Playstation 4 will support 4K gaming

[David Mullen ASC]

Jim Jannard has been right about so many things -- 4K, raw file-based capture and workflow, etc. -- but keep in mind that Red came about, what, six years ago now? I think this struggle to establish 4K and then make it commonly used will have ended up taking a decade, as one would expect actually. Just that few people want to think about how long things take to get a foothold after the release of new technology. Keep in mind that when I was a kid, we were supposed to have moon bases by now.

 

[Bing Bailey]

4k will come because consumer electronics companies need something new to sell. 3D in the home so far has been a bit of a dud. frankly I'd rather they go 10 or 12 bit colour with the displays and for all content to be at least 10bit so we can get rid of this 8bit monkey. 4k 12 bit would be even better for movies. 4k will come because of games , sports and probably a 4k version of blu ray using h265 as a codec. blu ray is the last disc format we'll ever see. but there is enough room on there with a new codec like h265 of red's new rgb codec that they don't have to reinvent the wheel entirely.

most people can't tell the different between 720 and 1080p now. but thats never stopped progress. where 4k will really make a difference is in projectors. I hope red submits their codec to be part of the blu ray 4k standard.

 

[L. Langer]

To me, 32" or 35" 4K monitor is the holy grail, at the moment.

Dell, where you at??

You know that rainy day you've been saving up for? It's not too far off. The first wave of 4K x 2K professional-grade desktop monitors is going to hit at the end of the year (or early next year) and 32-inches is going to be the smallest size according to the Chinese display component makers (they are working overtime to put out 4K panels and display controllers for the high-end large size 4K TVs that ship next year) and it appears that both HP and Dell are currently sourcing new monitor components from Chinese companies for use in next year's high-end workstation bundles with the latest and greatest hardware. 4K x 2K notebook displays are also nearing end of development for workstation-grade laptops.

 

[Tom Lowe]

David, these debates about when 4K resolution will come DO matter. Perception is reality in this business. Why do you think Jim is constantly going on and on, trying to get the idea across to people that they are going to regret shooting 2K on these big-ticket films.. and that regret will set in sooner than most people believe. If you think 4K is "decades" away, maybe you won't think twice about shooting your new James Bond film at 2K. If you had a better understanding of how soon 4K will ACTUALLY arrive in theaters, and in homes, you might rethink that.

 

[Bruce Allen]

David, these debates about when 4K resolution will come DO matter. Perception is reality in this business. Why do you think Jim is constantly going on and on, trying to get the idea across to people that they are going to regret shooting 2K on these big-ticket films.. and that regret will set in sooner than most people believe. If you think 4K is "decades" away, maybe you won't think twice about shooting your new James Bond film at 2K. If you had a better understanding of how soon 4K will ACTUALLY arrive in theaters, and in homes, you might rethink that.

I dunno man... those big-ticket films being shot now are often still having their VFX done at 2K.

If they do a 4K re-release of Spiderman, does anyone think that they're going to go and re-render everything at 4K... re-roto everything at 4K... re-do the hand-painted fixes at 4K?

Or do you think they're just going to use a good re-scaling algorithm to blow up all of the 2K VFX to 4K? In which case there is no reason they couldn't have shot on a lower res camera.

More likely they'll just use it as an excuse for another reboot

Jim makes it sound like it would be really simple to just re-release at 4K but it wouldn't be at all for most movies.

Also, that 8K standard just announced also specified a really wide color gamut - and RED is rather lacking in terms of color to my eyes. For future-proofing, I'd rather have a 2K movie with good color than a 5K movie with bad color!

Film is still the winner IMHO, if you want natural colors and decent enough resolution for future proofing. Let's see if Dragon can change that!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Tom Lowe]

Well you can analyze it fifteen ways until Sunday, but it doesn't stop this simple fact: It's going to really suck for filmmakers to wake up one day and realize their films will never look good on a 4K display.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Well you can analyze it fifteen ways until Sunday, but it doesn't stop this simple fact: It's going to really suck for filmmakers to wake up one day and realize their films will never look good on a 4K display.

Well at least with TimeScapes, you did it right and did everything at 4K all the way through, so you're sitting pretty! You put your money where your mouth is, which was awesome stuff.

Everyone else who did VFX-heavy films at 2K (and that includes RED-shot films or Alexa-shot films or film-shot films...) is going to be in a very similar boat - that's all I'm saying - and they will likely just do nice blowups from 2K and few viewers will notice, sadly

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[M Most]

Well you can analyze it fifteen ways until Sunday, but it doesn't stop this simple fact: It's going to really suck for filmmakers to wake up one day and realize their films will never look good on a 4K display.

Tom, by all appearances you are a "true believer" in the 4K gospel, and while I can respect that opinion, it is hardly a "fact" that material not shot and finished at 4K resolution will "never look good on a 4K display." In point of fact, the only widely deployed 4K displays we have today are 4K theatrical projectors. And I would argue that many things that were either shot, finished, or both at less than 4K seem to look pretty darned good on those projectors. In fact, since nearly every theatrical release is delivered as a 2K DCP, coupled with the fact that most people on this forum can't tell the difference and assume that pictures shot on, say, Epic, are being finished, distributed, and exhibited in 4K resolution provides ample evidence that "less than 4K " material can and does look just fine when exhibited on a 4K display.

Now, if you want to add the word "as" to "good," that would be a logical assumption and would make sense.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I've seen tests of 2K and 4K digital material projected in 4K: the 2K material looks fine in 4K... it's just not quite as sharp as the 4K material. It's not a night and day difference, it's more like the difference between a the sharpest prime lens and an average zoom lens, you can see that the 4K material is more detailed if you look but if you aren't mixing 2K and 4K material in the same sequence, a 2K movie projected in a movie theater with a 4K projector is not going to "suck" or look terrible. I mean, did "Prometheus" look terrible? It was finished and shown in 2K after all. Does "Timescapes" look terrible in 1080P? 2K material is going to look the same tomorrow projected in 4K as it does today projected in 2K, even if future 4K movies are even sharper in comparison. They aren't going to get worse, they can't get better.

4K is already here -- by a decade, I mean to get established and become commonplace, starting with the initial 4K technology that came about by the mid 2000's -- so a decade total is only about five more years away or so.

Besides, talking about legacy movies, do we mostly watch the movies of the 1960's that were shot in large formats rather than the ones that were the best or most entertaining? Do more people today want to rewatch the 35mm "Psycho" or the Ultra Panavision 70 "Fall of the Roman Empire"? Was Hitchcock an idiot for not shooting "Psycho" in 70mm because of this coming 4K revolution?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

BTW, don't confuse my conservative estimates about the roll-out of 4K to the average consumer with my desire to see it happen -- I want 4K to be established as the cinema standard, I have for over a decade. But I try to not confuse my desires or wants from the trends I see in front of me, and what I see is that 4K is coming, if not already here, but you aren't going to see a lot of mainstream movies sold to consumers in 4K for home consumption for some time, not when they haven't even finished creating a 1080P version of many of these movies. What you are going to see is a few 4K things become available for a niche high-end consumer market for a few years first.

I've seen 2.8K Alexa footage bumped up to 4K compared to 35mm scanned to 6K and downrezzed to 4K... and the truth is that Deakins is right, the Alexa footage was slightly more detailed than the 35mm footage, and the dynamic range was about the same. So if 35mm wasn't the wrong choice to shoot movies on for the last several decades, I don't see why it's so wrong that "Skyfall" was shot in uncompressed 2.8K ArriRaw rather than compressed 4K. That's like saying it's a disaster when a movie is shot on a Cooke zoom instead of an Arri Master Prime, or shot with a 1/4 ProMist diffusion instead of clean -- not all movies have to achieve maximum potential sharpness at all times, there has to be some artistic license.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Projection is not the way to view 4K vs 2K. Look at them on a panel -- 4K LCD or OLED. That's where the differences will jump off the screen.

Playing 1080p material on a 4K screen will be similar to playing SD material on a 1080p screen. It just will never look like the native resolution. SD looks terrible on a 1080p LCD when viewed up close, when you are accustomed to watching 1080p. I watch nearly 100% of movies at 1080p on my laptop, with the screen less than 2 feet from my face. Or I watch it 1080p on an iPad. Believe me, SD looks awful compared to 1080p.

Once people get used to playing games and watching movies at 4K on LCDs, 1080p is going to look super soft and bad on those same panels.

It is truly unwise, in my opinion, to make a major film right now in 2K. It is short sighted.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You are a resolution freak but you watch most movies on a laptop? So we should have watched "Samsara" on a laptop rather than go to a theater to see it in 4K on a big screen if we really wanted that real big screen / high resolution experience? And an image on a 100' screen isn't big enough to show resolution? So are the theaters going to install 100' wide OLED screens instead of projectors?

 

[Tom Lowe]

Well I can see the resolution of a 1080p movie better on my 17-inch laptop 16 inches from my face than I can on a 65-inch plasma 10 feet away on my wall. That's why I like it. When 4K LCDs hit the street, I will watch 4K films on a 35-inch monitor 2 feet away.... and I will revel in the resolution glory. :drool5:

Big screens can show 4K resolution, but monitors show it off better, in my experience. Monitors are accurate pixel for pixel.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Monitors are accurate pixel for pixel.

True, though that's not what drives me to see movies, pixel to pixel accuracy :wink5: ... Actually what drives me nuts about monitors, having timed "Smash" on various 1080P devices (DLP projectors, plasma screens, even CRT's) is not so much the differences in visible resolution but the differences in noise and black levels. And it's true that some monitors will show more of the image characteristics and defects more than others. On the other hand, there are limits to how much you can practically take into account every possible viewing situation.

 

[M Most]

Well I can see the resolution of a 1080p movie better on my 17-inch laptop 16 inches from my face than I can on a 65-inch plasma 10 feet away on my wall. That's why I like it. When 4K LCDs hit the street, I will watch 4K films on a 35-inch monitor 2 feet away.... and I will revel in the resolution glory. :drool5:

You may revel in the glory at this point in your life, but if you keep watching long form presentations on screens that are 16 inches from your face, I seriously doubt that you will even be able to discern 4K resolution by the time you're in your 40s.

 

[AndrewThomas]

I hate watching movies on little screens. I have the 120" front projection set up at home, which is where I watch all my movies and narrative TV content.

 

[Felix K.]

Well at least with TimeScapes, you did it right and did everything at 4K all the way through, so you're sitting pretty! You put your money where your mouth is, which was awesome stuff.

Everyone else who did VFX-heavy films at 2K (and that includes RED-shot films or Alexa-shot films or film-shot films...) is going to be in a very similar boat - that's all I'm saying - and they will likely just do nice blowups from 2K and few viewers will notice, sadly

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Why sadly? That's a good thing. Viewers will still be able to cherish old movies without thinking "oh look at the bad quality".
Why do you need constant justification that buying into 4k was a good thing. Are you so insecure?
4k is the future.
Still, HD stuff will hold up just as b/w movies still do...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

RED isn't driving 4k adoption. RED is a 4k anomaly.

The industry is just following the path of least resistance. Making silicon chips smaller is just the natural and easy progression of the manufacturing industry. You see this in every area. Things become common when it's easy to do. 4k is almost "easy". LCD manufacturers were already making 60hz+ displays. Getting to 120hz was easy and they had to do it for refresh rates anyway. So adding the ability to refresh between two frame buffers instead of one 120x was a pretty trivial upgrade... and we got 3D as a result.

I'm not convinced 10bit will happen. It's not as easy. It's following the obvious evolution of the existing manufacturing route. 4k though is pretty simple. If you created a 1080p chip 5-10 years ago moore's law now says the same price chip can handle 32x the data. I think 4k will happen because it's easy not because there's a demand for it. The average consumer just isn't sophisticated enough to notice the difference. I couldn't even tell which displays at the RED party in vegas were 4k. And I'm really picky. And at NAB this year the lest impressive displays were the 4k ones. If I had a 4k display with low contrast and a 1080p display with the contrast jacked up... the consumer is going to pick the high con display.

It's like the SD -> HD transition. It happened widely when it was widely easy to do. Everybody's phone can even handle editing HD footage now. When it's cheap... people will buy it. As great as the iphone was, if datarates had been $150 a month for 28.8kbps speeds like they were only a year or two before the iphone the iphone would have been DOA.

 

[Sergio Perez]

Interesting discussion right now about the perception of 4k in a projection environment. Have to say that in large screens i haven't found 2k projection distracting and have been amazed by going to the movies seeing films projected at this or poorer resolution since I can remember! I'm in a place that is yet to see 4k projected material. I sense that local audiences will experience 4k home entertainment first than 4k cinema... Also another interesting aspect is how the BBC and NHK went for 8k for home entertainment but also projected or displayed the olympics in 8k. Maybe the "real" big screen revolution is not 4k, but 8k? Will 4k be the next 720p, and 8k the next 1080p?

 

[Mark K.]

I've been saying this for a while now, the reason 4K showcase screenings have impressed people so much is because they've mostly been held in smaller theatres (to accommodate the small audiences those types of screenings attract) - the issue is that in a small cinema, you're so much closer to the screen, that you can perceive the added resolution of 4K far easier than you can in a regular full-sized theatre (where most people watch films).

When you sit further away from the screen circle of confusion renders most of the added resolution moot. Our eyes simply aren't capable of resolving the 4x additional resolution.

Which renders the notion of 'future proofing' a moot point - because unless the screen-sizes and viewing distance with which we watch films and television at the moment, change drastically; things that look great at 2K now, are going to look no worse in the future.

4K offers a host of advantages for image capture, but despite what you'd think - showing people extra detail on a cinema screen isn't really one of those advantages.