starting with the big screen, than the web (which is integrating with television at a rapid pace) and whatever ultra high quality home medium may it be. I know sony is already working on a way to get 4k blu ray going. If redcode can look good at 12-24mbps out of a red ray, why not a more effecient codec at the same bitrate for 4k optical? sky is the limit.

Speaking of Sky, a satellite or cable network is a good avenue for something like redray to start, as a 19mb/s channel is severely limited when it comes to quality 1080i or p60, not too mention cable and future internet services. With these services a set top box is required and can be made to do redray (thinking future imagination technology's general purpose computing gpu, and arm core. Simple, technical. The biggest limitation is in 19mb/s TV channels, they needed to be of the same maximum quality as bluray and h264, at least double for 4k. We are talking about over 70mb/s to get descent quality, with h265 we are still talking about nearly 50mb/s . I maybe in favor of multiple channel aggregation, but I am yet to hear of one TV station that is. So what is needed is something like redray or a superior system like I was designing years ago.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

There's a popular sports talk show host here in Boston (Glenn Ordway, WEEI) who talks about 4K quite frequently on his show. He's always into the latest home theater tech. The good news is that he reaches a lot of people in this market and even beyond, so a few more Glenn Ordways preaching this to the masses and you never know where it could go.

Can you imagine a group of guys watching a 4k or 8k telecast of a football match on a 200 inch+ screen? You could replay that annually for years, and people would still be seeing something they did nit see before on the 200 inch+ screen.

@guys
4g is 100-400mb/s and I forget if they were talking about 1gb/s, definetly enough for 4k, but you try to get a consistent rate like that even without anybody else using the network. But there is potential for broadcast to set top boxes. When you look at this, you could setup a channel over 4g, another use for redray.

 

[Carey Lee Coffey]

Yes, the problem is in the delivery. I used to work for the cable company, and believe me, they are too busy lining CEO pockets to invest money into new technology. The whole cable infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating, and they're playing golf. Don't expect to get a perfect 4K image delivered to your home via cable any time soon. It's all about dollars and sense.

 

[Hudson Tanimoto]

Some years ago I spent $3000 on a standard def 32" widescreen CRT TV and $800 on a DVD player.

And some years after that the same money bought me what was then 'the latest thing' a 32" LCD tv.

4K will come down in price eventually too.

 

[Hector Berrebi]

Yes, the problem is in the delivery. I used to work for the cable company, and believe me, they are too busy lining CEO pockets to invest money into new technology. The whole cable infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating, and they're playing golf. Don't expect to get a perfect 4K image delivered to your home via cable any time soon. It's all about dollars and sense.

agree

most posts in this thread seem to ignore completely the broadcast/cable industry and how it operates... both technically and financially. the infrastructures to change for these dreams of 4k broadcast to really happen are immense. much more than having Matrox Avid and AjA work on it, as one post suggested.
nobody who controls the money valve in large broadcast or cable companies cares that much about resolution or quality... they never even managed (or cared enough) to overcome the 1080p broadcast challenge.

aside from that, you got the post production pipelines and workflows... and even the cameras. every broadcast has their specific cams, sports, news and live studio don't use the same equipment, and they sure don't often use REDs. this is a mammoth step seemingly to big for a slow dinosaur industry like global broadcast TV to make. no matter how many expensive or cheap 4K consumer sets are shown at CES. their real concerns are how fast the internet will forcefully merge into what used to be television.

and aside from that, I wouldn't want 4K to go mainstream that fast... first i want it as a cinema standard, then i want an affordable grading monitor... or several of them, then a few more years of delivering better-than-competition, stunning looking imagery, then maybe i'll start wanting 4k reality shows on my home TV set... maybe..

however, because it is a dream industry, and dreamers make it move forward... its worth mentioning that BBC and NHK are going to broadcast several 2012 Olympic events in UHD (that's 7,680 × 4,320... roughly 8K). NHK has been experimenting with UHD for several years now, and it is supposed to replace HD one day... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/13/2012-london-olympics-super-hi-vision-broadcast-coming-to-se/
look for NAB demos of UHD screens... looks quite impressive
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/19/sharp-shows-off-the-worlds-first-super-hi-vision-lcd-with-16x-m/

watch out 4K... 4320p broadcast might just bite you in the ass

 

[Christoffer Glans]

agree

most posts in this thread seem to ignore completely the broadcast/cable industry and how it operates... both technically and financially. the infrastructures to change for these dreams of 4k broadcast to really happen are immense. much more than having Matrox Avid and AjA work on it, as one post suggested.
nobody who controls the money valve in large broadcast or cable companies cares that much about resolution or quality... they never even managed (or cared enough) to overcome the 1080p broadcast challenge.

aside from that, you got the post production pipelines and workflows... and even the cameras. every broadcast has their specific cams, sports, news and live studio don't use the same equipment, and they sure don't often use REDs. this is a mammoth step seemingly to big for a slow dinosaur industry like global broadcast TV to make. no matter how many expensive or cheap 4K consumer sets are shown at CES. their real concerns are how fast the internet will forcefully merge into what used to be television.

and aside from that, I wouldn't want 4K to go mainstream that fast... first i want it as a cinema standard, then i want an affordable grading monitor... or several of them, then a few more years of delivering better-than-competition, stunning looking imagery, then maybe i'll start wanting 4k reality shows on my home TV set... maybe..

however, because it is a dream industry, and dreamers make it move forward... its worth mentioning that BBC and NHK are going to broadcast several 2012 Olympic events in UHD (that's 7,680 × 4,320... roughly 8K). NHK has been experimenting with UHD for several years now, and it is supposed to replace HD one day... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/13/2012-london-olympics-super-hi-vision-broadcast-coming-to-se/
look for NAB demos of UHD screens... looks quite impressive
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/19/sharp-shows-off-the-worlds-first-super-hi-vision-lcd-with-16x-m/

watch out 4K... 4320p broadcast might just bite you in the ass

At my day job (broadcast), we still work at 720x576 DV 420 25i (Avid). When I speak to them about HD material they think I mean uncompressed 720x576, not higher resolution.
At home I do post production towards filmmakers and myself at full HD uncompressed and in some cases 4K. Having to switch this mindset between my work days and other projects makes me feel the 4K revolution will never happen. And sweden is a country where there are almost no CRT's left anywhere... still even HD is far off.

The revolution will happen when people can buy a film in 4K and/or 3D for their home system at the same price as BluRay and DVD's. How long will it be before that happen?
Finish a film in 4K is good, for a master, for saving it into the future, but it will take a loooong time before 4K and 3D is even remotely close to a broad distribution format.

 

[Petr Dvorak]

He he, maybe 4K content distribution will be here more quickly than anybody wish. Its time for Red Ray. :wink5:

 

[Simon Falkentorp]

There are so many 4K monitors (TVs) being released that we can hardly keep track. I wonder what that means to shows shot on 1080P?

Jim

Are you guys at RED testing 4K panels? Like you are ex. Canon lenses on the DSMC's. Have a pleasant break.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

agree

most posts in this thread seem to ignore completely the broadcast/cable industry and how it operates... both technically and financially. the infrastructures to change for these dreams of 4k broadcast to really happen are immense. much more than having Matrox Avid and AjA work on it, as one post suggested.
nobody who controls the money valve in large broadcast or cable companies cares that much about resolution or quality... they never even managed (or cared enough) to overcome the 1080p broadcast challenge.

aside from that, you got the post production pipelines and workflows... and even the cameras. every broadcast has their specific cams, sports, news and live studio don't use the same equipment, and they sure don't often use REDs. this is a mammoth step seemingly to big for a slow dinosaur industry like global broadcast TV to make. no matter how many expensive or cheap 4K consumer sets are shown at CES. their real concerns are how fast the internet will forcefully merge into what used to be television.

and aside from that, I wouldn't want 4K to go mainstream that fast... first i want it as a cinema standard, then i want an affordable grading monitor... or several of them, then a few more years of delivering better-than-competition, stunning looking imagery, then maybe i'll start wanting 4k reality shows on my home TV set... maybe..

however, because it is a dream industry, and dreamers make it move forward... its worth mentioning that BBC and NHK are going to broadcast several 2012 Olympic events in UHD (that's 7,680 × 4,320... roughly 8K). NHK has been experimenting with UHD for several years now, and it is supposed to replace HD one day... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/13/2012-london-olympics-super-hi-vision-broadcast-coming-to-se/
look for NAB demos of UHD screens... looks quite impressive
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/19/sharp-shows-off-the-worlds-first-super-hi-vision-lcd-with-16x-m/

watch out 4K... 4320p broadcast might just bite you in the ass

Thinking of obstacles rather than solutions often is not a good place to start for people. Let's look at the solutions, we don't need TV stations to support 4k. For starters computer professional tasks can use 4k, not just cinema editing and grading. Secondly, game systems can use 4k. Thirdly, cheap consumer cameras maybe 4k this year. There are three justifications to get a 4k screen without our content even. Next 4k bluray would be another, but we don't need that if we have 4k redray internet downloads or TV stations So, we don't need TV stations or cable to have a viable market, and TV stations, at least, will be kicking and screaming at themselves to upgrade infrastructure to keep up. This cost in delivery terms, rather than production, is likely not going to be as high in real terms as in the 1080i days also, with the exception of redray processing that has some network and storage savings but maybe horrendous in processing costs, but h264 can fill a gap cheaply enough (ambarella again, those cheap camera chipset makers that do broadcast). 4k production is good for longterm use of footage, so they should be progressing that way in content anyway. Maybe no sane local TV station will get into it early, but big networks might like the edge a bit more. They bought truckloads of Sony z1s in the past, maybe they will buy truckloads of Scarlet 1 fixed if Jim can get the design they like.

Dreans are dreams, but you have to make them realities, not just keep dreaming how they are not possible.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Yes, the problem is in the delivery. I used to work for the cable company, and believe me, they are too busy lining CEO pockets to invest money into new technology. The whole cable infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating, and they're playing golf. Don't expect to get a perfect 4K image delivered to your home via cable any time soon. It's all about dollars and sense.

Yeah, really bad stuff, too many channels and just smoothed out quality. I was watching an old re-aired episode of the late show with Craig McPherson the other night, with Angelic Skinbody I think, and he was joking around infering that she was on the show to get noticed, just incase some holywood producer might be watching because he's cable was broken that night. Pretty funny, but from what I have seen around the forums with obviously, drink, mentally or vision impaired people claiming highly compressed footage looks as good as uncompressed on a cinema screen, I can believe that a producer could be blind or drunk enough to watch that cable crap. Anyway, maybe they will adopt redray to get better quality, or just double the amount of channels. ;-) Well somebody could break ranks, and offer cable with Real Vision - Red Ray. If you look at it in computer terms, you can devide up a cable segment's bandwidth by subscribers, and devote the division to what ever channel they are watching. At the end is a modem, and eventually a local server that controls what streams the server gets, then you are just one step away from adding a cheap internet and phone service options. The trick is the rapidly falling price of network infrastructure at the ends of the cables compared to years ago. A cable dream for years. This allows a true competitor to get the fox among the hens, so to speak at a modest price. But I know, they are unlikely to do it.

 

[M Most]

Compression isn't the problem. I know that sounds a bit silly, but compression in and of itself is an enabling technology. What is the problem is when compression isn't handled in a way that maximizes its ability to do its job.

Broadcast television has some unique requirements, but one of the main ones is speed of delivery. Masters are often delivered to broadcast networks the day before or even the day of air. This is the case not only in the US, but in many territories. In the US specifically, however, post production expands to fill the time available. What I mean by this is that if a show "normally" allows about 2 weeks for editorial, followed by about 6 days for post sound, show conform, color correction, and creation of delivery masters, this time is usually expanded prior to the first airing (when there is more time available) and contracted towards the end of a season (when production is much closer to the air date). In either case, there is minimal time available for broadcast prep between creation of the delivery master and the broadcast airing. This, along with pure convenience, has led to the rather universal use of real time encoders for broadcast compression. This is then concatenated with recompression at both the cable and local broadcast level for almost all networks (Fox is a notable exception), also using real time encoding. The fact is that real time encoding has limitations, some rather severe, when compared to the kind of scene by scene, programmed compression used on, say, DVD's and BluRay discs - and also in the RedRay system, if I'm to believe what we've been told. BluRay and broadcast HD don't use vastly different data rates, but the quality on BluRay is almost always noticeably superior, especially in scenes with lots of detail and lots of motion.That's because the compression parameters are controlled and optimized on a scene by scene basis, with the primary criteria being overall file size. Eliminating real time encoding from the process, and replacing it with programmed compression, can and does lead to much higher quality at much smaller file sizes. In the early days of HD broadcast, I held out hope that since broadcast servers (largely based on JPEG2000 compression) were likely to come into wide use, that the industry would turn from creating videotape masters for broadcast delivery towards file based delivery, with enough time allotted to go through a programmed compression step and thus ensure the highest quality. That didn't happen, in part because of the time issues I mentioned, and in part because as with just about anything in the technical world these days, many people and companies want to take the easy way out as long as it's good enough. The fact is that with modern compression techniques and codecs (and I'm not talking only about RedRay here, but I'm not excluding it either) it is quite possible to deliver higher quality as well as higher resolution at data rates equal to or less than those used for real time HD encoding. But that requires a very different mindset on the part of the entire industry, from production through post through broadcast and cable delivery, in order to actually happen. I don't foresee that being the case.

 

[Zeb B]

Compression isn't the problem. I know that sounds a bit silly, but compression in and of itself is an enabling technology. What is the problem is when compression isn't handled in a way that maximizes its ability to do its job.

Broadcast television has some unique requirements, but one of the main ones is speed of delivery. Masters are often delivered to broadcast networks the day before or even the day of air. This is the case not only in the US, but in many territories. In the US specifically, however, post production expands to fill the time available. What I mean by this is that if a show "normally" allows about 2 weeks for editorial, followed by about 6 days for post sound, show conform, color correction, and creation of delivery masters, this time is usually expanded prior to the first airing (when there is more time available) and contracted towards the end of a season (when production is much closer to the air date). In either case, there is minimal time available for broadcast prep between creation of the delivery master and the broadcast airing. This, along with pure convenience, has led to the rather universal use of real time encoders for broadcast compression. This is then concatenated with recompression at both the cable and local broadcast level for almost all networks (Fox is a notable exception), also using real time encoding. The fact is that real time encoding has limitations, some rather severe, when compared to the kind of scene by scene, programmed compression used on, say, DVD's and BluRay discs - and also in the RedRay system, if I'm to believe what we've been told. BluRay and broadcast HD don't use vastly different data rates, but the quality on BluRay is almost always noticeably superior, especially in scenes with lots of detail and lots of motion.That's because the compression parameters are controlled and optimized on a scene by scene basis, with the primary criteria being overall file size. Eliminating real time encoding from the process, and replacing it with programmed compression, can and does lead to much higher quality at much smaller file sizes. In the early days of HD broadcast, I held out hope that since broadcast servers (largely based on JPEG2000 compression) were likely to come into wide use, that the industry would turn from creating videotape masters for broadcast delivery towards file based delivery, with enough time allotted to go through a programmed compression step and thus ensure the highest quality. That didn't happen, in part because of the time issues I mentioned, and in part because as with just about anything in the technical world these days, many people and companies want to take the easy way out as long as it's good enough. The fact is that with modern compression techniques and codecs (and I'm not talking only about RedRay here, but I'm not excluding it either) it is quite possible to deliver higher quality as well as higher resolution at data rates equal to or less than those used for real time HD encoding. But that requires a very different mindset on the part of the entire industry, from production through post through broadcast and cable delivery, in order to actually happen. I don't foresee that being the case.

"5K Acquisition I would like for you to meet Distribution Reality . . . "

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

The fact is that with modern compression techniques and codecs (and I'm not talking only about RedRay here, but I'm not excluding it either) it is quite possible to deliver higher quality as well as higher resolution at data rates equal to or less than those used for real time HD encoding. But that requires a very different mindset on the part of the entire industry, from production through post through broadcast and cable delivery, in order to actually happen. I don't foresee that being the case.

another great post... care to expound on WHY not? other than the obvious... and even better, how would you go about attempting to implant the change of mindset? Do you feel its worth it? I would think that $ arguments would help (not sure how muc RT broadcast encoding gear costs) but I bet its spendy.

You always have a firm grasp of the current mindset... just curious what you and I and everyone else can do to help alter the mindset

 

[Michael Lindsay]

What makes this problem worse is low resolution coupled with electronic sharpening. With a high native resolution you don't need the enhancements and the result is natural. 4k actually makes this "problem" better, rather than worse.

Graeme

I know this is probably tireing for you...... But keep saying this!! This is understood by too few.

 

[Felix K.]

I am still sceptical about the timeframe. In Germany, not your average behind the moon country, HDTV is still in the minority households. Our public TV stations, the main stations you could say, send out a 720/50p signal. A few more private channels have 1080/50i. The datarate is about 12 MBit for each channel. The Broadcast companies try to squeeze as many channels as possible into their bandwidth. Who complains? A few geeks like me who actually see the artifacts.
I mean the problem is not actually new. Sky Germany (or its predecessor Premiere) compressed the audio signal so much that you sometimes could hardly understand a word because the reverb was relatively loud.
I'm sure the broadcast companies will eventually be interested in marketing 4k as THE state-of-the-art-must-have-standard. But I also remember how hasitant they were to actually updating their broadcast equipment to HD. So what timeframe are we talking about? I say 5-7 years.
I see that you are on the safe side producing 4k now. On the other hand I won't dismiss beloved shows that were produced in standard NTSC or PAL or even 1080p.

 

[M Most]

another great post... care to expound on WHY not? other than the obvious... and even better, how would you go about attempting to implant the change of mindset? Do you feel its worth it? I would think that $ arguments would help (not sure how muc RT broadcast encoding gear costs) but I bet its spendy.

You always have a firm grasp of the current mindset... just curious what you and I and everyone else can do to help alter the mindset

The mindset can't really be altered, it is the nature of the industry to do what it does and there are reasons beyond those I've already touched on. QC, for instance. QC of a videotape master can be done pretty quickly, and multiple QC passes are done on just about every show. There is a QC done of the original videotape, a QC done of the delivery master, a network QC done when that delivery master is received, a QC done by international distribution, and a QC done of the file that is put on the broadcast server. All of these take time, so if corrections need to be made, there has to be at least a small block of time in which to make them. Notes can come from any of these QC steps, and all notes have to be addressed by the program creator. Programmed compression would add technical complication and more time to the already existing process. The issue is not cost. It is time. And the only way that can be addressed is by expanding the time available, either by ordering production to happen with more lead time before air, or by restricting the time available for post production. The former won't happen because none of the entities involved - namely, the production company, the studio, the network, and the international distribution entities - want to have their money sitting out too long. They all want to be paid, and that only happens when the show airs. The latter won't happen because post is a bit rushed already, and no producer I know is willing to sacrifice any of that time if they're not staring at an air date. Not to mention the longer lead time required due to things like visual effects, which have become a more significant part of everything we do, to the point where there are very few shows that don't have some amount of visual effects content, even if it's only things like background enhancements and wire removals.

Now, having said all that, there are some shows - primarily cable series - that don't have the severe lead time problem. Some of the shows on the major cable networks - HBO, TNT, and Showtime in particular - are produced and delivered with quite a bit of lead time. As an example, a new season of the Showtime series Shameless begins airing this Sunday. However, the entire season has already been shot, posted, and I believe delivered (with the possible exception of the last episode or two). This is possible in part because the show, as with most cable shows, produces fewer episodes per cycle than broadcast network shows, but also because Showtime and HBO operate under a very different business model than broadcast, one which isn't dependent on advertiser sales and advertiser retention, and one which doesn't need to wait until air to guarantee its revenues. And in the case of TNT, file based deliveries are already the reality, although they're currently using ProRes for this, a situation I believe will ultimately change. But that's a different topic.