33 MegaPixel TV in 2015

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."

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

When the movie theater is sitting in your own living room, yes.

Re:Wow

[JackHoffman]

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.

We're halfway there

[The-Bus]

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.

I've seen this live and related industry talks

[Hairy Fop]

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.

Re:Wow

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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:Wow

[Surt]

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:Wow

[rasputin465]

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?

At 100 ppi that's an 88.1-inch display

[HTH NE1]

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?

Re:Wow

[Panaflex]

Sure...

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

Re:Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, First 48, Daily Show..

[NFN_NLN]

Do you think any of those shows are really enhanced by the difference between SD and HD? Let alone 33 megapixels...

Short Answer: Yes
Long Answer: I previously had a 27" TV. Even standard TV looked fine on it. Fast forward to today where I did my research and bought a 42" LCD. At those sizes the standard TV signal looks like crap when its stretched that big (yes even in 4:3 mode). However, watching HDTV is great... even non-sports related shows like Dirty Jobs. I really like seeing various animal feces in HDTV, you can really see the individual hay in the hippo crap in HD :).
Rude Answer: Contrary to what your wife keeps telling you, size does matter!

Re:Japan is superior

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* FIOS.

Re:Saw it last year at IBC in Amsterdam

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen it too. Last March at the Calit2 center at UCSD. We saw some 4k footage taken from a helicopter chasing dirt bikes around the desert, some DVD then HD, then 4k scanned from the original film, a string quartet from somewhere in Japan, and lots of scientific visualization stuff... and it was totally amazing.

Re:Wow

[TeknoHog]

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.

Limits of human perception!

[jozmala]

Theoretical limits of human vision has been measured in 0.4 arc minute. Over 1 arc minute is considered below normal vision. The theoretical minimum visible object is normal computer monitor pixel (102ppi) from 14 feet away. Those with really perfect vision not just normal vision (which people speak as perfect vision).

(tan(pi/(360*60/0.4))*14feet) in inch = 0.00977384382 inch
1/0.00977384382 = 102.313892

Now the other way to consider the same limit is, 60/0.4=150 pixels per degrees of arch.
150*90= 10500 pixels horizontal gives you 90 degrees fov where you can concentrate your vision on any part of image and it is at limit of human perception.
60*120 = 7200 is a good target, 120 fov where each pixel is not smaller that worst of those who get 20/20 vision could see. 20/10 is still measurable vision and people get that also even people talk about 20/20 as "perfect" vision. But the market would be smaller and we are at the edge of what is possible.

Re:What this could mean for SpanktraVision

[Anonymous Coward]

Found on another website:

[quote]The Forum is offered by a company called Werner Erhard and Associates, led by Werner Erhard -- real name Jack Rosenberg -- a shady self-made human potential guru.... The scandal-plagued Hunger Project is another est/Forum spinoff. Other fronts include the Education Project, Transformational Technologies, and others.

Although it has been toned down over the years in response to bad press, the Forum is an extremely intense, sometimes abusive indoctrination session, comprising four days over two consecutive weekends, from nine in the morning to often past midnight, with one meal break all day. Afterwards, participants are pressured to enroll in weekly seminars and advanced courses, including the infamous "six-day" course that takes place at a secluded encampment in the woods of upstate New York. The Forum costs over six hundred dollars, the weekly seminars typically one hundred, and the six-day nearly two thousand. Even more "advanced" courses are available, costing thousands. Intense pressure is put on participants not only to continue to spend money on seminars, but to recruit friends and co-workers.

Besides being, substantively, little more than new-age pop-psychology mumbo jumbo, the Forum seminar itself is, from a mental health standpoint, reckless and destructive. Forum leaders employ confrontational and abusive tactics, group hypnosis, and regression exercises, all in a completely closed environment with participants that have not had enough food or sleep. The Forum leaders have no mental health training, except in the purposely destructive techniques taught to them by Erhard.

Moreover, for many of the participants, though certainly not all, 1) the Forum, 2) the advanced courses that come after it, and 3) the group of people associated with it constitute a cult environment. In my experience, the Forum was indeed a cult, closely following the model outlined by Dr. Martin. In fact, disregarding the particular nonsense that makes up its teachings, the dynamics of the people around the Forum are hard to distinguish from those of the rest of the long list of religious, political, commercial, or other cults.[/quote]