1st annual CES Ultra HD Conference Unveiled in New York City (1 Viewer)

[Robert_Zohn]

The Consumer Electronics Association, CEA and Twice Magazine are sponsoring the Ultra HD Conference on November 12th in NYC. The first of what is planned to be an annual UHD conference will be held at the well respected and beautiful Metropolitan Pavilion located in the Chelsea district of downtown Manhattan. I was selected as a panelist so for those who would like to attend please email or PM me so we can meet before and or after my speaker engagement and I'll walk the exhibit and conference floor for a personal tour. Click here to register for the event. This event is very well planned and will cover current and future 4K UHD content, UHD technology, UHD displays and peripheral equipment as well as market acceptance, potential and current sales and trends. Including HDMI 2.0 and all of its attributes.

Just today Twice magazine confirmed several new 4k UHD product announcements will be made on November 12th at the Ultra HD Conference. So stand by for some the latest advancements in UHD hardware development.The future of a/v is very exciting and 4K is in the forefront of advancing our beloved technology.Hope to see many of my forum friends at the UHD Conference event.-Robert

 

[Dave Upton]

Wish I could attend, perhaps next year!

 

[Kevin Collins]

Robert,

I have posted a series of threads here regarding the merits of 4K.

These are some of the trends / issues that I feel would prevent me from getting a UHD anytime soon:

1) Lack of native 4K content -- I could care less about up-conversion -- I want to see the real image
2) Cost of OLED technologies and when they will actually come down -- I suspect 3+ years
3) This crazy curved screen and the impact on getting a quality picture. Joe Kane says he has done test patters on the Samsung curved UHD and saw definitive distortion. Also, viewing angle is messed up.
4) Relative distance to screen to actually visualize 4K content. Joe Kane states in an interview we did with him at CEDIA that in order to see the full 4K resolution, one needs to sit .6 the screen height. How many people actually do that?

In reality, I'm excited about OLED, not UHD.

What are your thoughts?

 

[schan1269]

I don't think curved screen is really relevant for 95% of the market.

That size is too small, unless you were literally sitting 4 feet from it. I see it more of the "gee-whiz, look what we can do with OLED".

110-140" curved OLED...you bet. I might even buy one of those.

 

[Robert_Zohn]

I don't think curved screen is really relevant for 95% of the market.

That size is too small, unless you were literally sitting 4 feet from it. I see it more of the "gee-whiz, look what we can do with OLED".

110-140" curved OLED...you bet. I might even buy one of those.

I agree with one exception, we tested Samsung's KN55S9 from 3' to 10' and found the best viewing distance to be 6' and anywhere from 5.5' to 7' was best.

-Robert

 

[Robert_Zohn]

Robert,

I have posted a series of threads here regarding the merits of 4K.

These are some of the trends / issues that I feel would prevent me from getting a UHD anytime soon:

1) Lack of native 4K content -- I could care less about up-conversion -- I want to see the real image
2) Cost of OLED technologies and when they will actually come down -- I suspect 3+ years
3) This crazy curved screen and the impact on getting a quality picture. Joe Kane says he has done test patters on the Samsung curved UHD and saw definitive distortion. Also, viewing angle is messed up.
4) Relative distance to screen to actually visualize 4K content. Joe Kane states in an interview we did with him at CEDIA that in order to see the full 4K resolution, one needs to sit .6 the screen height. How many people actually do that?

In reality, I'm excited about OLED, not UHD.

What are your thoughts?

All very good points. Here's my take on your points.

[*]Some of the UHD TVs have excellent video processors, in particular, Samsung and Sony, so the upconverted 1080 looks very good and nicely improved when compared next to other high-end 1080p displays. Sony has a very cool 4k media box that is preloaded with 10 Sony Pictures movies and a decent library of Sony movies are available for download. Also more streaming content is expected to be announced at CES.
[*]I think you are right about it taking three or possibly even four years for larger OLED displays to be priced at a price point for the high-end mass market adoption.
[*]I also prefer a flat screen and think CES 2014 will bring us more flat OLED displays.
[*]At this time very few folks have proper screen sizes even for 1080 displays. We have always pushed our clients hard to get larger displays and had much success in persuading them to do so. In our showroom we designed the viewing distances of our 5 4k UHD TVs to be very close to the people.
[/list]
I love OLED, but UHD is also a nice enhancement, especially since so many key players are pushing for rec 2020, HEVC compression and faster frame rates. So the future of OLED and UHD with the new standards will be a huge leap forward in display technology.

I'm going to cover many of these points at my CEA Ultra HD panel discussion.

-Robert

 

[Kevin Collins]

I agree with one exception, we tested Samsung's KN55S9 from 3' to 10' and found the best viewing distance to be 6' and anywhere form 5.5' to 7' was best.

-Robert

What was used to determine "best"?

 

[Kevin Collins]

All very good points. Here's my take on your points.

[*]Some of the UHD TVs have excellent video processors, in particular, Samsung and Sony, so the upconverted 1080 looks very good and nicely improved when compared next to other high-end 1080p displays. Sony has a very cool 4k media box that is preloaded with 10 Sony Pictures movies and a decent library of Sony movies are available for download. Also more streaming content is expected to be announced at CES.
[*]I think you are right about it taking three or possibly even four years for larger OLED displays to be priced at a price point for the high-end mass market adoption.
[*]I also prefer a flat screen and think CES 2014 will bring us more flat OLED displays.
[*]At this time very few folks have proper screen sizes even for 1080 displays. We have always pushed our clients hard to get larger displays and had much success in persuading them to do so. In our showroom we designed the viewing distances of our 5 4k UHD TVs to be very close to the people.
[/list]
I love OLED, but UHD is also a nice enhancement, especially since so many key players are pushing for rec 2020, HEVC compression and faster frame rates. So the future of OLED and UHD with the new standards will be a huge leap forward in display technology.

I'm going to cover many of these points at my CEA Ultra HD panel discussion.

-Robert

We did see and posted video on the Sony media box. The problem I saw with this was
* Limited space for storage -- granted you could add more, but it isn't an elegant solution
* it's not transferable to any UHD TV besides Sony
* You are limited to Sony titles

In regards to picture quality, I guess we agree to disagree. If you put in a 1080P pixel test pattern, it isn't going to show up as a 4K pixel accurate test pattern (at least from tests that Stacey has done with his patterns). I view that as nothing more than having oversaturate colors where green looks greener. If it wasn't there to begin with, personally I'm not interested in seeing something else. Some people don't like seeing 24FPS for movies -- but that is how it really is supposed to be. I guess it gets down to your POV and if you are a purist or not. I know cinematographers like Alan Deviou roll over when they see things like upconversion.

I hope that manufacturers come to their senses and bring back flat panels. If they want to do curved and feel there is a disillusioned audience for it, then fine -- but still provide flat panels.

I can't agree with you more about screen size and sitting distance. We harped on this during HD DVD -- you can't see diminishing resolution past 1.5X screen width.

If the cinematographers move to a faster frame rate, then it makes sense to support that. For existing film based content, I don't see the value in it. I don't think H.265 is really related to UHD. It will be used in streaming as much as any other form of digital content. At any rate, until there is an abundant ecosystem of 4K native content, UHD is a yawner for me. Basically that would require BD to formally adopt 4K support in a new player (tough for an adoption curve there) and always support 4K on their content. Keep in mind that alot of the remastered content for HD was done at 2K, so many studios would have to rescan @ 4K to support this. It isn't cheap to do that particularly with a subset of the HDTV market getting new players.

In a sense, it gets to another post I had in the streaming media section. SACD and DVD Audio lost out to MP3 because of convenience and at the cost of quality. VHS lost out to DVD primarily because of convenience. BD adoption to DVD has been tepid, one could argue is that there isn't a convenience factor. Online is accelerating, because of convenience, not audio or picture quality. That begs one to wonder the fate of UHD and what other disruptor are in the market -- i.e tablet... with the iPad having more total units than all BD and DVD players combined...

As I said in that post, I'm all about better picture quality. I want it, I love it. Outside of OLED, I'm not seeing a reason, today, to be excited about UHD. I'm just wondering if the mass market does on either OLED or UHD. I think they will buy OLED not because of blacks or faster refresh rates, but because of the applications that OLED can be utilized -- i.e wallpapering on walls, thinner displays, etc. It's sad, but history has proved this out over and over again with technology.