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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

HBO pioneer writes off 4K prospects

It's not the size of the screen that matters but the field of view....

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
It's not the size of the screen that matters but the field of view....

Graeme
Click to expand...
Tell me about it. My 42" TV is about 4-5ft away from me, depending on where/how I'm sitting. I'd love to have a 50-55" 4K TV (not that I'll be able to afford one for another couple years).
 
Don't think I agree that you can't really tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.
Might be true on a 14" TV tho.

As the article itself states, there generally is no broadcasting in 1080p.

Thus 4k UHD is an opportunity to achieve resolutions higher than the 1080i maximum we tend to experience now.

Freya
 
If this is true then why would any tv series still be shot on film?

Like say, MADMEN.

because more resolution looks better when it gets shrunk down to those "tv" sizes.

HD is the new SD


david
 
David Battistella said:
If this is true then why would any tv series still be shot on film?

Like say, MADMEN.

because more resolution looks better when it gets shrunk down to those "tv" sizes.
Click to expand...

Or, perhaps because the flexibility and range of film, and the characteristics of the images it creates, are more pleasing to those who choose to shoot it than the alternative. Perhaps because it represents the best archival element we currently have. Perhaps because a show has already been shot on film for a number of years and has worked well on it. Perhaps any number of other reasons. Resolution is only one characteristic of motion images, and in many if not most cases, not the most important one. Only on RedUser is resolution the be-all and end-all.
 
Small tablets already have higher than 1080 HD resolution. It might take a while for people to move to UHD but it will come. An analyst at MIPTV this week was expecting only 50% of TV screens to have been updated to UHD by 2025. We'll see.
 
David Battistella said:
If this is true then why would any tv series still be shot on film? Like say, MADMEN....
Click to expand...
Also Glee, American Horror Story, The New Normal, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, Two and a Half Men, and a handful of others. In the grand scheme of things, shooting on film is not a gigantic budget increase, assuming it's a 1-hour scripted American network TV series with a typical union budget ($2.5M-$5M).

Practically speaking, I don't think shooting on film buys you anything for TV nowadays, and I was a film guy for a long time. I still kinda cringe at the soft 16mm wide shots on Walking Dead, which don't hold up as well as I think they would on HD (let alone 4K). The big problem with shooting on film is the shrinking number of labs that can still process film quickly and turn around the footage fast for dailies.

As far as I'm concerned, we're still not seeing great HD pictures at home on cable or satellite, because of the relative lack of bandwidth, 8-bit 4:2:0 color subsampling, and compression. The thought of seeing ultra-compressed 4K at home makes me cringe.
 
Makes sense to me. The resolution we perceive is always going to be limited by viewing distance and circle of confusion. It doesn't negate the benefits of having your acquisition in a higher resolution than your deliverables - but it absolutely effects how you deliver those images, and no broadcaster is going to allocate additional bandwidth to something it's audiences can't even perceive - that's just common sense.

What would be far more effective, would be an improvement in the quality of broadcast HD - as it stands, I'm completely incapable of discerning any difference between SD and HD versions of the same channels on a 50" Plasma TV. So let's not worry about 4K delivery until we can actually get plain old HD delivery in hand.
 
Mark K. said:
What would be far more effective, would be an improvement in the quality of broadcast HD - as it stands, I'm completely incapable of discerning any difference between SD and HD versions of the same channels on a 50" Plasma TV. So let's not worry about 4K delivery until we can actually get plain old HD delivery in hand.
Click to expand...

In Australia most of the HD channels are just simulcasts of SD stuff anyway. I've even heard that many Australian TV stations are not only heavily SD based but composite video to boot. Theres obviously some kind of serious problem with the way the TV system is working in Aurstralia and yes 4k is definitely not going to fix that. You will just get 4k broadcasts of SD material.

Freya
 
Mark K. said:
Makes sense to me. The resolution we perceive is always going to be limited by viewing distance and circle of confusion. It doesn't negate the benefits of having your acquisition in a higher resolution than your deliverables - but it absolutely effects how you deliver those images, and no broadcaster is going to allocate additional bandwidth to something it's audiences can't even perceive - that's just common sense.

What would be far more effective, would be an improvement in the quality of broadcast HD - as it stands, I'm completely incapable of discerning any difference between SD and HD versions of the same channels on a 50" Plasma TV. So let's not worry about 4K delivery until we can actually get plain old HD delivery in hand.
Click to expand...

Well in the UK it's not that hard to tell the difference between a SD show on an SD channel and the same SD show on the HD channel, the extra bandwidth shows. 4k channels will hopefully sneak bandwidth up a smidge again and help HD out in the same way.


Recently the Disney movie adverts have been annoying me as they are clearly SD badly up-scaled and really jar.

4k channels will hopefully sneak bandwidth up a smidge again and help HD out in the same way.
 
In Australia we call SD being broadcast in HD...... up-rezing ; ).

But in reality we hardly ever get HD, even up-rezed, due to muti-channeling within the broadcast pipe /spectrum. So every time a new channel comes online bandwidth on the other network's channels drops to compensate.

Plus ontop of that............ theres a black box that mathematically/magically decides which of the of the 3 or 4 channels being multi channeled within the pipe get more bandwidth on a microsecond basis. Hence the vision quality which is billed as HD will actually be in parts in HD & other times in HD something else.

Cable here is a real problem billed as HD, every time I've watched it to me looks terrible like everything has been shot on video.....or with a "Doctor Who" filter.

So HBO stating 4K is "over delivery" no surprise there .....................particularly in this county.
 
M Most said:
Only on RedUser is resolution the be-all and end-all.
Click to expand...

LOL! Guess you were not at NAB this year. There was pretty much only one booth not pushing resolution.

And HBO will go 4K. Starting with sports. You will see. And anyone that says consumers will barely notice the difference hasn't looked at 4K content on 4K TVs.
 
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Graeme Nattress said:
It's not the size of the screen that matters but the field of view....

Graeme
Click to expand...

Very true with the FOV, but don't agree on the size thing, Graeme!
To watch any screen at a comfortable distance there's a (pseudo SMPTE) standard which cites a 30 degrees viewing angle. THX standard is 40 degrees (max).

So watching a 80" screen at an angle under 40 degrees, you should be no closer than 9 feet.
The big problem here is if you're watching a 80"x 4k screen, you lose detail over 5 feet.

To watch 4K(4096x2160) @ 40 degrees you need to be sitting 16ft away from a 12ft screen!

This is why 4K doesn't work at home for viewers /broadcasters/tv manufacturers.
Zitter simply says TVs won't be produced en mass over 80" any time soon.

Dave
 
well of course hbo writes it off... I remember once reading the percentage of costs hbo and espn are in your cable bill, its huge. the big fish had hard enough time mitigating to HD. some still aren't really there I think... I mean I run into my local news guys in CT, a supposedly rich state, and they shoot Beta man lol!
 
"HBO pioneer writes off 4K prospects" goes right along with: "Talkies will never catch on", "Color is just a fad", "Digital will never replace film", "RED is a scam" all these bold axioms have proven another: "Adapt or get left behind".
 
I could be wrong, but I doubt I am, I think this HBO guy is the exact same HBO guy who wrote off HD circa '98... Scary to think that was only 15 years ago! And 4K/UHD adoption is happening far faster this time around.
 
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