GeekwithEnvy

4K

The Industry is Pushing 4K Television Forward

by Leave a Comment

We are just a week into 2013 and the tone of this year’s technology is already being set. New televisions are popping up left and right from manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, LG and Visio and this time they’re bringing with them some new tech. What new tech? Well, 4K to be more precise and sure it’s going to look fantastic but I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit of overkill.

First off what exactly is 4K television? Well, I have addressed this in an earlier post that goes into a little more detail, but to gloss over everything it’s basically twice the resolution of current 1080p television. This new high resolution has been named UHD or Ultra-High Definition. UHD also includes an even higher resolution known as 8K UHD (7680 × 4320).

UHDTV_resolution_chart

Now, all of this looks great and I can’t say I’m against moving technology forward, but my main issue with UHDTV is that it just seems like overkill. There is only so much that we can see with our eyes and unless you’re sitting right in front of your display, like less than 4 ft, I don’t think most people will be able to see the difference. Perhaps I am wrong, I didn’t think that I would be able to tell the difference with Apple’s Retina display, boy was I wrong. Plus these new resolutions will allow for some ridiculously awesome television sizes. I have seen some TV’s pushing the 80″+ range and they still look amazing.

A big issue with UHD is cost. These TV’s are selling for around $25,000 which isn’t exactly appealing to a very large audience. However, this year’s CES press conference from Sony has shown that 4K is becoming more affordable. Content is king, this is true for many things in life and it’s also true for UHDTV. There just isn’t much 4K content out there to enjoy on your new UHDTV set. This is the same problem we ran into when we first got into HDTV, there was little to no content and cable/satellite providers took years to get a decent amount of programming together, not to mention all of the issues they will have trying to get enough bandwidth together to broadcast 4K or even 8K.

Here is the new 65″ 4K TV that Sony unveiled at their CES Press Release.

SonyUHDTV
65″ 4K Ultra HD TV
Model number: XBR-65X900A (Source:Sony)

The industry will catch up and the move to UHDTV is most likely inevitable, so these problems will eventually be overcome. For the average consumer we will just have to wait and watch until something more affordable comes down the line.

Playstation 4 Not Too Far Away

by Leave a Comment

Yes, it’s time to start looking ahead already as the Playstation 3 is starting to feel it’s age. The rumors have already started to roll in and we can discuss of few of them right here.ps3Controller

The latest buzz surrounding the Playstation 4 suggests that the new gaming console will still continue to support optical media and will do so in the form of Blu-Ray.

Even though there will still be a disc drive, rumors suggest that each game you buy will be tied to your Playstation Network account and you will be unable to play them offline. Gamers will also supposedly be able to purchase and download any game directly from the Playstation Network.

A source reports that the new Playstation 4 will also support 4K resolution and will be packing an AMD x64 CPU and AMD Southern Islands GPU in order to provide solid frame rates at the new massively large 4K.  The codename for the PS4 project is “Orbis”.

Sony may also be planning on keeping backwards compatibility out of the new PS4, which is something that isn’t new for Sony fans. Going by the ten year rule, the Playstation 4 should be making it’s debut in about three years.

As we continue to hear more about the PS4 we will keep you in the loop. Just remember most of this is rumor and subject to change over the months to come.

Are You Ready For UHDTV?

by Leave a Comment

Just as we are starting to get really comfortable with HDTV as it is today, we are already looking ahead to the next big step.UHDTV Ultra High Definition Television

HDTV’s and basically any other displays we use are constantly being improved.

Television resolution was locked in at 480i (NTSC) and 576i (PAL) and these resolutions were the standard in television broadcasting for decades. Today, we seem to be in a race to create the most detailed display possible and every few months there is something better being created. We may not think about it very much but this is history being made before our eyes, quite literally.

Most of us are familiar with HDTV by now, which consists of two resolutions, 1080i/p (1920 x 1080) and 720p (1280 x 720). UHDTV or Ultra High Definition Television consists of 4K aka 2160p (4096 x 2160) and 8K aka 4320p (7680 x 4320). 3840 × 2160 is also considered to be UHDTV but for obvious reasons is not considered to be 4K.

Why in the world do we need such high resolutions? Well, as we begin to increase screen size we loose detail and with screen sizes over 80 inches, as is the case with projection systems, we begin to loose some of the fine detail that standard HDTV offers on screen sizes below 80 inches. 4K has primarily been used in projection technology until recently.

Now we are seeing LCD television sets that employ both 4K and 8K technology on screens at 84 and even 145 inch screens. The name of the game here is to reduce the visibility of pixels. Technologies like the Retina display from Apple and other high dpi screens also aim to make pixels disappear but on a much smaller scale. Resolution is relative to screen size, take a 1080p  image and place it on a 145 inch screen, that’s not going to look so great but also imagine 4K on your mobile phone, that’s not very practical so everything here is about making things look as smooth as possible based on screen size.

UHDTV_resolution_chart
Credit (GrandDrake)

Now that we have a basic understanding of what UHDTV actually is, it’s time to consider it’s actual implementation. In order for UHDTV to be broadcast, it would require a significant amount of bandwidth to do so. Many of our current television providers struggle to get us standard HDTV without severely compressing it and removing other data from the video pipeline. This also is true with streaming video online, we have only recently seen HDTV quality streaming actually work well on the internet and this is because we are still technically in the early days of broadband internet. I know what you’re thinking, our broadband has been around for more than a decade now! Yes, it is true that high speed internet has been around and it is relatively quick but we have only seen the tip of the “broadband iceberg”. Broadband will soon be many, many times faster than it is today and that’s when it will be practical to broadcast  or stream UHDTV.

I guess we can relax for now about our recent HDTV purchase as it looks like good old 1080p will be around for quite a while yet but we will start to see things change and it will be just as amazing as was the first HDTV display. It makes you wonder how much better will our displays get before we reach that theoretical “sweet spot”.