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A couple of weeks ago in news of someone coming out with 8K resolution televisions, I left a comment to the effect that I have a 4K TV, but there's no 4K content, so an 8K TV was a bit silly. Someone said they thought Netflix had a couple of 4K offerings.
I recently ran across news that I'll have 4K content in the nebulous future. The FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] is taking its first steps toward over the air 4K broadcasts. but it appears that it may be a while before I see it.
There's more about it here at CNet. But all three articles raise questions that aren't answered, primarily, what about bandwidth? It seems to me that without extremely tight lossy compression, it would take four times the bandwidth of 1080p. Will quality be much better than 1080p after they compress the signal?
How will they get around that? Will I lose some side channels? What do you folks have to say?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @01:15PM
My experience is that so-called HD video is often uglier than the old, "low-resolution" NTSC standard: During fast moving, or complex scenes (falling graffiti, rain droplets on water, a flock of flying birds, etc.), you get nothing but a blocky, blotchy mess of blurry colors. Blech!
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday February 06 2017, @01:31PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @03:43PM
Garbage in, garbage out. My TV is 4K but I've seen no 4K content. But at 1080p there's a noticible difference between cameras watching football games. Fox's cameras suck, I think they used 720i cameras for the super bowl.
The other three networks have good pictures, Fox's is lousy.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @03:56PM
http://1337x.to/search/2160p/1/ [1337x.to]
No piracy? Then you get this:
http://1337x.to/torrent/1041079/Big-Buck-Bunny-4K-UHD-HFR-60fps-ENG-FLAC-WEBDL-2160p-X264-ZMachine/ [1337x.to]
(Score: 2) by citizenr on Monday February 06 2017, @01:35PM
thats because US being the early sucke^^adopter went with MPEG 2 (~DVD), while rest of civilized world adopted MPEG 4 (~bluray/YouTube). There about is >2x difference between the two.
(Score: 2) by WillR on Monday February 06 2017, @01:47PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:21PM
OTA. I've read that part of the problem is that a local station might re-encode a video poorly. I've also read that many decoders are cheap. I guess the process is so complex now that it's not really possible to identify exactly what's wrong; all I know is that, to me, the image often looks like absolute junk.
When it was NTSC, at least you didn't have to pretend that it was high quality.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday February 06 2017, @04:03PM
Yea, quality varies a lot. But when done right, HD can compress pretty good so there is certainly room for 4K if using a newer codec like h264 or h265 is involved. But that isn't what will happen.
For example, on my cable system it is amazing to compare the local ABC feed to the local FOX. Both look very good but the ABC stream is less than half the size. Here are some real numbers from MythTV and a HomeRun Prime:
FOX, KVHP: Cosmos Episode 1x01: 6.4GB MPEG2 720p60 (approx 14mbps)
ABC, KBMT: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 4x12: 2.6GB MPEG2 720p60 (approx 5.7mbps)
Both stations send at least (we get them on cable) two HD streams, KVHP also sends a CW feed and KBMT an NBC (but at 720p60!?!) but one obviously sprung some coin for a really good encoder.
I suspect we will see some compatible 4K format get adopted. It should be obvious stations aren't going to give up the profits from sending two HD streams and the FCC isn't going to orphan every TV a second time in a generation. So send two HD streams at the 2.6GB/HR rate that we can see from above is possible right now in the real world and two side channels with a difference signal for 4K. Once the vast majority of sets in use can receive 720p/1080i in MPEG4 the base signals can switch to that and free up more bits for the diff signal.
Is it clunky? Yup. But somebody will propose it and instantly win because it solves everyone's problem. Set makers really need to point to some 4K content at some point and broadcasters do not want another "flag day" like the HD conversion. It would also mean they could leave their local plant untouched, only minor changes to allow passing on the 4K signal from the network when present. Especially since everyone knows 4K isn't the end point, there IS no endpoint. But HD is plenty good enough for local so standardize on that.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @03:46PM
I get between 12 and 18 channels depending on the weather. Why would I possibly need cable? That's more channels than cable had when it came out in the '70s. Cable is a complete waste of money unless you live where radio waves have a hard time reaching.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by WillR on Monday February 06 2017, @04:30PM
Judging by the amount of paper TWC wastes junk-mailing me about how amazingly great their $150/month TV service is, that seems to really upset them.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @09:06PM
Same here, I haven't had cable since TV went digital.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 06 2017, @07:38PM
Cable is a complete waste of money.
FTFY.
(Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday February 06 2017, @02:05PM
The 4K broadcast standard uses h.265 so it should be capable of getting a good picture while still getting a decent level of compression.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:23PM
See here [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @06:19PM
Guess that experience isn't from blu-rays or Over The Air (OTA) broadcasts. If it's from cable then that's understandable. They compress the crap out of stations to free up bandwidth.
Some OTA stations over-compress too. The ATSC standard allows for up to 4 HD channels in one 20mbps slot. 5mbps mpeg2 can have problems with challenging scenes even at 720p and some stations try to stuff 1080i in there too.
That said, the newer codecs (h264 and h265) are much better at low bitrates than mpeg2. At higher bitrates there isn't much difference - at 20mbps mpeg2 and h264 are practically indistinguishable. So simply moving up to a modern codec is going to help a lot for bit-starved transmissions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @04:14PM
Most people don't understand that the Cable/Satellite providers "compress" the HDTV signals. If your TV has a coax input, get an antenna and watch OverTheAir (OTA) and you will see the difference. Don't want to watch commercials, get a MythTV or other PVR box and record OTA and skip the commercials.
You could also have a cheap TV that can't properly decode the signals, but my bet is on your cable/satellite provider as who you need to complain to.
My wife is amazed that OTA is better than any other source.
(Score: 2) by tnt118 on Monday February 06 2017, @09:38PM
Assuming you are talking about OTA, that's almost assuredly the way the local affiliate has their encoding. OTA can (and should) be damn near pristine, but I know two of the three local affiliates here do a really bad job in setting their encoders up.
I think I like it here.