OTA TV Broadcasting In 4K...When?

With 4K being all the rage this year, and so many new TVs 4K capable, not to mention 4K camcorders available for under 2,000, I'm wondering when the TV networks are going to start broadcasting in 4K??
I'm looking forward to viewing 4K in my house this year, as I'll be buying a 4K set later this year.

ABC is still at 720P, I believe, so maybe they will skip 1o80i and go right to 4K. Any thoughts?

 

I doubt it's possible. There just isn't enough bandwidth in a single 6 megahertz channel to do 4K. To get that resolution, they would have to compress it so much it would look terrible.

 

4K doesn't go anywhere on a home enviroment, makes no sense, it's not necessary. Do you see any pixels on a theater screening? Most of us don't, and the movie is being displayed at 2K (digital intermediates, if not shooting with digital cameras are done at this resolution) most of the times, and the screen is huge.
There are still for improvement on current HD resolution (1920x1080p) like less compression artifacts (better compression codecs could be used) or higher color space like4:4:4 at 10 or even 12 bits as opposed to 4:2:0 at 8 bits as Blu ray and over the air broadcasting. Resolution and pixels are not everything, even less for home display.

 

Satellite trials have already been done in Europe. If using AVC, a DVB-S2 (satellite) transponder or DVB-T2 (terrestrial) multiplex would only hold a single UHD (2160p) channel. If using HEVC you could fit 2 per transponder. There's a tentative date for switching all (or maybe all but one) existing SD multiplexes from DVB-T (~27 Mbps) to DVB-T2 (~40 Mbps) by 2018 in the UK, so I wouldn't be surprised if a single multiplex was set aside for UHD at that time.

I must agree though, UHD seems rather pointless for most home environments and I can't see it taking off as much as HD did. You'd probably need a 60+" TV to see the effects and many people simply don't want huge TVs taking up their whole lounges. The one good thing about UHD though is that it will finally end interlacing.

 

I believe 4K will not begin to be adopted and pushed until the industry is convinced they've sold all the HD sets the market will bear before they will become uber-cheap. At this point the marketplace will introduce the concept as the "next big thing", scaring the consumer into needing yet another googaw The Privileged have that they don't.

For that matter, replace the words "4K" and "HD" with anything, such as "back seat cup holders" or "digital can openers", and you have the History of Consumerism in a nutshell, without even auditing the course. You're welcome!




Now playing on Ariel Stream: Mindy Smith - Closer

 

Agreed. I think compression is a much bigger issue with broadcast TV than the number of pixels. The confetti shower during the Grammys made my TV look like an 8-bit video game.

 

The same thing happened during the NFL Championship games, and the Super Bowl. It was horrible.

 

I don't see the broadcasters ever investing in this.

Hell a good number of cable channels are still just upconverting SD content.

You pretty much are not going to be able to see much difference in the resolution and as other have pointed out the video is going to be compressed so now you have an improvement you can't see covered in compression artifacts.

 

ABC is 720P for very good reasons, as is ESPN. Because 720P is 60 frames per second, as opposed to the 60 fields per second of 1080i, there are actually more pixels per second delivered via 720P. See this explanation by computer graphics pioneer Alvy Ray Smith.

All the TVs in the sports bar I do tech support for are set to 720P, and even on the 10', 4000 lumen projector, nobody has ever said "Hey, why isn't this 1080?" Eliminating interlace is a better improvement than increasing resolution.

In the same way, because 720P has no interlace, the amount of compression is reduced, producing a better overall picture. The same image, delivered via a 19.2 megabit transmission, the 720P version will look better than the 1080i one. You can see this when ABC, NBC and CBS all have the same video, like during the State of the Union speech. Flip to ABC when they switch to the chamber with Congress applauding. You'll see less compression on ABC.

 

Just to touch on this, whilst 4:4:4 would be great, it's not a very efficient use of bandwidth. By that I mean that if increasing 4:2:0 to 4:4:4 increased bandwidths requirements by 25% (random example), it'd probably be better to use that 25% in other areas. I think 4:2:2 would be an improvement over 4:2:0 though. I need to read up more on this, however I do know that chroma upscaling can be done using very sophisticated algorithms now (in MadVR for example) and even so, chroma upscaling is generally considered very much secondary compared to luminance upscaling.

Actually there are more pixels per second in 1080i than 720p at the same frame rate, but it doesn't really matter. It is generally true that 720p/60 and 720p/50 are better than 1080i/30 and 1080i/25 for fast moving material, like sports. 1080i has the edge for pretty much everything else though, which is why it's the de facto standard throughout much of Europe. 720p/50 is not used in the UK.

Which looks better totally depends on the deinterlacer being used and of course the content. With excellent deinterlacing you can get close to the original 1080p/50 signal from a 1080i/25 source with minimal artefacts. Most of the problems occur in fast motion.

Also, what to set your TV or set-top box to totally depends on the equipment. As far as I know, there are few (possibly no) native 1280x720 panels. Most HDTVs tend to be 1024x768 (early plasmas), 1366x768 (lower end sets), or 1920x1080. In each case, a 720p signal must be scaled by the display. In the case of a 1080p panel, a 1080i or 1080p signal needs no scaling (assuming overscan is off). On the other hand, you could get the set-top box to do the scaling...that could be better or worse, again, depending on the equipment.

I think that statement is way too general.

Again, too general.

Interlacing isn't as efficient in the digital world as in the analogue world, so 1080i/25 doesn't actually save a huge amount of bandwidth compared to 1080p/50. To that end, 720p/50 would indeed be more efficient. However, with modern codecs 1080i/25 can look great even at modest bit rates. In the UK, average bit rates for entertainment channels is anywhere from 5-8 Mbps. Sports channels use 12-15 Mbps. However, they all use very modern AVC codecs and statistical multiplexing to increase/decrease bit rate as necessary. This is far more efficient than using CBR MPEG2.

I wish interlacing was eliminated when the HD standards were put together. I can only hope that they finally abolish it for UHD.

 

Vizio recently introduced a 4K TV set for sale under $999 and it's been getting great reviews for it's terrific picture quality.

 

Not possible within allowable bandwidth. We don't even get 1080p with surround audio due to bandwidth reasons.

 

A few links to put things back into perspective.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/ibc-wrap-broadcasters-face-a-632287

This link helps to give the pixel junkies some pause for thought. http://broadcastengineering.com/hdtv/why-4k-wrong

http://hexus.net/ce/news/audio-visual/44241-itu-approves-nhks-uhd-tv-standard-4k-television-coming/

On the above link, it does confirm that interlaced formats have been dropped. Your wish has been granted.

I will return later to comment on this thread but I will start by pointing out that the implementation (or lack thereof) of HD via digital broadcasting in Australia in 2000 has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster. Little content, bandwidth crushed broadcasts full of compression artifacts and a television industry utterly disinterested in broadcasting HD content. You have more hope of seeing Australian content in HD overseas than you do in Australia.

4k/UHD is nothing more than an attempt by the rapidly failing television manufacturers to get you to update your set after that unmitigated disaster, 3D, failed to gain market traction and improve sales/margins.

For the desktop computer market (the one that allegedly no longer exists as Microsoft, Apple and others go mobile centric), I can see that not only does 4k offer benefits for presenting more information on a single monitor, but also that other ridiculous recent implementation, curved TVs would offer improved immersiveness at very close viewing positions on a single screen. A 32"+ 4k, curved computer monitor would in a lot of cases negate the requirement for multiple displays.

 

It is possible and it will happen. But... it may only happen via satellite. There's nothing to stop the networks from eventually abandoning their local stations and just broadcasting direct to people's homes, or providing some kind of internet-capable signal.

I agree, though: even with H.265 encoding and other advanced codecs, cramming 4K signals (52MB per frame) into 6MHz of bandwidth in a traditional over-the-air signal is damn near impossible. They'd have to throw away about 95% of the signal, and it's just too much.

I gotta say, HD does look OK in America on many stations. We still have "fattenized" uprezzed pictures on some stations, and even some high-end commercials seem to get released only in 4x3 or standard-def, but the transition is now doing well.

I agree 100%. If you go back on past discussions, I was one of the lone voices around here yelling that 3D in people's homes was an incredibly lame idea, and nobody would sit still for wearing special glasses and going through all that other nonsense in their living rooms. TV viewing for most people is a very casual experience, and nobody wants to go through all that rigamarole. 4K could work to a point, but I still say that most people have not seen HD as good as it can be. I bemoan the lack of 10-bit color, which would provide much better picture quality than what people have been seeing in HD, which is doomed to 8-bits with Blu-ray and all current broadcasting.

 

Actually, discrete 5.1 is part of most network TV HD broadcasts in America. But nobody does 1080P period except in Blu-ray disc or a closed-circuit transmission.

All I can say is, ABC and FOX look like crap in HD over-the-air. I much prefer 1080. ABC and FOX went to 720P because it was cheap and because they could use their other bandwidth for additional sub-channels, all of which look even more horrible.

Everything we master in video post is done at 1080 24p, and it looks fine. We lose something when it goes to 1080i, but it's not life-threateningly awful.

 

1080P is different. I'm comparing 1080i to 720P.

ESPN and ABC went with 720P because of higher frame rate. I have no idea how you are seeing your ABC and Fox affiliates, but I'm evaluating them OTA, not via cable or DirecTV.

 

It ain't that big a deal. And what I see on FOX and ABC is absolutely softer than CBS -- that much I can say for sure. I don't watch enough NBC to know if they're significantly sharper, but I'd say based on the two shows I do watch (Blacklist and Revolution), they're sharper than the 720P material I see. The progressive doesn't help from where I sit.

No, they did it because it was cheap and because they wanted to use their bandwidth for other things. They also wanted a unified corporate approach, so the head of technology for Disney decided to make all the Disney-related networks and O&O stations 720P. I think 15 years later, this decision looks as stupid as ever.

It'll be interesting to see if and when the whole industry goes 4K and ABC and FOX find an excuse to go 3K instead. UHD is still not exactly 4K -- it's 3840x2160 vs. 4096x2160 -- but apparently UHD went down in terms of pixel count because they couldn't cram all the bits into the current HDMI 1.4 spec.

 

I always felt standard broadcast TV should have been 720p with Blu-ray at 1440p. Nice clean upscale downscale then.

Would have given a nice pixel per inch boost for those large TVs that cost $60000 8 years ago and cost $600 now.

Plus our computer monitors would have had a decent vertical resolution all these years.

 

HORRIBLE idea.

Compression is already killing most HD pictures. Add in all the subchannels (( part OF the use of so much compression)) and what we have now is very compromised.

4k is better, but in reality, no way to transmit it efficiently, without a lot of compression.

Why not fix 1080 NOW, and uncompress it??
Pure uncompressed 1080 looks fantastic.

Even with my over the air set up and "Free" antenna it is compressed a LOT at times.

The answer is not to increase resolution, but to remove compression and fix the things that matter.

 

Uncompressed is not necessary, just less compression. I've received network Ku feeds via a DVB receiver at 35 megabit, and that picture was astonishing.

 

Hi guys, reviving this thread from a couple months ago.

At what point do you think the broadcast spec might change, i.e. go up from 720p or 1080i or p to 3K or 4K? Any way to predict whether it would happen within the next five years, if you don't mind taking a guess?

Also, is there any chance televised sports might move to a 3D format in the next decade or so?

This information is potentially useful to some work I'm doing right now.

Appreciate all thoughts.

 

I think 3D is effectively dead for home video at the moment.

4K -- at least what I call "pseudo-4K" in the form of 3840×2160 UHD -- is going to slowly roll-out, but I can't see over-the-air TV stations enduring yet another changeover after HD. If UHD takes off, then it'll have to happen through online streaming, satellite, and/or physical media. They're talking about a new upgraded Blu-ray disc that could provide UHD as early as next year, but of course, it'll completely obsolete all existing Blu-ray HD players.

 

Thanks Vidiot, was hoping you'd reply. I had the sense that no big change would happen fast.

 

There's a ton of talk about UHD and 4K that is scheduled for NAB in Vegas next week, and I'll hit up the usual demos. NHK has been demoing 8K for four or five years that I can remember, so who knows where all this is going to go. I still say it's a lotta hooey and that people care more about great stories and characters than they do about resolution per se. And in terms of technical quality, we still have a long way to go just in making sure people see good HD pictures at home... which I'm not convinced most people can see. Average cable systems and even over-the-air HD broadcasts too often look like crap due to bandwidth issues. Blu-ray looks far better, and even that's very compressed compared to the original HD material.

 

Ha, isn't that a good point! heck, a lot of people are watching on computers, tablets, and even phones-obviously picture quality, like sound quality, takes a back seat to "on-demand" convenience.