Full HD? That Is So Yesterday! Get Ready For 4K
Chance is that the majority of friends, colleagues and relatives do not make use of the full HD TV technology yet.
DVD sales do still top Blu-Ray sales by a large margin, and it is not likely that this is going to change anytime soon. But Blu-Ray is obviously not the only technology benefiting from full HD resolutions.
TV stations all over the world are slowly (depending on your location very very slowly) beginning to offer HD TV. With all that said, it feels surprising that TV manufacturers are already showcasing the next generation of TVs that offer four times the resolution of full HD displays.
The so called 4K standard offers a resolution of 3840x2160 which equals four times the resolution of the current full HD standard. This would theoretically mean that the 4K TV is capable of displaying four full HD screens at the same time.
Panasonic for example showcased their new 4K TV at the Ceatec convention in Japan last month. Other companies like Sony also showcased upcoming 4K TVs already.
But who needs such a display? There are definitely some uses in the high-end professional market but what about end users?
The main culprit here is that end users won't have anything to watch or play on these devices for a very long time. Especially considering that the full HD standard has not even reached a critical level of distribution.
But then again, who needs 4K if the next standard called Ultra High-Definition Video (with a proposed resolution of 7,680 × 4,320) is already in development?
It makes sense, obviously, to wait until you can make use of the higher resolution before you pay thousands of Dollars for a new cutting edge TV.
What's your opinion on the matter?
Update: It is 2017 now, and 4K is slowly beginning to become adopted more wildly. Services like Netflix offer 4K streaming already for some of their shows, and the new Blu-Ray 4K standard is also already available.
It’s pretty well known that 1080p is wasted on anything less than 50″. That being said you’d need a 70″ TV for 4K. Resolution isn’t the issue, LCD and Plasma are still immature, that’s where the bottle neck is not resolution.
More bullet point marketing hype nothing to see here.
How big a screen would you need to appreciate resolution of this magnitude, viewing at normal distances?? Sounds like tech in search of a market to me.
@Rupert – But if you don’t constantly buy new stuff, then the economy will not grow and people will lose their jobs.
All modern economies are based on always more growth. But like cancer, eventually, too much growth will kill the host!
Isn’t it all in danger of going down the Graphics Card arms race route, where every year new cards are released that are better than last years and so consumer feel the need to update each year.
TVs should last 5-10 years, but it seems that even if your TV is more than a year old it is out of date.
It’s inevitable. Storage gets denser, displays more robust, etc. But HD 4k and greater displays require a much bigger net pipe.
The problem is that the ISP monopolies are restraining net bandwidth to users. Until bandwidth is opened up, there is no practical use for this technology.
My opinion is who the hell needs such a high resolution?
Even today I find it hard to look at such high detail sometimes. HD does no favors to anyone whose skin is not perfect. I have no wish to see every pimple on the guy in every idiot commercial or on the news.
I say: leave something for our imagination…