Consumer Television (Broadcasters really dragging their feet) on 4K

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Litejazz53, Apr 18, 2017.

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  1. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    No one's 'pushing' standards. Standards are always evolving as technology changes and gets better. If you don't want to pay for it, you don't have to. Just stick with what you have until it dies, then you'll have to get whatever's on the market at the time, or go without.

    It's like complaining about new cars which are about a 100 times safer then they were 20, 40 years ago. Are you still using a Commodore 64?

    That ship has sailed. Social media and online tracking isn't going to change anytime soon. Best that you can do is to minimize your digital footprint - don't use social media apps, use Signal or WhatsApp for encrypted phone messaging, use a VPN when surfing the web as well as your internet connected devices. Never, ever, get a IoT device!

    Could have fooled me! :)

    We have always had such standards - it's whatever it is at any given point in time. All new standards always have a backward compatibility tranche which means your existing tech will still work. Once in a while a radical change in the transmission spec will have an effect on old tech such as the switch to digital broadcasting, but there is usually many years of warning before that happens and cheap workarounds such as dongles/etc.

    UHD/4h is still relatively new, and yet you can pick up a UHD 4k 60" TV for less than $700. You don't have to be an early adopter and pay through the nose.
     
  2. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Yeah, but I wouldn't be so proud of it myself. My entire point is, the haves and have-nots don't have equal access to the technology, purely by virtue of, eh, having not. Particularly hard to get traditional older users on board when they just went through the U.S.'s first major backward-incompatible standard update in the past few years. Being a tech-snob myself, of course I want the best tech the science can bring us. But, I want it for everyone (as in, "the airwaves belong to the people"). So I want us to respect the budgetary needs of retired middle-class consumers who suddenly relized the middle class disappeared right after they got their Medicare.

    You can't empathize with people who did indeed buy their Commodore 64's with no idea that wouldn't carry them through their golden years; at worst, they thought they may sometime have to put out for a "Commodore 65". Now, you need a job, a retirement plan and your grandchildren on speed-dial as tech support if you ever hope to afford and use an iPhone. Not if you're one of those people who stream their media to their devices off their NAS, and don't understand why these rubes with their sound bars and their 5" subwoofers, get confused because suddenly you have to choose between 4 flavors of HDMI cables.

    You want 4K for eveerybody? Fine. But first please have the courtesy to go visit your grandparents and explain to them what a "K" is. But don't expect them to retain enough of it to explain it to their Wednesday afternoon bridge club.
     
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  3. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I saw an extended demo of Dolby Vision at the private Dolby Theater on Hollywood Blvd. (near Vine), a few days ago, and one of the top colorists in town lecturing there said, "I'd take High Dynamic Range anyday over 4K." I see his point.
     
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  4. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Well they do have equal access to technology. Of course, they may not be able to afford it, but that's nothing new. As I said before, the current new tech has dropped below $6-7 hundred, which is incredibly cheap, butt some have-nots may still not be able to afford it.

    I understand your desire for a more egalitarian state of affairs- don't get me started on the hollowing out of the middle class, which started somewhere in the 80s and has continued apace ever since (and is now in overdrive). But this isn't really a tech issue, so best not go there.

    Well yes, of course. These folk are used to having one remote button control one specific thing on their TV. They're not used to context depended buttons and menu systems, modes and sub-options, etc. I'm not sure tech affordability would help that. Best you can do is show them the basics and then wait for the inevitable phone calls when they get into the service menu! :D Not much you can do about that.
     
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  5. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    That H.265 compression is pretty good. I downloaded a H.265 and a H.264 episode of a show to compare. Couldn't believe the quality level compared to the file size.

    Unfortunately only my computer can decode it. My Oppo 105 and TV both don't. I also read that the firmware of the 105 can't be updated to decode it either. Something about a chipset.
     
  6. And as viewing via smart phones and tablets continues to grow it throws another dynamic into all of this. Likewise, the Playstation and forthcoming Xbox are 4K compatible and have 4K games. And sites like youtube offer 4K currently.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2017
  7. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Yep, I've been running tests for about a year and reading up on the spec. It really is an excellent improvement, not unlike the jump from MPEG2 to H.264.

    Yeah, your Oppo like older TVs that only support H.264 will not be able to decode it. It's not a simple software/firmware update like say for HDR handling. You need a dedicated chip to handle the rather heavy processing required for decompression.
     
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  8. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I find it interesting that there are folks out there willing to push the envelope as far as it can go - 4K, 16K; give me as many K as you can imagine, and make it on 100 inch, 200 inch monitors - I want the biggest and best picture.

    Then there are the masses largely content to watch a Ben Stiller Netflix movie on a 6" iPhone.

    I maintain that 1080p is superb enough. We don't really need anything "better". What we need is to get Aunt Minnie and Uncle Fred to stop stretching the picture...
     
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  9. pdenny

    pdenny 22-Year SHTV Participation Trophy Recipient

    Location:
    Hawthorne CA
    I'm going to wait for 4.0. After all, I'm gonna live forever and I'm a stickler for delayed gratification :nyah:
     
  10. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    That is a nice and concise sound bite!

    Yet, the whole thing kind of wearies me, when regardless CrumCast et all will just compress the hell out of stuff to fit it all down their skinny cable. Sigh. At least DirecTV puts up more satellites. It would be interesting to have some kind of meter to check actual bitrates on a channel.
     
  11. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    I'm really looking forward to buying a 4K TV so I can tune into over the air 4K broadcasts. I had a lot of fun doing the same thing when 1080i and 720p broadcasts first started. I imagine that folks did the exact same thing decades ago, when the first color broadcasts were happening. I'm a Ham Radio operator too, I guess I just like tuning things in!
     
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  12. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I've run into the same issue with my Oppo 95. I wound up using ffmpeg to transcode H.265 to H.264 so my Oppo could play the files.

    For those who are new to ffmpeg and/or gunshy when it comes to command-line scripts, the excellent ffmprovisr site has a lot of sample scripts for many common tasks:

    ffmprovisr
     
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  13. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Apart from me, you must be the only other person here that uses ffmpeg. It's incredibly powerful and configurable - it can to anything! I prefer to use scripted cmd files with 2-pass encoding. Don't forget when transcoding H.265 -> H.264 to roughly double the H.265 bitrate.
     
  14. nopedals

    nopedals Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbia SC
    In a lot of ways, things have not gotten that much better, although they may be cheaper. And certainly differences in resolution that can't be seen on normal sized TVs at ordinary distances are not a big deal. A $700 4K TV is probably inferior in PQ to the best plasmas 10 years ago. There are probably some exciting developments around the corner at a higher price point, but I am not upset that broadcasters are not pushing 4K for the current generation of cheap 4K sets.
     
  15. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I'm still a newbie to ffmpeg, but have been quite impressed with it in the limited time I've been using it to do a few basic things like the aforementioned transcoding. The first desktop workstation I ever used on a daily basis was a Sun 3/60 running Solaris, so command-line scripting feels quite natural to me. I really do need a machine with more horsepower - my current desktop, although possessing a decent amount of RAM, is more than five years old and had only average specs when it was new, so it's less than optimal for any kind of heavy lifting. I wasn't aware of the H.265 -> H.264 bitrate issue, but will definitely keep that in mind in the future.

    ffmpeg is a favored tool among many in the moving image archival community. I've been reading the AMIA-L listserv for a long time, which is how I found out about the ffmprovisr site.
     
  16. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I remember those. I used to work with Sun Sparcs many years ago.

    Mine's about that old too. Each year I've found no compelling reason to upgrade as the CPU improvements have been incremental and unimpressive. I have a decent processor, Core-i7, which is still pretty decent. The biggest improvement would be if I upgraded to a SSD disk...but I might leave that for a brand new system...

    It's a rule of thumb because H.265 is a lot more efficient than H.264 which means it can use lower bitrates to represent the same picture quality, so a H.265 2000kbps encode is equivalent to a H.264 4000kbps encode. It's just a rule of thumb though, as it still depends on other encoding parameters, but I've found it to be good enough.
     
  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That's what I think as well.
     
  18. ky658

    ky658 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ft Myers, Florida
    If you can help it, don't buy "consumer crap" (as we used to call it in my TV days). There are professional versions out there with many of the same features and more, usually for a realistic price.
     
  19. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Exactly! Give me HDR 1080P and 4K can get stuffed. They are only making 4K displays because it is technically possible to make 4K displays. I would challenge anyone to tell a 4K standard dynamic range image from a downrezzed 1080P version on the same size screen at recommended viewing distance.

    The quick rule of thumb for that is this:

    Close your right eye, and move your head so you can see the tip of your nose touching the left side of the screen.
    Then, without moving your head, open your right eye and close your left.
    The point where the tip of your nose touches both sides is the recommended viewing distance.

    Vidiot probably have a better term for it, but it's a quick way to evaluate. And with a 1080P screen, you really can't see the pixel structure. Try it with your computer monitor. I'm typing this looking at a pair of 22" monitors, and the recommended viewing distance using that formula is 21". And for the life of me, I cannot see the pixel structure of this monitor that is running at 1920 x 1080. My nose has to be 14" from this screen before I can see the pixels.

    If you have a 120" projection setup, then 4K is worth it.
     
  20. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    People only seem to talk about 4k as if it's just about the resolution. The resolution aspect is perhaps the least of the components of the UHD spec. With that 4k you also get HDR, wide color gamuts, 3D colorspaces, better bitrates with HQ compression, 10bit displays. That's nothing less than a revolution in capability over and above a simple resolution boost.
     
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  21. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    Those may be possibilities - but in reality, we'll still get Diane Sawyer's face fuzzed out to hide the age lines, and orange and teal movies that are more monochromatic every day. I maintain that 1080p is more than I need.
     
  22. bradman

    bradman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lexington,KY
    People said the same thing about HD, and DVD before that. "The existing tech is good enough for me" crowd.
     
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  23. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Give me 1920 x 1080 with HDR and H265 compression and I'll be a happy man.

    As I said, in this case the existing resolution really, honestly is enough. I see movies in the theater all the time, and theaters need 4K. Homes, do not. If you can't see the pixel structure, you can't see an improvment in resolution. You simply can't. I could see the pixel structure on my home theater projector displaying DVDs, and used a scaler to uprez it. When I got HD sources, I no longer needed to upscale anything.

    Now I can see compression artifacts on some HD sources, and want better quality compression. I can see Mach banding due to not having enough bits per color channel, and want 10 or 12 bits per channel. Give me those things at 1080P.
     
  24. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    But what's the harm if you also get 4k res into the bargain? Since they don't make 1080p screens anymore, I don't see why you object so strongly.

    But also, 4k res is more important as you get to the bigger screens 60 -75" plus, which is becoming more and more common these days. For example, LG's recent wallpaper model:
    LG’s stunning 'Wallpaper’ OLED sets the standard by which all TVs should be judged
     
  25. spanky1

    spanky1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    Since I was the one that made the comparison between OTA and satellite/cable, I'll comment on that. In my experience, OTA from my antenna (coax directly to the tv) is a much better picture than what I've gotten through either satellite or cable.

    Also, you mentioned "digital antenna". This type of wording by the "industry" just added confusion to a new technology. Many people were already confused by digital vs. analog, vhf vs uhf, needing a converter vs not needing one. Even today, many old-timers(I'll include myself in that age category), don't realize that their 30-year old UHF/VHF antenna will work wonderfully with their fancy HDTV.
     
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