[MediaPi]

The introduction of the Chromebox and the Intel Celeron 2955U changed the landscape of Kodi (thanks to MattDevo)
it fullfills the vast majority of users need. I hear alot of talk about future proofing and 4k. But realistically how far are we from mainstream adaptation of 4k.

HD took a while before the industry accepted it. If we use HD as an example don't we still have a couple of years left. When will movies be released in 4k? how long will the Intel Celeron 2955U stay at the helm? Opinions thoughts and expertise welcome.

[Lamm]

I think UHD will catch on quicker than most will suspect. I don't see any (big) constraints from manufacturers, end users, distribution or content creators. Everybody is ready for the change (though not everybody will think it's a necessity).

[wrxtasy]

I'm going to repeat what I have previously posted....

Future-proofing HTPCs for the 4K Era: HDMI, HDCP and HEVC

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9152/futur...p-and-hevc

and the Great 4K Marketing Con ....

... With televisions it’s a different story. Many people probably aren’t even making full use of their FHD TV yet. To really profit from 4K you’d need an extremely large screen, or sit extremely close. And 8K is just plain ridiculous. For a 250 cm viewing distance you’d need a 595 x 335 cm screen. There aren’t that many people with a wall that big in their house and even if you had, you’d need a pretty impressive beamer and a very large projection screen (they obviously don’t make TV’s that big).

One of the reasons that 4K televisions sell relatively well might be that in the store people tend to look at it from a very short distance, at which they could easily see that 4K is sharper than FHD. If they would look at it from the same distance as the actual distance they would view it from at home, many would not be able to tell the difference (if all other aspects of the image reproduction were identical for both displays). Manufacturers know this, so from a marketing perspective 4K is very clever.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/visual_acuity.htm

[MediaPi]

so what your saying is wrxtasy that its the limitation of the eye. theres no point in 4k now or ever? get yourself the best 1080p screen and concentrate on HEVC and HDCP.

[noggin]

Unlike 3D, 4K costs less to upgrade for in production terms. BT Sport are launching UHD coverage (aka 4K/50p) in the UK, Netflix and Amazon video are already commissioning in the format, and all of the high end BBC stuff is now being shot and post produced in 4K (Natural History etc.) It's coming to pay-TV.

How quickly it becomes available in the Open Source domain is a different question.

[Lamm]

The resolution component of UHD as it relates to a TV/projector-from-a-couch scenario, is the least interesting one. A 1080 display that can handle UHD signals (and reproduce it correctly) would be preferable as long as the manufacturing cost (and consumer price) is lower than a UHD native display (if PQ is the same) imo.

[doug]

I've got a 42" and a 51" pioneer plasma and, from sitting on the couch and watching a movie, I really can't see the difference between a bluray and a DVD version of a movie. If I pause the movie and get up close I can see a difference; but that isn't how people watch.

I also have a projector and a 100" screen and I can hardly tell the difference between DVD and bluray while watching movies. If I stop the movie and look, I can see differences.

4k? bah!

[noggin]

I've got a 42" and a 51" pioneer plasma and, from sitting on the couch and watching a movie, I really can't see the difference between a bluray and a DVD version of a movie. If I pause the movie and get up close I can see a difference; but that isn't how people watch.

I also have a projector and a 100" screen and I can hardly tell the difference between DVD and bluray while watching movies. If I stop the movie and look, I can see differences.

4k? bah!

Wow - I find it really easy to tell the difference between DVD and Blu-ray on both a 40" and a 49" display fed HDMI. It's less easy to tell 720p from 1080p on the 40" display, easier on the 49". I think it's both a combination of resolution and MPEG2 artefacts when it comes to DVDs vs Blu-rays.

[Namoi]

In my opinion it will happen when the providers will have the infrastructure to broadcast that kind of signal easly.
In my country which in that matter is not the ass hole of the world we all can have access via adsl or fiber to hd...
But when you see the bitrate,... meh.
So it's not just to be able to receive 4k, but at which bitrate.

Just saying this as for becoming mainstream a technology must be first available when you switch your tv on and go live tv.
After we can speak of blu ray 4k.

[noggin]

In my opinion it will happen when the providers will have the infrastructure to broadcast that kind of signal easly.
In my country which in that matter is not the ass hole of the world we all can have access via adsl or fiber to hd...
But when you see the bitrate,... meh.
So it's not just to be able to receive 4k, but at which bitrate.

Just saying this as for becoming mainstream a technology must be first available when you switch your tv on and go live tv.
After we can speak of blu ray 4k.

In the UK it's BT - who run the dominant UK VDSL/Fibre to the cabinet platform who have now got sports rights for major UK sporting events who are launching 4K first, and via IPTV. I'd imagine 20Mbs+ bitrates for HEVC 2160/50p?

[oWarchild]

In sequence of what @wrxtasy said, I've also found the article cnet: Why Ultra HD 4K TVs are still stupid which links to a 4K Calculator where you can check if you'll benefit from upgrading from 1080p to 4K. The article also has the following chart which I think sums the calculations quite nicely:



Generally speaking, for the majority of the cases, I think we can say that unless you're going for a 75" TV or bigger it's not worth buying a 4K TV. Even if you are going for a 75" TV or bigger it will depend on how close you'll sit to it.

[noggin]

Though there are reasons for buying UHD sets other than for watching UHD/4K content.

I bought my 50" UHD set after a lot of comparisons of the same HD and SD material on UHD and Full HD sets, including a lot of fiddling in menus to reduce/remove additional digital processing, I couldn't find an HD set that delivered as clean an HD picture as the UHD sets I was looking at. The UHD set looked better even with HD material.

Yes - there are panel limitations with the UHD sets, the black levels aren't as good or as uniform on some, but other aspects are definitely better. Both my father (who for 30+ years was a broadcast video engineer) and I (who work in the broadcast industry and was a former broadcast R&D engineer) decided to go for a UHD set.

I don't think Netflix UHD is anything to write home about - though may well have a look at BT's UHD stuff if it is cheap enough (we have a high enough bitrate FTTC connection to get it without sweating)

However we also live in a small West London flat, where viewing distances to our 50" set are probably a lot shorter than many people's!

[BORIStheBLADE]

I would actually prefer OLED going mainstream first. OLED makes me want to throw my Plasma out the window..

The big question here is are the people that want a Kodi device that supports 4k going to compress their movie files because they think they're too big?!

[voochi]

So-called 4K cameras use bayer-pattern sensors, demoire filters etc. With the result that the effective resolution they can capture is much less. Red One for example has an effective res of ~2.8K

The majority of multi-million dollar Hollywood movies are still finished in 2K.

The majority of cinema DCP files are 2K. Jurassic World, one of highest grossing movies of all time? What you see on a huge screen in the theatres is 2K (the 2D version of Jurassic World is a 153GB file)

In order to do justice to a 4K display, you need to shoot with a 6K or 8K camera, finish in 4K and then deliver with a very good codec and bitrate. If they are not even finishing the likes of Jurassic World in 4K today, it's naive to think there will suddenly be lots of compelling content in a short time.

[noggin]

So-called 4K cameras use bayer-pattern sensors, demoire filters etc. With the result that the effective resolution they can capture is much less. Red One for example has an effective res of ~2.8K

That's only true of large sensor D-cinema style cameras. Until recently all UHD production used these, even multi camera stuff, which ended up using horrible F55 and F65 Franken-cameras...

However - Sony have now launched the HDC-4300, a 3 x CMOS 2/3" UHD camera that looks and handles very similarly to their successful HDC-1500 and 2500 range of HD lightweight cameras. The 4300 has 3 full resolution 3840x2160 sensors (one each for R, G and B), and like conventional broadcast TV cameras, no requirement for De-Bayer-ing and delivers full UHD resolution. It also doesn't have the same DoF issues which are so beloved by cinematic directors, but a bit of a nightmare for live sport coverage.

I know that BT Sport and their production partners have been trialling this new camera in the UK in advance of their UHD channel launch next month.

Coupled to that, there are now UHD spec lenses for 2/3" cameras that handle like regular HD sport lenses (Fuji have an 80:1 box lens for instance)

In order to do justice to a 4K display, you need to shoot with a 6K or 8K camera, finish in 4K and then deliver with a very good codec and bitrate. If they are not even finishing the likes of Jurassic World in 4K today, it's naive to think there will suddenly be lots of compelling content in a short time.

There is more than Hollywood when it comes to compelling content. AIUI the BBC are shooting their latest natural history production in 4K, and increasingly it is becoming the default for high-end drama for network TV. This drama may be shot on Alexa though, which will only offer marginal improvements over 2K I guess?