When Will We See 4K TV At Home?

JVC's new 4K D-ILA Projector the DLA-SH4KNLGChange happens all the time, especially in the world of television and film technology.  At the moment the discussion seems focused on chip size, film look, resolution, and the democratization of production with the introduction of low cost, high quality cameras.  

On my twitter feed the other night there was a tweet by Tom Lowe, of www.timescapes.org fame, that sparked a brief discussion.  He tweeted, 

“Anyone who thinks 4K LCDs, TVs and projectors for home are "10 years away" is gonna be in for a huge shock. 4K will be the new gold standard”

Without a doubt 4K will eventually become the new “gold standard” for the reason Tom stated in his next tweet,  

“4K is a huge leap over 1080p, but also represents a "cap" or ceiling on scanning older 35mm film, so 4K is a great longer-term gold standard”

The part of his first tweet that I personally question is the adoption of 4K, in the home, within 10 years.  What are the hurdles preventing the adoption of 4k immediately?  How about the development and marketing of 4K products?  What about the development of a viable distribution pipeline.  With broadcast stations just spending billions, if not trillions of dollars to upgrade to digital, and in part to HD, why would they want to reinvest immediately in a new technology?  That’s what it would take to make home adoption of 4K within 10 years a reality.  

There is a lot of debate online about resolution, but I feel the more important conversation to have is; How will content be distributed in 10 years?  This will be the driving force of the acquisition standards required, as well as the future upgrade to the resolution standard for delivery.  

iPads, iPods, iPhones, internet video, video billboards, digital paper, digital theaters, cable, satellite, IPTV.  What will exist and what won’t in 10 years?  How will we consume content?  (I sure hope it’s not through cable because at the rate they are going I’ll only have about 20 HD channels in 10 years) What sacrifices will be made to the video signal in the compression that is required to send it through the existing distribution infrastructure?  When speaking about YouTubes roll out of 4K videos YouTube engineer Ramesh Sarukkai said,

“To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet; IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution projectors.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have or want a 25 ft screen at home.  Ok...I want one, but I don’t have one. ;-)

All this being said, I still agree with Tom that 4K will become the “Gold Standard.”  Currently what you watch on you TV or computer is most likely not even the current “gold standard” 1080p.  You are probably watching what I would refer to as the “silver” or “copper” standards of compressed to hell, down graded HD or up-resed 16:9 SD.  

4K and above will become the acquisition standard for many digital film projects and other programming that benefits from the added latitude given by higher resolution.  With the advent of new more affordable cameras that will shoot +4K, many producers will experiment with the larger format on other projects as well.  Home adoption on the other hand is a ways away.  

To Tom Lowe’s credit he didn’t say the home adoption of 4K was coming, he said it is coming as the “gold standard”  and there is a difference.  HD TVs were the Gold standard in the 90’s but no one owned them for another 15 years.  I think the same will be said for 4K at home in the next decade.   When it does come, it won’t be in all its “gold standard” glory either, it too will be “compressed to hell.“ Hopefully, I’m wrong. ;-)

Comments

[Jay Friesen]

It think we will certainly see 4K in the home but it will be scaled down in people's home theatres. I don't when, if ever we'll see it in the mass-consumed general market. Because current broadcast standard is 1080i60 for HD in the US. there are variants, but that's the cap on HD for broadcast.

Digital Cinema is a whole 'nuther beast as he indicated 4K *negative* scans of 35mm are the limit, but the limit on 65mm scans is 6K. Current D-Cinema mastering standard right now is 2k and 4k with 4K seeing limited adoption because of it's cost when 2K will suffice. Final film masters are just over 1.5K *positive* finished scans mastered at 2K.

Until we're seeing regular 4K distribution, there's not point in finishing at 4K or buying a projector at 4K. Aside from a digital file, we don't even have a medium for 2K- this will likely become the mode for distribution; much easier to get 2K material digital than on a physical medium. But the content creators will have to adopt some way of distributing files to their customers at these sizes.

Incidentally, this is where RED is simply shining if you ask me. They're attempting to achieve digtally, the negative resolution scans of film. But just because you capture at 4K, doesn't mean you have to post and deliver at 4K nor should you.