HD Guru Reveals 2014 UHDTV and HDTV Pricing!

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Irishman, Mar 4, 2014.

  1. Irishman

    Irishman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    http://hdguru.com/panasonics-2014-uhdtv-and-hdtv-prices-leaked/

    Check it out. Great article, and timely for us who have been chomping at the bit for news.

    What? Not enough? You need more?!?! Okay, here it is.

    http://hdguru.com/lgs-2014-hdtv-prices-leaked/

    Still have a Samsung-shaped hole in your heart? This will fill it.

    http://hdguru.com/samsungs-2014-4kuhdtv-and-high-end-hdtv-prices-leaked/

    http://hdguru.com/samsung-2014-hdtv-prices-leaked/

    Vizio has dropped their E series pricing and sizes, but no news on their Reference series yet.

    http://hdguru.com/vizios-2014-e-series-hdtvs-arrive/

    Enjoy!
     
  2. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    As pointed out in the other threads, useless until content becomes wide spread, and still useless unless you buy a really really large TV to use from less than about 6 feet viewing distance.
     
  3. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    UHDTV will be a hard sell to the general public, most of whom have just upgraded to HDTV in the last decade. Especially considering the limits to the format unless you buy a huge screen and the lack of programming.
     
  4. DarthTom

    DarthTom Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It appears as though Netflix and Comcast have come to an agreement to throttle up Netflix on their internet service, to provide 4K TV. And with the Time Warner, Comcast buy out doesn't that give them the largest market share in the US?

    So the TV's may be more useful than at first we thought.
     
  5. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    According to this, 4K-capable TVs that can decode 4K streams from Netflix should be available this year. It looks like Netflix is really getting ahead of the curve on this.

    Normally, I'd say there's not much of a market for 4K, but Netflix has savvy customers who often have a lot of disposable income, and those customers may well buy 4K TVs they can stream Netflix to. The interview also specifies the maximum data rate of their 4K streams: 15.6Mbps. My pipe at home is 15Mbps, so in theory I could probably watch 4K in near-maximum quality, but then I also have Verizon which has been throttling Netflix traffic lately.

    The main problem with 4K thus far had been giving people a reason to buy in when there's no 4K content. Well, looks like there will very soon be that 4K content, so we'll see what happens.

    I doubt I'll be in the market for such a TV anytime soon.
     
  6. DarthTom

    DarthTom Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Perhaps not for long. At some point though I'd imagine Netflix will ask people to pay more for the higher quality pictures since internet providers like Verizon and Comcast are extorting more money from them.

    Zdnet
     
  7. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    That's infrastructure. You still have to produce 4k content for it. How many shows in production are currently being filmed in 4k?
     
  8. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    4K is becoming the standard for digital cinematography, actually. House of Cards' second season was filmed in 4K and will be streamed that way later this year.

    Sony's also gotten into the game, selling 4K TV shows and movies via an online service tied to a special 4K device. Link.

    Having a service tied to a specific device meant to work with a specific TV strikes me as Apple-level vendor lock-in, but whatever. It's Sony. The point is that all those properties listed above are in 4K right now. There will surely be more soon, too.
     
  9. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Wow, 4K tv's i only got into HDTV in 2007 so i don't think i will be touching them anytime soon, but at some stage in the next two years i may replace my PC monitor with a 4K one, assuming that high a game res becomes a option and i have a graphics card that can run games that high without dropping down to 1 fps. lol
     
  10. Irishman

    Irishman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    8K TVs are following on the heels of 4K. Japanese broadcaster NHK has already invested and is using 8K cameras!

    Of the various names for 4K, the label that makes the most sense to my brain is 2160p. But what does it mean? Well, ultimately, it’s about once again upping the ante in terms of visual clarity and how much like the real world our video content appears. Some of you might be asking “didn’t we just do this with HD a few years back?”, and you’re right. We did. And in a sense, we’re not done, because 1080p is not the best we can do with displays, so we should really expect to see more of this display resolution evolution. So, in the most basic form, what do we get from 4K? Current FullHD is 1920x1080 pixels, for a total of 2,073,600 pixels (think of it like a 2 megapixel camera image). UltraHD provides double that in both directions for 3840 x 2160, for 8,294,400 (making an 8 megapixel image)! This means an image that’s 4x more detailed than 1080p. Another benefit is overall more accurate, lifelike color. How does that work? Well, the current format standard for HD Television is called Rec. 709. It gave us the widescreen 16:9 format, several HD resolutions (both interlaced and progressive) and framerates, and 8-bit color depth. Here’s a good demo to see the improvement in color depth. If you compare a DVD movie to the same title on Blu-ray, you’ll notice the DVD color looks flatter and more primary than the Blu-ray, which has more lifelike color. Rec. 2020 – the newest standard, gives us 2 new resolutions – 3840x2160 and 7680x4320 (getting rid of interlaced resolutions altogether), 9 framerates, plus 10-bit or 12-bit color. So, what does all this HD geekery mean for the viewer? Well, it means that both 4K TVs now and 8K TVs later can display much more accurate colors than your 1080p TVs can display with the best blu-ray content on the market!

    Now, of course, human vision is capable of seeing more colors than either of these standards, but UHD is getting so much closer to that limit, that it’s really starting to show just where Rec. 709 – the current standard - is deficient.

    If you're deciding whether or not to pop for one of the bright, shiny new UHDTVs. Be very careful: if the reason you want it is for the higher resolution and detail, studies are showing that you’re only going to see that on displays of larger than 75”! Now, Sony offers 4K sets at 55”and 65” sizes right now, but if you’re sitting 6-7 feet away from your 50” HDTV now to see its detail, you’ll need to pull up chair another foot or so! At this early point in 4K adoption, the best and most cost-effective way to work it into your home is a front-projection and screen system. Why? It gives you the best bang for the buck for screen size, and it removes any question about whether or not it’s visible. To put it in perspective, Samsung’s 85” UN85S9AFXZA model runs $40,000! This makes Sony’s and Toshiba’s 84” UHD sets look like deals at $25,000 and $17,000 respectively.

    Now, if the reason you want 4K is for the better color representation, you would be better advised to wait. As of now, the HDMI 1.4 standard cannot pass through the improved color information to your TV. This means, no HD cable or satellite boxes, no current blu-ray players, no current set-top boxes or HTPCs can provide that better color information to the current crop of UHDTVs.

    If you do sit close, or if you’re wanting it for streaming video (There are a few places online you can find UHD video content) go ahead and pick up one now. Seiki – a Chinese value TV brand – is offering a 4K 50” TV for $1400! The guys over at HDNation have reviewed one, and despite its limitations, it’s a decent enough set, with the qualification that you’ve got to be feeding a native 4K signal (its upscaling of full HD content could best be called poor or nonexistent). If you want 4K for the highest-resolution PC gaming and you're into Call of Duty-type games, wait. Right now, UHDTVs like the above-mentioned Seiki cannot play those games at refresh rates higher than 30Hz. Translation - you'll get owned in online games with your friends. HDMI 2.0 will offer support for 60Hz refreshes, when it comes.
     
  11. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    Some of the info in your post isn't quite accurate. 8-bit color, in context, means 8 bits per channel, which translates to over 16 million colors. The human eye can only distinguish about 10 million. The real problem with Rec. 709 in terms of color fidelity is that it has a relatively small color space. It's particularly deficient in blue-green colors. It's rather wasteful because although it has over 16 million colors that can be defined within the space, the human eye cannot distinguish them all.

    Rec. 2020 has a much larger color space (compare 709 to 2020), and 10 bits per channel permits over a billion colors while allows almost 69 billion. The vast majority of these colors are redundant to human vision, though.

    I don't think there is necessarily an issue with having more colors available. Obviously, it's nice to have the option. But the problem with sRGB (what Rec. 709 and pretty much everything else to date uses) was never the number of bits per channel but the small color space.

    HDMI 1.4 actually supports broader color gamuts than sRGB, but not the full gamut of Rec. 2020, unfortunately.
     
  12. Stoo

    Stoo Commodore Commodore

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    So hang on, this is a resolution beyond what even Blu-Ray can store, right? Is there some even-bluer-ray on the way? Or are all the upgrades in resolution coming via streaming, from now on?
     
  13. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    Blu-ray can do 4K just fine. Blu-ray supports multiple video formats at various resolutions, including ones above 1080p. But the future is going to be streaming because it's infeasible to store anything bigger than 4K on a Blu-ray disc, and it doesn't look like anyone is investing in optical disc technology to supersede Blu-ray. After how costly the last format war was, can't say I blame anyone for not wanting another. On top of that, the data involved has simply exploded in size to the point where we just can't keep up with optical discs anymore. Blu-ray's not even been on the market for 8 years and it's already nearing the end of its useful life due to advancing technology. I just don't think it's economical anymore, and for most people broadband Internet service is now fast enough to handle some pretty high resolutions. As I mentioned above, Netflix will bring 4K streaming to its service soon, and others are sure to follow suit.
     
  14. Stoo

    Stoo Commodore Commodore

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    Huh, just skimming the wikipedia article it says 1920p is the max. Apparently 4k Blu-ray is under development.

    It's pretty clear streaming is the way forward, I was just curious as to whether media companies will keep trying to sell improved optical disks to hardcore movie fans, or if Blu-Ray is the last generation.
     
  15. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    By "just fine" I meant it's possible and that people are working on it, but you're right that it's not actually out yet. Technically, there is no reason you can't do it, assuming you can compress the video enough. It's just that I can't imagine 8K compressing down well enough to fit onto a BR, so that's a non-starter.
     
  16. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    I already posted a link that shows content is being created for demand and the delivery method. I also already mentioned Netflix woukd be leading the way. No surprises here.
     
  17. Irishman

    Irishman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Well, with regards to Blu-ray or some successor to Blu-ray, the fact is we don't know yet what the industry is going to settle on. So, for now, we're seeing UHD/4K/2160p streaming, courtesy primarily of Netflix. For example, "House of Cards" is going to be offered in 4K, as is "Breaking Bad". The smart thinking is that we'll become more and more reliant on internet-delivered content this time around, as terrestrial TV stations being too slow to react to rebuild their infrastructure once again, after "just" having done so 8 years ago for HDTV (broadcast TV STILL hasn't upgraded to 1080p, for example). They're not moving fast enough to remain relevant, so the internet seems like it will win this time around.

    The question becomes then - what of 8K? Will internet delivery to cement its lead in content, or will terrestrial TV learn this lesson and redouble their upgrade efforts for the successor of 4K - 8K? Noone who knows is talking, but it's fun to speculate. Or will some holographic delivery system replace flat panels as we know them?
     
  18. Irishman

    Irishman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    4K streams from Netflix are said to require 15 Mbps download speed. I don't know about you, but we'd have to upgrade our home internet.
     
  19. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    I have a fiber optic connection so I'd be fine. I don't have a 4K TV, though!