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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: 2) by tnt118 on Monday February 06 2017, @10:45PM
There's a problem. Unlike the transition from analog to digital, stations are not getting a second (temporary) channel to run both simultaneously. And we're not even sure if it will be possible -- let alone practical -- to run both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 at the same time. I'd wager that may never happen. It's entirely possible the "best" way to get through this is for stations to cooperate.
Station 1 converts to ATSC 3.0 and carries the signal for both station 1 and station 2. Station 2 remains on ATSC 1.0 and adds station 1 to its signal. There wouldn't be room for any of the original subchannels without significant cutbacks to the bitrates. Eventually station 2 converts when everyone is ready to drop ATSC 1.0.
There are going to be some pain points on this one, we just don't know exactly what they are yet.
I think I like it here.