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posted by on Monday February 06 2017, @01:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the mine-eyes-have-seen-the-glory dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday February 06 2017, @04:03PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Monday February 06 2017, @04:03PM (#463470)

    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.

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