A Response To Jim Jannard and 1080P

[Felix van Oost]

I find Michael Shilnov's post ... two above very interesting and possibly quite significant.
Has the recording industry not determined that MP3's are "good enough"?
(but then, I suppose there are MP3's and then there are MP3's)

Not really - the industry uses 96KHz 24-bit WAV or similar for audio. The problem is consumers claim they don't hear the difference (unlike video, where you can see it) between a highly compressed MP3 and WAV, so they don't bother with the higher bitrate format. It's also harder to tell the difference with audio - the earphones you can buy for under $100 aren't very good (so it's hard to tell the difference in the first place - much less with the Apple earphones) and few people are willing to pay more than that for earphones or headphones. This is contrary to video where everyone with a modern laptop or desktop already has a screen of sufficient quality to see the difference between YouTube compressed video and high-bitrate 1080p.

The truth is, the vast majority of people in my generation (I'm 16) couldn't care less about audio or video quality, although you guys (and me included) would like to think so. I shoot my video and record my audio in the best formats possible (can't afford a RED at the moment, but I make do with what I have - a Sony HXR-NX5), but it doesn't make much difference to most young people. They torrent films and music at ridiculously low resolution and bitrates (480 x 288 @ 400Kb/s for video anyone?) and all they care about is how many they can fit on a their iPod / laptop and how quickly they can download it. Sure, people are starting to see the difference with 720p on YouTube, but nobody can really be bothered to wait the extra time for it to load, much less 1080p. And they certainly don't give a crap about 4K for home use (they might see a difference in a cinema, but I doubt most will care). You'll tell me that my generation are not the ones with the purchasing power here, but we will be in 5 or so years, and honestly what we do and the tools we use will dictate the future of consumer technology.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

There's another factor that drives this push towards a 4k future and its always overlooked when the debate orbits the technology axis. It is a matter of economic pressure to drive growth in the consumer electronics sector in the face of a staggering downturn in employment. Consumers must be given an overwhelming incentive to spend their shrinking discretionary income in this sector. We also have to recognize that the differentiation between the quality of the audio/ visual experience in the cinema and what is available to consumers in the home has narrowed to a historic degree. This puts enormous pressure on the cineplex chains who are now competing with consumer electronics to provide a unique entertainment experience. Those of you familiar with history will recall that this same battle occurred during the golden age of television in the 1950's and it gave rise to the 2:35 aspect ratio and ultra-large formats like cinerama. This is how the cinema protected itself both as an economic sector and as a singular entertainment experience. What we're seeing now is almost a repeat of the same market forces that shaped the filmmaker's landscape of the early 1960's through the 1980's, before the rise of the home video juggernaut. The cinema needs filmmaker's to aggressively adopt formats that will fuel the transition to higher resolution, higher bandwidth, large venue communal cinema. If you as a filmmaker are okay with staying in the 1080 market space, you are not likely to be able to break out into the large format traditional theatre-going experience. You must produce content that can be exploited by this sector and that means working at a resolution that can be easily adapted to a cinema experience. For the career-oriented filmmaker looking to raise their profile in the eyes of the movie-going public, there are large amounts of marketing dollars that the cinema must put behind the filmmaker for this purpose to insure their own survival as a viable economic sector. You can wait to be discovered by the viral zeitgeist, or you can harness the long-established big media publicity engine that made Scorsese and Spielberg household names. But you won't have access to these marketing resources unless you are providing compelling content for this market.