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33 MegaPixel TV in 2015

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:38 AM
from the gonna-need-a-bigger-hard-drive dept.
psyph3r writes "The Japanese communications ministry is investing in a new broadcast display technology with NHK to launch a 33 million pixel, 24-point surround-sound broadcast standard by 2015. The standard will use a video data rate of 24Gbps and an audio data rate of 28Mbps. This must be surreal in person."
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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2008, @11:41AM (#22035836)
    Eye upgrades are expected to become available in 2016.
  • Technology is advancing far faster than the understanding humans have of themselves. I watch my NTSC 320 x 240 maximum resolution TV and usually feel that the resolution is higher than it needs to be considering that the low thought content of the TV show.
    • That reminds me of when DVDs were the big new thing. Some one I know got me to set up his new DVD player, and later was bragging about how crisp his new DVD picture was and how great digital was. Half way through the movie I told him the sad truth. His DVD player didn't work so we were watching a VHS copy of the movie. He got sullen and cranky after that.
        • If that's your attitude, why watch TV? Why not just read a book?
        • by jedidiah (1196) on Monday January 14 2008, @12:36PM (#22036680) Homepage
          If the show has any cinematography to speak of then it will infact look better on a high resolution 60" TV.

          Video is a visual medium. It's silly to not expect it to have a visual quality that would be improved by size and clarity.

          There are bound to be shots even in the A-Team that benefit from good viewing hardware.

          A 20 year old SD Television doesn't even display SD content well.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            "There are bound to be shots even in the A-Team that benefit from good viewing hardware."

            No! Very much no. I don't think high-def A-Team is such a good idea. You can already spot issues with the special effects as it is. No need to compound the problem by making it that much more obvious how all the explosions and car crashes were rigged.
        • by Don_dumb (927108) on Monday January 14 2008, @01:14PM (#22037164)

          The only stuff that really benefits from an HD tv are sports and summer "blockbusters" like Transformers.
          I have said this before but the best application for HDTV is natural history, case in point The BBC stunner Planet Earth [imdb.com]. I think it's ironic that the best use of better TV is real life.

          You're right about most programming not needing HD, especially here in the UK where digital 480 widescreen is already the norm. You just don't need HD to get the full enjoyment of non-cinematic shows.
  • This must be surreal in person

    If you think that is surreal you gotta try the acid. It'll blow your mind!
  • by Bohnanza (523456) on Monday January 14 2008, @11:50AM (#22035960)
    This must be surreal in person.

    I think the purpose for it is to seem real.

  • Duke Nuke Em is going to look amazing on it!
  • by GodfatherofSoul (174979) on Monday January 14 2008, @11:56AM (#22036056)
    Too bad you'll need a Beowulf cluster of hard drives just to store a single movie.
  • will i need a new graphics card for this display?

    why are you laughing?

  • We're halfway there (Score:5, Informative)

    by The-Bus (138060) on Monday January 14 2008, @11:56AM (#22036080) Homepage
    Well, we're halfway there already. I believe most studios that are now remastering for HD (especially HD DVD and Blu-Ray) are mastering the picture at 4K resolution: Blade Runner being one of those titles. The idea I guess is once "4K" becomes a standard, they'll have this content ready.

    Sony already sells a 4K projector [abelcine.com] meant for digital cinemas. But, you can use it to show 4 HD signals at once, something which Sony has been trying to promote to sportsbooks, tradeshows, etc.

    It all ultimately depends on visual acuity. Some people are already having trouble seeing the difference between an upscaled NTSC signal and an HD signal. I can only imagine this well get more troublesome as we keep ramping up the resolution.

    Just remember, HD doesn't even get close to properly displaying all of the resolution of 35mm film. We've got ways to go, although I don't see more than one new generation replacing the current HDTV "standard" for consumer-level high-end technology.
    • Well, we're halfway there already. I believe most studios that are now remastering for HD (especially HD DVD and Blu-Ray) are mastering the picture at 4K resolution: Blade Runner being one of those titles. The idea I guess is once "4K" becomes a standard, they'll have this content ready.

      I'm confused... George Lucas hasn't already re-released the original Star Wars Trilogy in 4K? He must be getting slow in his old age.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      HD doesn't even get close to properly displaying all of the resolution of 35mm film.

      That's true. But it's also very rare in real-world conditions to encounter a truly pristine presentation of a 35mm film. Maybe I have an exceptional bad group of theaters in my town, but my 1080p HDTV and a blu-ray or hd-dvd disc blows away most of the presentations I see in the theaters. Crappy worn prints, out-of-focus presentations, minimum wage "projectionists" who also pop the popcorn and sell tickets, cheap managers

  • Sounds like it will be just in time for when:
    1) I finally upgrade to "regular" HDTV...doh!
    2) George Lucas' re-re-release of Star Wars original trilogy in this crazy new format
    3) playing some Duke Nukem Forever on my PS9

  • by StandardCell (589682) on Monday January 14 2008, @12:16PM (#22036378)
    One of the things that TV manufacturers contend with is what screen size versus resolution. The uptake of true 1080p on screen sizes of 32" or less has been slow because there's virtually no visual difference between 720p/WXGA screens at those screen sizes for the average viewing distance in a living room. I'm also not talking about computer output, though you wouldn't be able to read much unless you bumped the font size up by quite a bit at 1080p.

    Now, 37" is marginal and 42" is where it really starts getting to be noticeable. This is also the sweet spot for a primary panel for the next few years. Beyond this resolution, you'll start noticing 1080p from the next highest resolution (i.e. quad-720p or 1440p) at the 56-63" screen size. But there's one problem with 63" and larger screens: they are close to the limit for what most homes can pass through their door!. In fact, a monolithic 71" 1080p plasma that a large Korean company allowed us to borrow for our lab work wouldn't go properly around normal corners and with standard door widths. So all your dreams of 102" LCDs in your living rooms may be short lived given you won't be able to get it around any corners. Most luxury homes these days, by the way, usually have this in mind when the house is architected so that there's enough room to get these sets into the house from outside. Also, bear in mind that the scaling technology, although advancing rapidly, can only do so much with standard definition material and it just looks worse as you get a larger screen size.

    Now, even if it's possible to build a seamless, high-reliability large screen like a flexible screen that can fit in your room, you start hitting a visual limit again at around quad-1080p (3840x2160) for the height of an average room in most of the developed world without even considering how much eye/neck strain this will cause for the average viewer. In case you weren't counting already, we're at around ~8 Megapixels at that size. So, having an 8k x 4k resolution system like the one proposed will require a double size wall which - surprise! - is pretty much where most theaters are going for online distribution of movies. Heck, they already get away with 4k x 2k resolution in digital theaters anyway and most people don't even notice it. And when I saw their demo of 4k, my entire field of view needed to be taken up to see any differences.

    As for the audio, never mind that 24 position audio is completely impractical from an installation perspective in the average home and can be easily emulated using far fewer speakers and using virtual surround positioning techniques. This is why it's funny when DTS versus DTS-HD gets brought up - unless you're an audiophile or are in a movie theater, you probably won't care about or notice the difference.

    And this gets us back to one immutable point - that this technology is complete overkill for broadcast applications. If broadcast is the target market, and given the rise of personalized on-demand/online video, then this an essentially completely futile effort.
  • by torkus (1133985) on Monday January 14 2008, @12:18PM (#22036424)
    Impressive, but diminishing returns will relegate this to...well i have no idea what scientific la la la will make use.

    "low def" to 480p (huge improvement)
    480p -> -> -> 1080i (noticable improvement with proper equipment)
    1080i -> wtfpwnedx1000 will be a minor improvement useful only for those with the equipment, a huge screen, etc.

    Looking at cost...it scales extremely quickly but i guess the ferrari isn't $995,000 faster than the Scion either.

    Though...somewhere around this level of resolution you make a "virtual window" available to apartments with no exterior walls. But hey, if you can afford a 3 bagillion $ TV for a window you can probably get a nicer apartment :)
  • by Hairy Fop (48404) on Monday January 14 2008, @12:20PM (#22036458) Homepage
    I saw them demo this live a couple of years ago. It's very impressive, but despite the post title they're not thinking about using it for domestic use any time soon, it's aimed at digital cinema and outdoor events and won't be commercially available till about 2025. What they are proposing is the standard to be ratified by 2015.
    This was the same company that demo'd HD TV in the early 80s and people thought it was at least 10 years away from being commercially available, they misjudged by over 10 years. They know their technology but not their lead times. Like most companies in this sector.
  • by SilentTristero (99253) on Monday January 14 2008, @12:22PM (#22036472)
    ... and it was totally amazing. Like looking out a huge picture window. They had some stored content (playing off a fast RAID array I believe) and some streaming content from a camera array mounted on the roof. The projector alignment tech was awesome; there were no visible seams anywhere. This was in a room basically the same size as the one on the linked web site; maybe 50' x 30'; viewing distance around 10-20'. It was beautiful.

    But, they could only run it about 10 minutes per hour. Not sure whether it was heat, storage, or whatever, but it was definitely not at all ready for prime time. Still, when it worked it was just stunningly gorgeous.
  • by HTH NE1 (675604) on Monday January 14 2008, @12:30PM (#22036588)
    This 7680x4320 is 1920*4x1080*4, or 16 times larger area than HD.

    sqrt( 7680^2 + 4320^2 = 58982400 + 18662400 = 77644800 ) = 8,811.62868 pixels diagonal

    At the typical 100 pixels per inch of computer LCDs today, that's an 88.1-inch display.

    I doubt I'd be using that in portrait mode.

    An an exercise, if "Frank's 2000-inch TV" is a 16x9 display at 100 ppi, what's the resolution? Given that most >HD resolutions are an integer multiple of 1920x1080, which is the nearest probable x*HD resolution?
  • by Zak3056 (69287) on Monday January 14 2008, @01:52PM (#22037666) Homepage Journal

    The image would be more palpable and vibrant than anything we can imagine.

    It must be sad to have such a poor imagination--or, worse yet, to think that a picture of something, no matter the resolution, could somehow look "better" than the real thing.

    • Sure, you will see only skin pores and little hairs because your room won't be large enough to be sufficiently far away to see an entire image.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Y'know, I figure the proper way to do porn in hi-def is simply to tile 16 different vids at a time, and you can check out the stream that interests you most.
      • The old EST/Forum Six Day training used to feature something like this. You and the others doing the course were led into a room and seated. Without warning, the lights went out and a dozen or so projectors started up, showing very hardcore porn on one or more walls of the room. I'm talking anal Nazi fisting and the like--everything you can imagine short of child porn or snuff.

        The resulting conversation was designed to demonstrate that whichever film you couldn't stop watching was the one you "couldn't be with." Most everyone agreed that they tended to ignore the tamer (or familiar) scenes and found themselves staring at the strange.

        I notice that my tastes in entertainment continue to change--and that we think we need bigger and sharper vidscreens. Compare and contrast to the technicians who create bigger/sharper/better vidscreens: I think they're in it more for the "we have the technology" angle.
    • Yes, yes, I can, and as a result, I think there's good money to made in making real-time convolution [wikipedia.org] processor accessories.

      "Oh, holy shit, I don't want to see that!" *click* *click* Video Options:Transform:Real Time Blurs:Add Soft Focus.

    • Just the idea of a naked Ron Jeremy on super hi def is enough for me to feel sick already.
    • Yes, if you MUST have 300Gbps streaming data to your home, we'll be glad to rent to you and your family the following items:

      3 obnoxious people who will not watch the movie, but will interrupt your view of it
      1 usher who is totally clueless as to what he should be doing as well as what movie is playing
      2 rude 16 year olds who will get your order for popcorn wrong twice, then over charge you 50 cents on the medium soft drink
      1 ticket taker who should have been replaced by a bar code reader years ago, and who rou
      • Pah, your package sounds pretty standard.. is there a premium version complete with a big sweaty fat guy in the seat next to you? Do we get complimentary sticky floors? What kind of adverts do you provide prior to each movie?
        • And what about the row of teens in front of you, texting their friends through the whole movie? I'm assuming an upgrade like that has to be pretty expensive...
      • If you were only overcharged $.50 cents on your purchase of popcorn and a medium soft drink, you should consider yourself lucky.
      • 5 obnoxious people,
        4 clueless ushers,
        3 rude teenagers,
        2 ticket takers,
        and a manager to sit in your den.

        Your comment. I fixed it for you.

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)

      by JackHoffman (1033824) on Monday January 14 2008, @11:49AM (#22035952)
      Digital cinema currently uses 2K projectors (2048 pixels wide), which is about the same resolution as you effectively get from analog projection (and only very slightly higher than HDTV 1080p). State of the art projectors are capable of showing pictures which are 4096 pixels wide (4K), which is significantly better than analog projection. At a 2:1 aspect ratio those formats are 2 and 8 megapixels.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        What they've failed to account for is, all the old bastards who can afford this, well, their eyes aren't really that great anymore.

        Or, to put it another way...

        "Sorry Sonny, I can't see a difference... just let me get my bifocals out..."

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          It's not for home use. I think there are some in use. One system was demonstrated at NAB 2007 and IBC 2006. I think some museums are using it. It's actually quite nice. It's almost possible to recognize the t-shirt designs audience members are wearing from across a football stadium.
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            It's blurry as shit and obnoxious to watch unless you have a newer DVD in there. Older DVDs -- which he has more than a few -- look like ass on there because it won't upconvert them to anything near the 1080 it will do. Newer DVDs, like his copy of Ratatouille looked fine upconverted to 1080.

            Which has nothing to do with the age of the DVD or inability to upconvert, but is more an issue that early DVDs were encoded at lower then desirable bitrates. (Okay, some of the early encoders weren't the best eithe
          • Your dad explained to you that he doesn't see so well anymore. His old TV set was obviously becoming too small for his aging eyes. While it looked perfectly clear to you, he could not see the picture on his old TV. While the current TV looks perfectly clear to him, it looks mottled to you. Get it?
    • This is supposed to be exciting?

      It is to me. I just bought a new TV 3 or 4 years ago, when this one has been out for a few years I'll be ready for a new TV and might even be actually to afford it (or not, as I'll be retired). Assuming I'm still alive then, of course.

      A retired friend complained that he was on a fixed income. "You're lucky", I told him, "My income's broke."
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Yes, but it's somewhere right around that level for the size of tv that most people have a large enough wall for. If you want to watch a ~60inch tv from the minimum field of view distance (something like 4ish feet), then you need about this number of pixels @120hz to pretty much max out human perception.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            You're only saying that because current display technology is still hard on the eyes. Do you look around the "real world" and have your eyes "almost bugging out of your head" because your entire field of view is full? No, you don't. I'm not saying improving the resolution and refresh rates will fully solve that, but it certainly won't make it worse. I can sit much closer to my 42" plasma than I could to my old 32" CRT without straining my eyes, for example.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        But can somebody explain to me why in the hell would we ever need a 28 Mbps audio stream even with 24 channels?

        Yeah, not sure what this is all about. Most internet radio streams are in the 100-200 kbps range for two channels, which comes out to the ~2.4 Mbps range at most for 24 ch. So they're saying they need roughly a factor of 10 more data per channel? Maybe they're not compressing the audio stream?
      • Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)

        by Panaflex (13191) <convivialdingo AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday January 14 2008, @12:33PM (#22036646)
        Sure...

        (44.1 KHz @ 24 bits per sample * 24 channels) / 1024 / 1024 = 24 Mbps. Little room for protocol overhead there.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            Actually throughput is always 1024. It uses bits instead of bytes to cut corners.

            Its storage which uses 1000 to boost their numbers.
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              Actually throughput is always 1024. It uses bits instead of bytes to cut corners.

              Its storage which uses 1000 to boost their numbers.

              I'm afraid the grandparent AC is correct. Channel capacity (aka throughput) is a physical quantity, and used in lots of applications besides computing.

              Incidentally, since the field of error-correction codes is based on communication channels, you could argue that the usage in hard drives is derived from that of communication.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      You can't even get a 12Mbps connection in the US for less than $1000/mo. Max for any reasonable price is around 6Mbps.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      A 2d display at *any* resolution is still a 2d display. Color balance, the fact that the images produced by currently widespread display tech glows, etc all contribute. Just look at still cameras--a nice 5MP camera with top-notch optics, sesors, etc will capture much better images than a cheap 10MP camera. More pixels aren't always better.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      It depends on viewing distance. But resolution is not the most significant contributing factor in the unrealism arena for modern displays. Color accuracy, dynamic range, and two dimensions are the most significant contributors to this.

      Modern displays have decent color, but as long as we are limiting ourselves to red / green / blue color sources, this will always be distinguishable from real (real cyan is not a 50/50 mixture of blue and green light, it is a single wavelength between the two).

      Dynamic range
    • Leela: Fry, maybe yo should get outside and see the real world sometime instead of watching TV all the time.

      Fry: But this is HD TV, it's higher resolution than the real world!