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After 3D, here comes 4K

Home entertainment: A new television standard called Ultra HD is four times sharper than today’s best HDTVs. But providing content in this new format poses daunting technical challenges. And does anyone really need it anyway?

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During the past 2 years, there is aggressive environment of TV manufacturing and marketing. There are 3 types of broadcast digital television (DTV): standard-definition TV (SDTV), enhanced-definition TV (EDTV), and high-definition TV (HDTV). In 1979, Dr. Tang Ching- Wan from Hong Kong, developed the technique of organic light-emitting diodes TV (OLED, or named organic electroluminescence). With a view to consumer product, Japan’s experience is a good lesson for the recent developing world to strengthen national competition.

As “China Economic Reform” written for lesson of CEIBS’s MBA or EMBA, the author Wu Jing-lian, the chief economic counselor of China’s then prime minister Zhu Rong-ji, talked of an example of whether government has enough ability to play a role of locomotive for national interest. There is a link: (p247 of this book)

http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.tw/epaper/CER-event3.htm (traditional Chinese)

Soon after Japan became an economic power in 1976, while US stagnated due to Arabic Oil Crisis, Japan’s technology of semi-conductor actively overtake American. Meanwhile, Japan developed a model of “industrial maker-officer-academy” as world’s benchmark. With a slogan of “technique way to wealth”, the governing Liberal Democratic Party chose an approach of “administrative tutorial” strategy, mainly engrossing Information Technology. Earlier in 1964, as the biggest TV in Asia, NHK began development of HDTV and, in 1990, first international HDTV drama "The Ginger Tree" co-produced with the BBC. “TV was American creation, but HDTV is an innovation of Japan.”, said then NHK President Shimakin Shigeru. Although after few years American won the technique by digital signal (MPEG-2) rather than previous Japan’s analogy one, I still prefer Japan’s TV rather than the rest of the world’s ones.

The competition of HDTV may be coming to crossroad. On one hand, some makers turn to develop next-generation TV product, OLED, which was put forward by Sony with Panasonic last June. It was a bit thicker than credit card, very lightly, even said of touch-order function.

On other hand, it is 4K, which means double-square number of horizontal pixels, that is the main battle field of TV. Sharp, who owns the best sale of android phone and the biggest LED maker in Japan, continued to develop larger LED in aquos series, like the recent 90-inch (LC-90LE745U, only “1080p”TV). And Sony, the third-largest maker of TV behind LG and Samsung, added a 84-inch one (KD84X9000, the example that Economist said) to Bravia family on sale after LG, launching in CES 2012, debuted the first one, which pitifully had less quality than Sony’s this one for me. The best jocund happens while getting 60 degree of visional angle at a distance of 1.7 m between eyes and the 4K LED.
There is a detailed article of OLED and 4K in CES 2013:


Not only 4k but also the existing item of 3D video expressing are the key of cutting-edge technology that excites every manufacturers. For me, the Japan-preference fan, Sony always lead the world with a view to Home Theater. Samsung was the first advertising integrated amusement, like social network and internet, with device connecting to affiliated facility and LG was said to close to Google for Google TV. Sony made good use of sound technique, like S-master, still leading TV market and nevertheless South Korea and Taiwan’s makers put new kind of display for sale one after another.

As PCWorld rates the recent years’ HDTV of many makers, Samsung, once reaching 90 scores, LG and Sony got 88-89 scores for years while Panasonic lagged behind owing to the costing electricity with turning off but plugged. Yesterday, as PCWorld reported, the period of plasma TV seemed shorter than expected when Panasonic told Reuters that it’s “considering a number of options regarding our TV business” without official decision. Panasonic spent too much money and wasted time doing trash or failed product for several years, although the incumbent President Kazuhiro Tsuga is better than the past predecessors as I asked Toshiba’s CEO Norio Sasaki, who is now Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s chief economic counselor. Panasonic’s huge net losses, for the 2nd year to total around 9.6 billion dollars, shows the horrible battle in TV sales. Uhha, Toshiba’s Regza is not bad though PCWorld didn’t count this series.

The development of vision or sound is essential with the flourishing Blue-ray DVD, which was derived from DVD by both Sony and Toshiba in 2007. Yeah, Sony’s visionary jocular is still second to none and OLED is devised in the world’s first hat-wearing theater (HMZ-T1), which fits Blue-ray DVD. The OLED, or dual panel, promotes the technique of 3D vision, giving real world of video land. It just costs NTD 22900, a nice price in contrast of huge-sized 4K display while leaving awfully-bleeding marketing war for blue sea.


I'm not sure where the standard calculation of what humans can see comes from, but it is clear it undersells our capabilities somewhat, in part because 20/20 is kind of a minimal acceptable standard, but exceeded by most people. I performed the experiment on myself, seeing how far away I'd have to be before I can no longer see a single-pixel period on my monitor. The answer is that for HD, it is 3.2 times the screen width--and at that point it is still absolutely clear. So with a 65" 4K screen, I could sit 8.5 ft away and still distinguish every pixel, and I'd have to be 17 ft away before I could no longer see the change from HD to 4K at all.

While it is true that the improvement is not nearly as important as the transition to HD, everyone I know who has seen Lawrence of Arabia in its original 70mm format considered it a remarkable experience--so there are material gains to be had.


What you fail to explain (and/or grasp) is that 35mm motion picture film has roughly the same resolution as 4K. So just about every Hollywood movie is 4K-ready. You don't need to "shoot" movies in 4K video in order to have home 4K content.

TorturedWriter in reply to Murbar

YES, movies ARE still shot on film. They're edited digitally and they may be distributed digitally, but most movies are still shot on film. If you don't know what you're talking about, you should keep quiet.

nVhHNmeJab in reply to TorturedWriter

Woah, calm down - you're both right and both wrong.

The vast majority of films these days are shot on digital (across all budget ratings) but there has been a recent resurgence in films being shot on film, most obviously The Master (shot on 70mm, which was a bit mental) and Django Unchained - but so the last fast and the Furious film was also shot on film (I've worked with one of the guys that loaded on that film).

For some (like Tarantino) it's a nostalgia thing, but for many it is a budget thing: film is suddenly cheap! Kodak (or what's left of it) and Fuji, although no longer manufacturing, still have huge warehouses of the stuff that they're now trying to get rid of before it goes bad. Plus all the labs, who have invested a lot of capital in the equipment, are trying to squeeze the last few dollars out of it before the whole thing is obsolete - in other words there are deals to be made!

dave of the coonties

I became impressed by Blu-ray when I went to see a vintage movie at the movie theater, which turned out to be that format. On the other hand, at the same theater, a live telecast of a National Theatre show was reduced in resolution after break in transmission, according to theater management. Had they not pointed out the change, I'm not sure that anyone would have much noticed.

So I think we're looking at an entrenched, very good standard versus a nominally better one. Maybe 4K would be useful for computer monitors.

Face Smullens

Personally, I don't think it will catch on. (To be fair, I work in the industry.) Here's why:
- Remember CDs? 16 bits, 44.1kHz. After that came Super Audio CDs (SACD), DVD-Audio, and a few other high-bit, high sample rate formats, and they all fizzled. Why?
1) Because for the vast majority of people listening in the vast majority of environments, the new format offered little to no noticeable improvement for a higher cost. Most of the time you're listening to music in the car or on your iPod walking down the street, etc., even at home with the washing machine running and the kids screaming. These environments have so much background noise, and the equipment being less than optimal, that the improved aural resolution is imperceptible.
2) The majority of people think CD quality is good enough.
3) The cost. How long have people been complaining about the cost of music?
Basically, for all intents and purposes, the quality of the audio recording and playback process has been perfected. Compare ads these days for audio equipment to those from before, say, 1985. Before, the ads and the engineering was about sound quality. Now it's about features. The quality is assumed.
Video has reached that level now as well. TVs and such are focusing more on features than video quality, because no one complains about the video quality any more. Like the article mentioned, your eye cannot resolve smaller pixels than we are making, so the effort is futile unless your image is huge. So in cinemas, it's probably worth it, but certainly not in homes. (Just as in large format sound systems the audio quality is still paramount and improving.)
Plus, just like CDs, I think we're all sick of new formats, and don't want to buy our video collections AGAIN.

Alen Russo

Ultra HD is a joke. Most television programming doesn't even broadcast in 1080p; it's still at 720p. It's ridiculous to talk about 4k resolutions when we haven't even embraced regular HD. And what % of households are going to own 80+ inch televisions? Even if they become more affordable as the technology improves, there's an eventual point where SPACE in the living room will hold back cheap, huge televisions. Organic LED TV sets are a more promising technology than 4k, in my opinion. OLED will actually create better pictures, better contrasts, more vivid colors, deeper blacks, and it will actually be a noticable improvement to televisions both large and small.

William Donelson

To quote Nicholas Negroponte- "If you ask 100 people on the street what is wrong with television, none of them will say 'resolution'"

Personally, I would start with a breakup of the Hollywood Writers' Guild, the single most destructive element of quality writing in the world today.


Larger TV screens (say, 10+ft diagonal) will do it - increase in consumption of 4K definition content.
I see the TV screen almost wall-paper thin; roughly, LCD film that glues straight on the wall.
Since sports are most TV watched programs, there will be some fresh content available - provided ESPN or whoever upgrade to the expensive 4K cameras.

MJUK in reply to newphilo

Larger screens would increase demand, BUT there is a limit to the screen size one can comfortably view at home before it is necessary to scan across the screen to view the image rather than having the whole picture in the field of vision.


Maybe it won't give you a headache on extended viewing like some 3D sets, but it is still a gimmick. What is far more important for a TV than ultra high resolution are the quality of the black levels, the shadow detail, and color accuracy. Besides, there is really no programming available right now that can really make use of this level of enhanced resolution. Maybe diehard gamers will appreciate the extra pixels if they are sitting up very close to the TV, but for most people who sit 5-10 feet away it is overkill.


The major breaktrough which will inspire people to go out and buy new sets would be holographic telecommunications which would allow viewers not only to watch movies in quasi-real enviromenment, but also to stage teleconferences.

But that's still ca 10 years away.


Am I the only one to have the impression that as TV resolutions and the number of TV channels have improved and increased the actual standard of programming has deteriorated and declined? It appears that broadcasters' budgets are being directed to broadcasting technology rather than programme production. This means the viewing public get to watch ever more, ever cheaper programmes in ever greater detail. Check out the endless number of repeats from the 70s, 80s, and 90s in any week's viewing in the UK.


"The 4K film standard has twice the resolution vertically and twice horizontally—ie, 3,996 pixels across the frame and 2,160 down—making it four times sharper all round"

It is correct to state that 4K provides 4 times the resolution of HD (if this is discernible for the average viewer can be doubted). But sharpness is primarily depending on the local contrast at edges. As long as this contrast is not increased, there is no visible difference in sharpness between 4K and HD.


Great article, but a few corrections:

1. 35mm film is equivalent to 4K in resolution, so all movies could be shown in 4K resolution even if they were not shot using 4K cameras. Also the US sports leagues have started testing 4K cameras - the first content when HD launched was movies & sports - it appears it will be again.

2. The H265 codec mentioned in the article has been agreed and will be available in silicon by the end of this year and in consumer products in 2014. H265 is twice as efficient as H264 so given 4K has 4x the data and H265 is twice as efficient, overall you will need 2x the data bandwidth HD needs today. Netflix delivers HD quality in as little as 2Mb/s and IPTV providers deliver HD in as little as 4 to 6Mb/s, so it would appear you could deliver 4K in as little as 10Mb/s - very achievable using todays high speed data connectivity to the home.

3. Satellite service providers were first to deploy HD service and will be the first to deploy 4K - Sky has stated they will launch 4K in fall 2014 and Direct TV has indicated they will follow.

In summary we will see 4K launch in fall 2014 with Movies and Sports on Satellite followed by OTT providers like Netflix and others.

The rollout will probably take as long as HD, but I think your article is overly negative given the corrections above.

Face Smullens in reply to PaulHealy

Well put, Mr. Healy.

Netflix delivers HD quality - I can't agree with that. What is HD quality? Using the popular codecs, you can keep your 1,920 by 1080 pixels and reduce bandwidth by compressing the colors. Try Netflixing a movie, then watch it on even a regular DVD (not blu-ray) and you'll be amazed by the crap that Netflix streams.

blue asgard

On a technical note the BBC managed to stream 8K video at about 360 M bits / sec, so 4K would come in at 90 M bits/sec, not 1 G bits/sec, over 10 x more.

There are new techniques still in the labs which could do much better than this. Bandwidth will prove to be less of an issue than the article makes out.


I'm sorry but I think I've lost the thread here. We live in a world in which far too many people spend far too much time sitting passively in front of big screens watching drivel churned out by Hollywood. The very last thing we need, therefore, is better definition and even larger screens. This whole thing seems to be a reductio ad absurdam scenario. Maybe we should instead focus on designing sofas that send electric shocks every 5 minutes or so and TV screens that shut off after an equivalent period of time so as to encourage people to get off their butts and go for a walk instead? Seems like this would be far more useful.

marcuslaw in reply to CA-Oxonian

Oxonian, your argument is absurd. Your placing blame on Hollywood and big screen HDTVs for obesity? Get real. Just because you feel people are increasingly lazy is no reason to halt advancements in technology. You need to get off your butt and stop writing drivel in comment threads.


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