8K Broadcasting Begins in Japan

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,003
While 4320p displays are almost nowhere to be found, that hasn’t stopped Japan from launching the latest in cutting-edge broadcasting technology: citizens who are lucky enough to own a UHD monitor and the required tuners may now watch both 4K and 8K content courtesy of Japanese broadcaster NHK. The remastered version of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is the first 8K UHD movie available for the service.

It's still early days of course, since almost no one has an 8K display, and most of the people who do need a special receiver and antenna just to pick up the signal. Engadget Japan reported that Sharp began selling its first Super Hi-Vision-ready TVs with a built-in tuner last month for around $6,600. Also, HDMI 2.1 hasn't been implemented in any of these displays yet, so just getting the signal from box to TV requires plugging in four HDMI cables.
 
Brahmzy said:
In before the “we don’t need anything past 720p” crowd comes in...
Click to expand...
Of course we need 8k, we just need a big enough screen to make use of it.

027_blade_runner_theredlist.0.jpg
 
I still see Jaggies at 4k. Somehow I doubt 8k will be enough to completely eliminate them. 128k when?
 
Looking forward to 8K wall screens on every exterior wall of my home. I can move from the beaches of Pensacola to the rim of the Grand Canyon with the click of an app. Make it happen, Google/Facebook/Apple. Solve that parallax problem.
 
Brahmzy said:
In before the “we don’t need anything past 720p” crowd comes in...
Click to expand...
Is I don't have anything more than 720p, close enough, and that's my phone.... :(

GhostCow said:
I still see Jaggies at 4k. Somehow I doubt 8k will be enough to completely eliminate them. 128k when?
Click to expand...

You were the kid who always sat in the front row at the theaters, weren't you?
 
Brahmzy said:
In before the “we don’t need anything past 720p” crowd comes in...
Click to expand...

We do need resolutions beyond 720p.

For Movie/TV content - however - you'd have to be sitting uncomfortably close to a very large screen (think movie theater front row neck pain zone experience) to be able to see the difference between 1080p and 4k. And 8K is just retarded.

4K can make sense for games if you sit really close to a large screen like I do, but for movies and TV it's just kinda dumb, and puts more load on networks really for no reason.
 
GhostCow said:
I still see Jaggies at 4k. Somehow I doubt 8k will be enough to completely eliminate them. 128k when?
Click to expand...

You see jaggies in Movies and TV? I kind of doubt that. Aliasing really isn't a problem in Movies and TV at any common resolution.

In locally raster rendered content (like in games) of course you do, but pumping up the resolution is the absolutely worst way to solve the aliasing problem here. It's many times more computationally expensive than a good antialiasing algorithm.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
. . . And 8K is just retarded. . . .
Click to expand...
Yeah, just keep raining on the Seagate/WD/[insert favorite LAN product producer] parade.

Of course we f###ing need 2^12k video so that we need more storage and 10Tbs LAN.

Better yet, just give us some kick ass brain implants.

Progress man. ;)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
You see jaggies in Movies and TV? I kind of doubt that. Aliasing really isn't a problem in Movies and TV at any common resolution.

In locally raster rendered content (like in games) of course you do, but pumping up the resolution is the absolutely worst way to solve the aliasing problem here. It's many times more computationally expensive than a good antialiasing algorithm.
Click to expand...
It's often the only way is the problem:

FXAA / SMAA = doesn't cover single pixel areas which causes the most flicker to begin with
MSAA = Often not even included, doesn't cover alpha textures or areas with certain shader usage
Mixed mode MSAA / SSAA = Almost never included now, doesn't cover some distance aliasing situations
SSAA = Rarely included, haven't been able to force since DX11
Downsampling = Inefficient, works on almost all games.
 
Megalith said:
citizens who are lucky enough to own a UHD monitor
Click to expand...
Lucky enough? I mean crap go to Costco I think they only sell 4k TVs now, you can get older models without XLED technology or HDR for under $400. They're not exactly rare as they used to be.

That said, I'm not exactly holding my breath over 4k in the US, I mean even if by some manner they did put it out, you know they'd charge you an arm and a leg for it, I mean christ I think every major TV provider from Comcast to DirecTV charges $10/month for "HD channels" still unless you managed to get in on a special promo they had.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Lucky enough? I mean crap go to Costco I think they only sell 4k TVs now, you can get older models without XLED technology or HDR for under $400. They're not exactly rare as they used to be.

That said, I'm not exactly holding my breath over 4k in the US, I mean even if by some manner they did put it out, you know they'd charge you an arm and a leg for it, I mean christ I think every major TV provider from Comcast to DirecTV charges $10/month for "HD channels" still unless you managed to get in on a special promo they had.
Click to expand...

Cable is a shrinking market in the U.S. They are unlikely to invest in 4K, unless they think that can reverse their fortunes, which I don't think it can.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
We do need resolutions beyond 720p.

For Movie/TV content - however - you'd have to be sitting uncomfortably close to a very large screen (think movie theater front row neck pain zone experience) to be able to see the difference between 1080p and 4k. And 8K is just retarded.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about that. My girlfriend just got a new 4k 55nu8000 Samsung ultra HDTV to replace a 1080p 43 inch from just five years ago. The difference in details one can see are noticeable. Watching a 4k movie or episode is quite different than a 1080p or 720p episode of elementary was on the old TV.

Even at 10 feet away viewing distance and only a 55 inch screen, the difference is clear. 4k is worth it for clarity, color and contrast over 1080p TVs of even five years ago.
 
IRSmurf said:
Looking forward to 8K wall screens on every exterior wall of my home. I can move from the beaches of Pensacola to the rim of the Grand Canyon with the click of an app. Make it happen, Google/Facebook/Apple. Solve that parallax problem.
Click to expand...

Seen it solved with 12x4k 40k lumen projectors in a 180ft diameter dome run by 6xP6000s in unreal engine before, if you're up for that install I'll put you in contact with someone who can set it up for you ;) (it has been done twice ever and is not commercially viable, but the most impressive visual setup I've ever seen hands down).

SamuelL421 said:
:eek: What?! How do they build a whole 8k ecosystem and not come up with a better connection option than 4 HDMI cables?
Click to expand...
Its the limitation of the receiver chips, just too hard to get them inside your product before release in current stock. Latest Dp standard can handle it though but again low volume production from realtek means you won't see them until next year in volume.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
We do need resolutions beyond 720p.

For Movie/TV content - however - you'd have to be sitting uncomfortably close to a very large screen (think movie theater front row neck pain zone experience) to be able to see the difference between 1080p and 4k. And 8K is just retarded.

4K can make sense for games if you sit really close to a large screen like I do, but for movies and TV it's just kinda dumb, and puts more load on networks really for no reason.
Click to expand...
LOL
You could not be any more wrong about movies and TV content. Night and day difference from 1080p content to native UHD on my 75.
I told you they would come in here!
 
The truly ironic thing here is that 8K's usefulness is for just about everything except video!
But here are some legit reasons for 8K, even on smallish screens:

1) Textures. We have had life-like color for a while now, and with HDR we are beginning to see life-like contrast. What we have never had (ever!) is life-like texture. Back before the 80s film quality was so low that we had film texture which is an art form itself, but not life-like. In the 80s-90s film got significantly smaller and up to a roughly 4k quality resolution (which is why 4k was a thing looooooong before bluray as a digital film archive format), and while this gave directors the ability to make things 'less filmey', it was still out of reach of 'life-like'. Then we had digital capture which was at first plagued with digital grain, and poor capture compression, but over the last 20 years that has been sorted out and we can now have crisp clean video capture, but the resolution of 4k is just not quite enough to make things life-like yet. But on a high resolution phone, or on a small 4k computer display we start to see the effects of these super high texture looks and it is a very different feel than the big screen. 8k will allow us to bring the cell phone expierence to the livingroom, which will be great! It is not about seeing individual pixels; It is about giving directors options to be as lifelike or cartooney or filmey as they want, and giving audiences ways to view it.

2) Text. As I look at my 4k computer monitor at roughly 110dpi text has problems. Computers are still designed around 72dpi content, and when you start going to higher resolutions text all just runs together. You can turn on display scaling, but then you loose screen realestate. I really like 40-46" for computer use as it is just a really useful size for multitasking on a single monitor. But at 1080p the resolution is too big to use the space. At 4k you have a useful resolution, but no better pixel density than we have had since the CRT days. At 8k ~40" with display scaling we can finally have a single display that fills the field of view with a useful screen realestate, and with crisp text and textures that are easy on the eyes.

And that is with Romanized characters. I can only imagine with asian script just how difficult it could be to decipher between kanji. And how text as an art form is just butchered on a normal display. 8k will go a long way towards fixing this, and is likely why Japan and China are pushing for higher resolution displays before the US and Europe.

3) Manufacturing. Back in the days of early LCD televisions one of the largest hurtles was brightness. Getting a backlight bright enough to evenly light a large display was extremely difficult unless you had very large gates to let the light through. 1080p was not expensive because the panel was hard to make; it was because the backlights were problematic. But that then introduced ghosting and performance issues. With LED backlights this fixed a ton of things, and now backlighting the display is one of the least of our problems. Brighter backlights mean we can have smaller and easier to manufacture gates to let the light through, and these smaller gates are more capable of closing entirely and reducing backlight bleed. With a demand for better and larger pictures, it became far easier to just make smaller gates and smaller pixels, so manufacturing moved to 4k well before the content did. I suspect we will see a similar move to 8k, especially for larger displays. We may all still be watching 1080p content on these huge 8k displays, but the manufacturing process will make is too affordable not to make the switch. Plus it will give the same light control and gate reaction times that we have enjoyed on sub-60" displays to the large screen market which still suffers from ghosting.

4) Demand. Consumers are not demanding 8k, as 1080p (or lower) is still 90+% of the content being consumed. But customers are demanding HDR and ever larger screens. So if you have an 8k display you can start to do some interesting tricks for HDR with limiting the number of active pixels to produce dark scenes. The pixels are so small on a normal sized screen and viewing distance that you will never know the pixels are off. Then, when you need the brightness you open everything up and tan the audience! And this can be done more easily with cheaper backlights rathe rthan needing 500+ local array dimming. And for the demand of ever larger displays, the ease of manufacturing smaller pixels will allow the 60"+ market to drop in price significantly.

Anywho; Point is that there are lots of reasons to move to 8k other than content resolution. NHK is just trying to get the ball rolling as soon as possible.
 
Bring 8K and bring HDMI 2.1. Make a killer 85” FALD panel for not $15K.
 
If your eye has a 1 arcsec resolution (from personal experience mine has probably a bit less), for a 100" 8k screen you would need to be at 1m to appreciate the resolution. Which is absurd.
I mean, I can see how 8k media itself might have a use. E.g. for archival purposes, it can hold the full detail of a 65mm negative vertically mounted negative (like Panavision 70 etc - the Imax 70 is horizontally mounted going to up to 12k), or for allowing you to zoom in. But an 8k home display is absurd, for the reason noted above. I mean I can see a big computer monitor in 8k having uses for some professionals, the absurd thing is a 8k TV or video monitor.
And I just know that down the line somebody's going to put 8k on a phone display and boast about it.
 
Last edited:
WBurchnall said:
I'm not sure about that. My girlfriend just got a new 4k 55nu8000 Samsung ultra HDTV to replace a 1080p 43 inch from just five years ago. The difference in details one can see are noticeable. Watching a 4k movie or episode is quite different than a 1080p or 720p episode of elementary was on the old TV.

Even at 10 feet away viewing distance and only a 55 inch screen, the difference is clear. 4k is worth it for clarity, color and contrast over 1080p TVs of even five years ago.
Click to expand...

This is going to be heavily tv set to tv set dependent. The 4k set we have with the same source material doesn't give any better picture than what you find to be an ancient 1080p plasma set at any viewable distance or angle in the living room. So, the plasma remains until it dies it seems.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Lucky enough? I mean crap go to Costco I think they only sell 4k TVs now, you can get older models without XLED technology or HDR for under $400. They're not exactly rare as they used to be.

That said, I'm not exactly holding my breath over 4k in the US, I mean even if by some manner they did put it out, you know they'd charge you an arm and a leg for it, I mean christ I think every major TV provider from Comcast to DirecTV charges $10/month for "HD channels" still unless you managed to get in on a special promo they had.
Click to expand...

Man I would just like full 1080p on cable/satellite. The local cable sports channel in Houston are 720p. I'm not even going to dream about 4k for cable tv.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Cable is a shrinking market in the U.S. They are unlikely to invest in 4K, unless they think that can reverse their fortunes, which I don't think it can.
Click to expand...

They won't upgrade the infrastructure to true 1080p! I just have to roll my eyes every time I see a provider in the US go on about all the HD channels they have compressed as shit 720, sure. and that's as good as it's ever going to be.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Cable is a shrinking market in the U.S. They are unlikely to invest in 4K, unless they think that can reverse their fortunes, which I don't think it can.
Click to expand...

sort of, cable will have 4k but not substantially over legacy qam. its too expensive to deploy. Its money better spent on higher modulation docsis channels for data and then deploying 4k over iptv. Its more a matter of making that painful transistion off legacy qam video.
 
i haven[t even moved to 4k yet.

4k wil never happen in the US. Look how long it took to get any kind of HD here. Plus even if they did it would be a massive up charge on your bill.
 
Too bad Red Digital Cinema is privately held, otherwise this would be a good time to buy ;)
 
Traditional cable and satellite broadcasters haven't innovated for decades. Just look at the force fed cable bundles.

4K is alive and well in the USA, and it's on services like Netflix and Emby ;)

Oh and in Canada too

Bigbacon said:
i haven[t even moved to 4k yet.

4k wil never happen in the US. Look how long it took to get any kind of HD here. Plus even if they did it would be a massive up charge on your bill.
Click to expand...
 
BloodyIron said:
Traditional cable and satellite broadcasters haven't innovated for decades. Just look at the force fed cable bundles.

4K is alive and well in the USA, and it's on services like Netflix and Emby ;)

Oh and in Canada too
Click to expand...

Sorry i meant by traditional content providers.
 
///AMG said:
Man I would just like full 1080p on cable/satellite. The local cable sports channel in Houston are 720p. I'm not even going to dream about 4k for cable tv.
Click to expand...
I tell you what I was going gaga over the PBS stations OTA when I first put an antenna on the roof. Uncompressed 1080p yuuuuum.
 
ecuador said:
If your eye has a 1 arcsec resolution (from personal experience mine has probably a bit less).
Click to expand...
FYI humans have on the order of 1 arcminute resolution not 1 arcsecond. You physically could not have 1 arcsecond resolution unless your pupil was about 140mm wide, and that's a hard limit due to the laws of physics not something "better eyesight" determines.

1 arcsecond would be like seeing a separation of 1mm at a distance of 200 meters. Or 5 microns at 1 meter which is like a large bacteria
 
Last edited:
tetris42 said:
Of course we need 8k, we just need a big enough screen to make use of it.
Click to expand...

8K does not have to be that big. More like my attachment.

Zarathustra[H] said:
We do need resolutions beyond 720p.

For Movie/TV content - however - you'd have to be sitting uncomfortably close to a very large screen (think movie theater front row neck pain zone experience) to be able to see the difference between 1080p and 4k. And 8K is just retarded.

4K can make sense for games if you sit really close to a large screen like I do, but for movies and TV it's just kinda dumb, and puts more load on networks really for no reason.
Click to expand...

For home usage yes but for theaters there are already a couple that have migrated to 8K LED walls. The great thing about those is that while the industry is still working on a standard 8K distribution method, any sort of standard would need the backend upgraded, not the display itself since they are inherently disjoined.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1465.JPG
    IMG_1465.JPG
    433.8 KB · Views: 0
///AMG said:
Man I would just like full 1080p on cable/satellite. The local cable sports channel in Houston are 720p. I'm not even going to dream about 4k for cable tv.
Click to expand...

they are 720p@60fps instead of 1080p@30fps. 720p is actually significantly better for sports because of the increased framerate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top