4K Monitors...

[Wayne Morellini]

I still have concerns about the other picture quality concerns about monitors. Sure, you can technically build a monitor with 4K resolution. But what's the bit-depth? How many consumer monitors out there can really handle 10-bit color? How many can actually reproduce Rec709 color space? How many can display pictures without enhancement issues or motion artifacts? How many have a wide enough contrast range that can handle rapid bright-to-dark transitions without any issues? How many can show white details without blooming out? How many consumer monitors look the same from many different angles in the room? How many can show a perfect gray scale display? How many can even show the exact same pictures, day after day, without changing over time? I think the answer is zero -- at the moment.

All of these problems are hard to solve even with very costly pro HD displays. 4K displays are even tougher. I don't dispute that it can be done; Sony's 4K projectors are very good in most respects, except maybe for cost, size, heat, and physical noise. And I have hope that maybe Red will be able to produce an affordable pro 4K projector of some kind. But I think the consumer electronics industry needs to walk before it can run; it's barely crawling with most of the awful consumer HD monitors I see out there. And I still say 4K delivery to the home is going to be difficult to do in the near future, even assuming just a 20Mbps data rate. And the chances of a new physical media format for consumers is almost impossible, given the near-collapse of video stores and mass-market chain stores in the present economy.

Given a massive change in infrastructure -- say, an ultra-wideband "FiOS-like" service available inexpensively in all parts of the country, without data caps -- sure, it's possible. But first: show me a decent consumer monitor that does all the HD basics right in terms of color, brightness, black detail, white detail, and all the other parameters. Then, do it in 4K.

There has been a lot of advances in recent years in consumer displays, even years ago 8k show model was described like looking through a window (or was that shd). My own old TV was one of the cheapest on the market, and cheapest with professional color calibration. I can see some issues, including occasional banding if I care to take notice, dark levels are near black (though I have not used a calibrated source with own dtv decoder), off angle not so good, but allright for monitoring. I bought it because it was the first affordable LCD screen to be good enough, it rivaled the higher end sets, now even the low end vivo sets at least rival it, and the higher end sets are generations ahead in quality. On bluray it is clearly better than going to the movies, even digital projection probably (except maybe the brightness). Would I buy a 4k version of that standard for editing , probably not, but most consumers would not worry too much. So, even if the 4k sets suffer a bit it is still going to be consumer good,

Have you checked out the new range of good TV's from lowest to highest? Motion is now being conquered (well, many switching 3d lcds had that conquered for a few years, at reduced brightness, but how much brightness do you want for editing). There has been recent advances, and a number of new technologies, including blue phase LCD, where sequential color up to 1000fps might be possible, that is just LCD's. We are looking at cheaper and better. For even a low end consumer I think they could do shd or even uhd cheap and good enough, but we are only talking about high end consumer here, so expect much of what you ask for.

Sorry I am a bit unclear here, I have forgotten what I wanted to write originally.

I can't wait for the day that we will playback 120fps or 96fps of 4K. I think that is the thing to push from now on. We can record it with Epic. As long as peoples feedback is that they can't see the difference between 4K and 2K a lot of things are not right yet. One thing is for sure...4K is the resolution most of us here believed in. But to truely make it a show of rich detail/sharpness we will need much higher framerate to get rid of motionblur. The more motionblur will be a thing of the past, the more we will see the benefits of a hi-res imaging. We need detail in moving objects in my opinion. And I hope I'm not alone in this. 120fps5K shouldn't be only used for overcranking. It should also predominantly be a futureproof acquisition format. I hope projectors and monitors will step it up from now on!!

Years ago I wrote up a recommendation for handling compression of motion, it looks like some people might have read it. Basically matching compression to noticability and eye tracking, the faster it goes, and even turns, the less detail needs to be preserved, with preference given to shape/s before it could be broken down further (plus a few other things I can't remember). This was targeted at improving old compression use, mpeg2/h264. Honestly though, I think 50fps is fine for consumer.

 

[Stuart English]

Stuart, I don't think you're really answering the question. ProRes HQ can be played back on a Mac (or a PC, for that matter) without any additional or proprietary hardware assistance. RedRay, at least as I understand it, is a complex algorithm that although the file size is small, will require hardware assistance (using Red hardware) to play in real time, just like various flavors of JPEG2000 do. So the answer at this point is probably no because the size of the file, and thus the speed of the storage delivering it, is not the relevant criteria. The complexity of the decoding is.

And although others here probably won't mention it, I would add that ProRes HQ actually exists in users' hands and has for a number of years. RedRay has been talked about for almost 2 years now, and is being talked about recently as if it's a shipping product. Except that it isn't. I'm not making any accusations here, but that is a fact. Without an actual shipping product it's a bit difficult to assess what's real, what's not, what the actual parameters are, and what applications it's suited for. Get something out there and we can then ask relevant questions.

OK, let me drop any specific product out of my answer, my point was you can't build a broad scale distribution business on a high bit rate codec.... it is uneconomic - noted that DCI does but that's a special case.

 

[Daniel Kunz]

in my opinion 4K is just one of the pieces towards a "better" version of today.
Until we have unlimited Resolution (1 photon per pixel), unlimited dynamic range (from night vision to Sunlight), unlimited colorspace, unlimited angle of view (2D/3D), variable and unlimited DOF, with NO noise at all, I don't think anything inbetween is "futureproof™"

"There are so many 4K monitors (TVs) being released that we can hardly keep track."
I bet that 95% of those 12 Panels (just guessing) you are talking about are not "Real 4K" but QuadHD.

And for all your worries about a viable distribution for 4K, i think you missed the elephant in the room. Google has been the first and only Company out there who is willing and able to do exactly that and has been for 2 years now. In fact you can already experience it right now if you have a Monitor that is higher than 1080p. check it out: www.youtube.com
Google will probably have options for professional distribution and hosting of Movies, Shorts, MusicVideos and other stuff.
I bet that they will have a YouTube+ Service for those clients/studios who want higher Bitrates and better compression at higher resolution for their customers. I bet that you will be able to stream "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in 4K in a year or two from youtube for a small price of 10$. No other service or device will ever be able to compete with that.
So in fact your worldwide 4K distribution model into every home is already online, up and running. Things are moving faster than you think.

And to all those who are pissing on every TV-Show that has been shot at 1080p or below please stop watching them. You might ruin your eyes. I will turn of my low resolution monitor now and throw it in the garbage. you have convinced me that everything below 4K is pure garbage. :sarcasm:

 

[Ces Peynetti]

And for all your worries about a viable distribution for 4K, i think you missed the elephant in the room. Google has been the first and only Company out there who is willing and able to do exactly that and has been for 2 years now. In fact you can already experience it right now if you have a Monitor that is higher than 1080p. check it out: www.youtube.com
Google will probably have options for professional distribution and hosting of Movies, Shorts, MusicVideos and other stuff.
I bet that they will have a YouTube+ Service for those clients/studios who want higher Bitrates and better compression at higher resolution for their customers. I bet that you will be able to stream "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in 4K in a year or two from youtube for a small price of 10$. No other service or device will ever be able to compete with that.
So in fact your worldwide 4K distribution model into every home is already online, up and running. Things are moving faster than you think.

Slightly relevant.

 

[Daniel Kunz]

Slightly relevant.

exactly, just read that a few minutes ago.

 

[M Most]

OK, let me drop any specific product out of my answer, my point was you can't build a broad scale distribution business on a high bit rate codec.... it is uneconomic - noted that DCI does but that's a special case.

I agree with that. But I would amend it to say you can probably no longer build it on anything that requires proprietary hardware, either. Nor can you likely build it based on single platform distribution, even if that platform is a large screen television monitor. Nor do I think you can count on a large segment of the population (at least in the US) having access to Internet delivery speeds anywhere near those required for these kind of services for a long, long time, not when the vast majority of consumers in this country have, at the most, 6Mb or less service now. Visit some people in places like Kansas and Missouri and you might get a different picture of the current state of broadband deployment than you do in the country's largest cities. From where I sit, it's highly possible that going forward, wireless delivery might very well be faster than wired broadband in a number of places. Unfortunately, wireless delivery leaves an awful lot to be desired in terms of reliability, even in places that don't have mountains, canyons, and large buildings.

 

[M Most]

Having said that, that is yesterday, what is going to happen tomorrow.

You can call it whatever you want. I call it reality.

Doubling channel size or quadrupaling live compression quality results in better images in the existing frame work.

You can't double the channel size in the existing framework. Channel size has been allocated and wireless spectrum is very, very valuable. That's why the government - who controls such things - had a spectrum auction. And it's also why you now have digital and HD broadcast at all. If you think this is all just technology, or that the point of the technology is to advance the state of the art, you're not looking at the world the way it really is. In the words of Paddy Chayefsky in "Network" - written over 35 years ago - the world is a business. Things like spectrum allocation aren't done solely for the public good. They're done for financial reasons, the same reason most wars are fought. So if something is to change on a granular level, there needs to be a financial justification and reward for that change. Better television pictures probably don't qualify unless they bring with them more advertising or other revenue. That's just the way it is.

As for the move to 4k mentioned elsewhere, moves to bigger screens will make hd look SD (sorry 720p50), those moves in screen size are possible in two years with the technology advancements. I have been meaning to make a special 200 inch+ high gain projection screen for the last 8 or so years, cheap, that can use a cheap projector source. It is based on an old design, fhd is so dead. When execs are faced with the fhd quality on their own, and their freind's, screens, aswell as a growing consumer base that might choose online redray delivery for their 4k displays, or a video shop, the desirability to change will become more obvious. Now is the time to establish (figure out) future 4k standards for this years use and in broadcast in 2-4 years time.

The time frame that elapsed between the establishment of the original color television standard (NTSC) and the digital broadcast standard (ATSC) was almost 50 years. If you really think there's going to be a new broadcast standard in 2-4 years, you're not being very realistic. Alternate delivery methods might be another story, but the consumer market has been burned enough times over the last 10-15 years that I think they're going to be very reluctant to buy into new "standards" nearly as quickly as they've done in the past, regardless of the price. I would also point out that most people in this country and worldwide don't live in homes with walls that are available for large theater size projection screens. They live in either homes or apartments where space is at a bit more of a premium. Even a 55 inch flat screen is larger than most people's homes need, since most people are sitting no more than 8 or 10 feet from that screen. When you talk about future trends, you're largely talking about things that are mass-marketable. The only mass market I can see for 100+ inch projection screens are people who live in 3000+ square foot houses, drive Mercedes and BMW's, and have lots of disposable cash even in a depression. That's a pretty limited market.

 

[Bill Anderson]

And because "the world is a business", TV has improved considerably since Paddy Chayefsky said so. And if the technology is not about advancing the state of the art, it is about advancing the state of the business. If there is one thing that business fears, it is better business. I believe that, among other things, greed shall provide a way. ( :

 

[M Most]

And because "the world is a business", TV has improved considerably since Paddy Chayefsky said so. And if the technology is not about advancing the state of the art, it is about advancing the state of the business. If there is one thing that business fears, it is better business. I believe that, among other things, greed shall provide a way. ( :

It often does, but only when people don't expect everything to be free.

 

[Ryan Farnes]

Anyone have links to stuff you can buy, or announcements of these 4K monitors or TVs?

I see posts like this and as a small time content creator, I'm genuinely interested in seeing how realistically close even basic 4K display is available for consumers.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I still have concerns about the other picture quality concerns about monitors. Sure, you can technically build a monitor with 4K resolution. But what's the bit-depth? How many consumer monitors out there can really handle 10-bit color?

One thing to note is that with 4k video you can dither 8 bit far more seamlessly than you can in SD or even HD.

 

[Kalani Prince]

If the show is good, it won't matter.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

I agree with that. But I would amend it to say you can probably no longer build it on anything that requires proprietary hardware, either. Nor can you likely build it based on single platform distribution, even if that platform is a large screen television monitor. Nor do I think you can count on a large segment of the population (at least in the US) having access to Internet delivery speeds anywhere near those required for these kind of services for a long, long time, not when the vast majority of consumers in this country have, at the most, 6Mb or less service now. Visit some people in places like Kansas and Missouri and you might get a different picture of the current state of broadband deployment than you do in the country's largest cities. From where I sit, it's highly possible that going forward, wireless delivery might very well be faster than wired broadband in a number of places. Unfortunately, wireless delivery leaves an awful lot to be desired in terms of reliability, even in places that don't have mountains, canyons, and large buildings.

Why not proprietary hardware? What if it were made available at low enough prices that everyone could jump on board (no pun intended) and profit? I don't know enough about manufacturing, but a scenario kinda' like NVIDIA's with their videocards... People would upgrade to "4k receivers" and presto. PS4's and the new X-Box would just add this Red-Ray board alongside their regular 4k-capable videocard hardware. Not sure how to score this kind of win, but if RED has the know-how, and it seems they've had it for years, it might be a matter of waiting till the component manufacturing conditions are just right and being able to bang this out with enough force to get it rolling before a Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD war breaks out with some giant with a Red Ray competitor. Anyway, that's what I am hoping for, as long as Red Ray can becomes a low-maintenance money making patent on the consumer end so that the rest of RED can continue business as usual, while tons of added funding fills their R&D budgets. 0.02

 

[George Butterfield]

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

It means you can watch four of these shows at once, pretty neat says I.

 

[Daniel Kunz]

I wonder how many users here actually do have something that is higher than 2.5K to view their work on.

 

[Daniel Kunz]

Why not proprietary hardware? PS4's and the new X-Box would just add this Red-Ray board alongside their regular 4k-capable videocard hardware.

Not sure if you know Sony well enough. they don't have a big history of adopting anyone else's proprietary hardware. USB, SD and Compact-Flash are notable exceptions.
I bet that sony has about 100x more engineers perfectly capable of creating a new 4K standard that will someday be incorporated into every Bravia/Playstation/other thing they have. it will probably be called Bravia4K(tm)

and red will never be able to hold up with coming demand for hardware, so they should probably license RedRayCode to other vendors and profit. that's way easier.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Not sure if you know Sony well enough. they don't have a big history of adopting anyone else's proprietary hardware. USB, SD and Compact-Flash are notable exceptions.
I bet that sony has about 100x more engineers perfectly capable of creating a new 4K standard that will someday be incorporated into every Bravia/Playstation/other thing they have. it will probably be called Bravia4K(tm)

and red will never be able to hold up with coming demand for hardware, so they should probably license RedRayCode to other vendors and profit. that's way easier.

Sony is the principle founding member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, which is working on a QFHD (3840x2160) codec spec as we speak. Blu-ray, like USB, SD and Compact Flash are not proprietary but consortium led industry standards. A proprietary standard would be Intel's Thunderbolt, which features in the Sony Vaio Z (the only non-Apple PC with Thunderbolt in 2011).

On a different note, CES 2012 brings 1080p tablets. So 1080p is good enough for 10 inch tablets after all. Oh wait, there's a 2.5K Samsung Galaxy tab coming...

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

There has never been a better time to introduce 4K delivery than this year IMO. Traditional TV broadcasting is a dying model. MMost make some good points - and they are true for "status quo" - this year and next year there will be much disruption as content delivery models shift.

Things change. And change accelerates.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsav...y-finds-traditional-tv-viewing-is-collapsing/

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Why not proprietary hardware? What if it were made available at low enough prices that everyone could jump on board (no pun intended) and profit? I don't know enough about manufacturing, but a scenario kinda' like NVIDIA's with their videocards... People would upgrade to "4k receivers" and presto. PS4's and the new X-Box would just add this Red-Ray board alongside their regular 4k-capable videocard hardware. Not sure how to score this kind of win, but if RED has the know-how, and it seems they've had it for years, it might be a matter of waiting till the component manufacturing conditions are just right and being able to bang this out with enough force to get it rolling before a Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD war breaks out with some giant with a Red Ray competitor. Anyway, that's what I am hoping for, as long as Red Ray can becomes a low-maintenance money making patent on the consumer end so that the rest of RED can continue business as usual, while tons of added funding fills their R&D budgets. 0.02

The mistake Red makes many times, is going custom hardware, by the time you get it finished somebody has upgraded programmable processing hardware. There is plenty of cheap quality short term gains to be had by using programmable processing hardware, like modern GPU's. So in even Arm related GPU's should be able to decode Redray. Encoding might require a cheap PC with descent GPU's. These are only guesstimates. While current xbox and PS might not do it, next generation versions might.

in my opinion 4K is just one of the pieces towards a "better" version of today.
Until we have unlimited Resolution (1 photon per pixel), unlimited dynamic range (from night vision to Sunlight), unlimited colorspace, unlimited angle of view (2D/3D), variable and unlimited DOF, with NO noise at all, I don't think anything inbetween is "futureproof™"

"There are so many 4K monitors (TVs) being released that we can hardly keep track."
I bet that 95% of those 12 Panels (just guessing) you are talking about are not "Real 4K" but QuadHD..

Like the robot on the Craige Macpherson show says Daniel, "that's right, just nod your head, like you're agreeing with him".

And to all those who are pissing on every TV-Show that has been shot at 1080p or below please stop watching them. You might ruin your eyes. I will turn of my low resolution monitor now and throw it in the garbage. you have convinced me that everything below 4K is pure garbage. :sarcasm:

I agree with that. But I would amend it to say you can probably no longer build it on anything that requires proprietary hardware, either. Nor can you likely build it based on single platform distribution, even if that platform is a large screen television monitor. Nor do I think you can count on a large segment of the population (at least in the US) having access to Internet delivery speeds anywhere near those required for these kind of services for a long, long time, not when the vast majority of consumers in this country have, at the most, 6Mb or less service now. Visit some people in places like Kansas and Missouri and you might get a different picture of the current state of broadband deployment than you do in the country's largest cities. From where I sit, it's highly possible that going forward, wireless delivery might very well be faster than wired broadband in a number of places. Unfortunately, wireless delivery leaves an awful lot to be desired in terms of reliability, even in places that don't have mountains, canyons, and large buildings.

What about solar activity affects on the signal consistency? Used to watch my 3g connection just continuosly vary by up to a third the bars.

You can call it whatever you want. I call it reality.

You can't double the channel size in the existing framework. Channel size has been allocated and wireless spectrum is very, very valuable. That's why the government - who controls such things - had a spectrum auction. And it's also why you now have digital and HD broadcast at all. If you think this is all just technology, or that the point of the technology is to advance the state of the art, you're not looking at the world the way it really is. In the words of Paddy Chayefsky in "Network" - written over 35 years ago - the world is a business. Things like spectrum allocation aren't done solely for the public good. They're done for financial reasons, the same reason most wars are fought. So if something is to change on a granular level, there needs to be a financial justification and reward for that change. Better television pictures probably don't qualify unless they bring with them more advertising or other revenue. That's just the way it is.

Well that is just the way it is in a corrupt country with treasonous public servants, who will decry people that go against corruptiin as treasonous. Of course that is not what I meant, it is pretty obviose to most people there would have to be a change of law, new license, auctions or buyouts (financial). The truth is it is a lit cheaper to run less sub channels, and there is more money with less competitors. So, yes, the cable competitor problem aside, I have thought for years that America should get real allow aquistions of channels to reduce over competition and increase quality. You swing your way, I'll swing mine, but I'm not breaking from present reality, just presenting practical options for descent change.

The time frame that elapsed between the establishment of the original color television standard (NTSC) and the digital broadcast standard (ATSC) was almost 50 years. If you really think there's going to be a new broadcast standard in 2-4 years, you're not being very realistic. Alternate delivery methods might be another story, but the consumer market has been burned enough times over the last 10-15 years that I think they're going to be very reluctant to buy into new "standards" nearly as quickly as they've done in the past, regardless of the price. I would also point out that most people in this country and worldwide don't live in homes with walls that are available for large theater size projection screens. They live in either homes or apartments where space is at a bit more of a premium. Even a 55 inch flat screen is larger than most people's homes need, since most people are sitting no more than 8 or 10 feet from that screen. When you talk about future trends, you're largely talking about things that are mass-marketable. The only mass market I can see for 100+ inch projection screens are people who live in 3000+ square foot houses, drive Mercedes and BMW's, and have lots of disposable cash even in a depression. That's a pretty limited market.

I'm not being unrealistic, but what are you being. They did not have HD digital of the required power, or the technical know how 50 tears ago, if they had it cheaply 2 years after, guess how long they would have taken to change. It is a non sensical argument, basically saying the lack of something is proof they would not want it. The cycle is this, create desire, create demand, sell, then repeat. The expensive 3d and before that the expensive premature 1080i thing was a mistake, sure enough, but shd, is a desirable advantage. In this case, shd requirements are years behind the times in practical technology and manufacturing terms for the high consumer market. They will continue to string niave little people along with 1080p as long as there is more profitable demand for it, then maybe try to get them interested in something else again. 4k is just a beach head to another x years of profitability, the reality of supply and demand economics. About the progressive screen size, not everyone will go for it sure, a number of this will go along with it anyway, we might be talking about 40%+ of households choising smaller displays, but for the rest the reality is, make space, like all this old secondhand TV cabinets, that is the psychological reality, and of trends.

Thanks M.

 

[Stuart English]

There has never been a better time to introduce 4K delivery than this year IMO. Traditional TV broadcasting is a dying model. MMost make some good points - and they are true for "status quo" - this year and next year there will be much disruption as content delivery models shift.

Things change. And change accelerates.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsav...y-finds-traditional-tv-viewing-is-collapsing/

Bottom line there is - people want to watch content, and they will watch content across a variety of platforms.

Sounds good to me... content distribution is a big market, even if you restrict your view / analysis to the USA.