Sony 56″ 4k OLED
As the 2013 consumer electronics show wraps up we heard a lot about the new Ultra HD televisions. They are marketing them as UHDTV, and promising them to be the next great thing. We all will want them is what the savvy marketers are implying.
Even Samsung got into the game with a hideously designed 85 inch S9000.
Bad design and who has room for that easel?
Why am I so negative on this though has to do with we are years away from commercially available 4K playback. There is nothing available today to play 4k. There is content out there that has been shot and edited in 4K and I imagine it looks amazing. In fact Sony had an announcement,
“Mastered in 4K” Blu-ray releases will feature titles—such as The Amazing Spider-Man™, Total Recall, The Karate Kid, Battle: Los Angeles and The Other Guys—sourced from pristine 4K masters and presented at high-bitrate 1080p resolution, with expanded color showcasing more of the wide range of rich color contained in the original source. When upscaled via the Sony 4K Ultra HD TVs, these discs serve as an ideal way for consumers to experience near-4K picture quality. SPHE also plans to utilize available high quality 4K masters for select upcoming new release Blu-ray titles. “Mastered in 4K” Blu-ray Discs can be played on all existing Blu-ray Disc players.
Yes currently we have to take a Blu-Ray and make it bigger to fit on a 4K television because 4K is about 4 times bigger than the largest HD image which is 1080p.
Don’t get me wrong I would support 4k as the production gear is there, but no one has any sort of playback system. You can forget about live television productions in 4K as we are years away from that as well. In fact 720p (which is smaller that 1080p) is used by some networks including FOX. Hopefully h.265 will help, but I just don’t see much immediate future for 4K.
4K another marketing fad.