Don't Know About Anyone Else But 4K Is the End of the Line For Me (1 Viewer)

[cineMANIAC]

I've been watching some pretty stunning 8 and 12K demo material on Youtube. As pretty as those images are, though, I don't have any use for them outside of National Geographic-type content. I guess Sports are another outlet for those crystal clear images but I'm not into Sports. I spend most of my free time watching shot-on-film movies, with very little television programming outside the occasional news but I'm not sure if I want to see any of that material in 8K. Again, the pictures are pretty but everything looks like video, albeit high-quality video. I don't want back catalog films or TV shows to look like that. 4K is definitely the end of the line for me. If I ever get a hankerin' for more stunning footage of landscapes and fish, my LG OLED does a great job of conveying those images.

Frankly, I don't see a market for higher end displays outside of businesses who want to grab people's attention on sidewalks. Kinda like what places like Best Buy do on showroom floors. Nice pictures but not very practical in the real world (in people's homes).

Thoughts?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Thoughts?

This is mostly being led by manufacturers who want to turn TVs from being the kind of thing you purchase once a decade or so into the kind of thing you replace every couple of years, like a phone.

There are some genuine uses for 8K and higher resolution displays, but it’s not for the average consumer. Think more in terms of billboards, stadium displays, medical imaging, that kind of thing.

In terms of actual consumer viewing, virtually no one is making 8K content right now. Frankly, there’s still relatively little 4K content being produced. The majority of theatrical release movies are still being completed at 2K resolution. A great deal of made-for-television content is still being completed at 2K resolution. Broadcast and cable networks are mostly 1080i or 720p. In other words, the capability of these new very high resolution screens is far exceeding the resolution of the material being made today.

At some point I supposed all TVs will be 8K, just as today most TVs are 4K. That might be the only choice consumers have at some point. But I don’t think that will automatically mean that there will be 8K content to play on them.

 

[John]

I tend to feel the same way. However, I recognize I'm a grown adult that has grown accustomed to a certain quality level (and can even feel fane watching things *below* that quality level). Sometimes things with lower quality even have a bit of charm in my eyes.

I don't remember how I felt about similar upgrades in the past. I was aware of them, but not the tech levels involved. Do either of you remember your impressions of the quality of a tech jump like this when you were from 12 to 16? I feel like that is the generation this kind of change this will capture and the rest of us will "catch up" so to speak as it becomes more commonplace.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Do either of you remember your impressions of the quality of a tech jump like this when you were from 12 to 16?

We didn’t really have this frequency of tech jumps when I was those ages.

For people in the U.S., standard definition NTSC format video was the common standard from about 1950-2000. That’s more or less fifty years where everything was essentially locked in place. There were small refinements in how TVs were made and how they looked, but it was essentially the same.

The biggest leap that I’ve experienced in quality/user experience wasn’t standard definition to high definition, or high definition to 4K, but just going from VHS tapes to DVD. The advent of streaming, where suddenly things were available at the touch of a button without leaving the house, was also a big leap for me. Nothing else in terms of quality or delivery options has come close to having the impact on me that those things did. DVDs, which I starred getting in the standard definition era, looked so much better than any VHS tapes or TV broadcasts I had ever seen. When HDTVs started coming out, DVDs looked great on those too. Streaming was similarly groundbreaking for me just because it separated the act of watching a program of my choosing at a time of my choosing from the act of acquiring a physical object. Being able to see movies when I wanted without going to a store or waiting for a mail order package to arrive was a game changer.

Everything else to me has just been incremental evolutions. And I don’t mean to put that down. But growing up as a kid who had to take a 5 mile round trip bike ride to rent a video and then another one the next day to return it, nothing has had the same impact on me as those two things. Movies went from being real effort to track down to things I could get at the touch of a button.

 

[jayembee]

4K is definitely the end for me. In addition to the above comments about 8K being pretty much pointless for the typical home viewer, I'm approaching 70 years old, I'm retired, and I can't justify continuing to upgrade endlessly.

 

[John]

For people in the U.S., standard definition NTSC format video was the common standard from about 1950-2000.

Ah, I was born right at '90, so this makes a lot of sense. I can sort of remember the changes, but not the exact definitions of what they were. A combo of growing up with grandparents and people just being less tech-oriented in general back in those days made the 'names' of the tech upgrades considerably less potent in my mind.

Streaming was similarly groundbreaking for me

TRUE. This is the big technological change in movie tech I'll always remember. It affected daily life. In senior year of HS (07-08) the gf and I would walk/drive down to the movie rental place on the corner once a week, minimum. Sometimes even go to those discount DVD places, or even the combined used bookstore/used DVD stores and grab a few. By sophomore year of college, that wasn't completely gone from our entertainment lineup... but it was much, much less a part of the lineup.

 

[jcroy]

This is mostly being led by manufacturers who want to turn TVs from being the kind of thing you purchase once a decade or so into the kind of thing you replace every couple of years, like a phone.

There are some genuine uses for 8K and higher resolution displays, but it’s not for the average consumer. Think more in terms of billboards, stadium displays, medical imaging, that kind of thing.

A next generation of video game consoles, might very well drive the consumer market for higher resolution screens once LG / Samsung (or somebody else) has got the manufacturing process down to a commodity science.

 

[jcroy]

4K is definitely the end for me. In addition to the above comments about 8K being pretty much pointless for the typical home viewer, I'm approaching 70 years old, I'm retired, and I can't justify continuing to upgrade endlessly.

I'm still on standard 1080p HD screens, until my tv dies and I have to buy a new screen. 1080p screens are not available anymore.

By the time my tv dies, who knows. It might already be common 8K by then?

 

[Keith Cobby]

Based on the image quality of some 4k discs, this is indeed the end of the line. Broadcast television may be in 8k although there is very little in 4k (in the UK) currently. It is satisfying, however, to realise that I won't have to buy Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon ever again!

 

[John Dirk]

It's an interesting topic because manufacturers aren't dumb or blind to consumer preferences. If we [as enthusiasts] have essentially no interest in 8K, then the average consumer is clearly not concerned or interested, yet the products are still being produced. I can't explain it.

On a similar note, my new projector has "8K E-Shift." Experimenting with it, I've found it adds little perceptible value to most DVD content but can be worthwhile for UHD discs in some cases. As the old axiom goes, "garbage in, garbage out." In other words, if the source material is already good, there's no real need for an up-conversion and if it isn't, the up-conversion isn't going to help anyway.

 

[jcroy]

I've been watching some pretty stunning 8 and 12K demo material on Youtube. As pretty as those images are, though, I don't have any use for them outside of National Geographic-type content. I guess Sports are another outlet for those crystal clear images but I'm not into Sports.

Even on youtube when I'm listening/watching to a music clip, or content which doesn't have any interesting video such as video feeds from live podcasts, lectures, seminars, news, etc ... I deliberately set the video resolution to 240p or even 144p.

"Not interesting video" is stuff like an entire youtube feed is just a video of the host talking.

 

[jcroy]

It's an interesting topic because manufacturers aren't dumb or blind to consumer preferences. If we [as enthusiasts] have essentially no interest in 8K, then the average consumer is clearly not concerned or interested, yet the products are still being produced. I can't explain it.

A better question is whether Joe Sixpack or Jane Q Public even knows what an 8K screen is.

Once 8K screens become common and all Joe Sixpack has to do is just plug in the cable box / streaming device via an HDMI cable, will they even know that they are on an 8K screen?

 

[cineMANIAC]

There may even be a different kind of cable needed for 8K other than HDMI. Or is that the end of the line as far as cables?

 

[jcroy]

There may even be a different kind of cable needed for 8K other than HDMI. Or is that the end of the line as far as cables?

I'm guessing the initial batch of 8K screens, will be backwards compatible with older HDMI running at standard HD or 4K resolutions. Otherwise Joe Sixpack will be returning such "defective" tv screens to the retailer, and complaining that it doesn't play anything.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

If we [as enthusiasts] have essentially no interest in 8K, then the average consumer is clearly not concerned or interested, yet the products are still being produced. I can't explain it.

They’re trying to turn TVs from being a once in a decade or longer purchase into a disposable commodity to be replaced regularly like smartphones. It’s not quite planned obsolescence but just a cycle where whatever number of Ks your last TV was, next time you buy, it’ll be something different. At some point maybe they’ll realize that it’s diminishing returns, but as long as corporations are rewarded more for putting new products onto the market than they are for maintaining existing but useful products, we’re all probably trapped in this cycle.

But for most people, I think any future upgrades will happen like they did with 4K - someone’s older TV will die, they’ll go to buy a new TV, and they’ll get whichever kind is available.

I don’t think we’re likely to see the kind of mass consumer purposeful upgrades that people made switching from standard definition to high definition again.

 

[jcroy]

But for most people, I think any future upgrades will happen like they did with 4K - someone’s older TV will die, they’ll go to buy a new TV, and they’ll get whichever kind is available.

Back in the day, the tv screen could last over 25+ years outright before dying. A few of my relatives were still using mid-late 1970s era color tv screens until the early-mid 2000s when their tvs finally died.

In more recent times, my tv screens typically died when the power supply went kaput after about a decade.

 

[John]

I remember ~2015 having a monitor bust on me and having very little money. I figured I'd just go get an older model, on the cheap. Yeah... those didn't exist.

It doesn't even have to be a part of a "planned obsolescence" thing... just make it "better and better" to justify continual price upgrades. Though, as stated before, I think Gen Z and younger will take to the upgrades much faster than those 30+.

 

[jcroy]

Based on the image quality of some 4k discs, this is indeed the end of the line. Broadcast television may be in 8k although there is very little in 4k (in the UK) currently.

In the case of broadcast television such as the news, the transition to native 8K or higher will likely be highly dependent on whether the camera companies are able to manufacture newer 8K+ camera models at a "commodity" price (relatively).

My thinking behind this, is asking why was the mid-2000s Doctor Who revived initially only filmed at a non-HD pal resolution during the Eccleston and Tennant doctor eras (2005-2008). Some news networks were already broadcasting in HD at that time, such as CNN. My guess was that by 2009, high def video cameras were becoming commodities (relatively) and the older pal equipment was reaching its "end of life".

 

[Josh Steinberg]

asking why was the mid-2000s Doctor Who revived initially only filmed at a non-HD pal resolution during the Eccleston and Tennant doctor eras (2005-2008).

Because it was a low budget show produced by Britain’s equivalent of PBS, and that was their standard operating procedure at the time.

 

[jcroy]

I don’t think we’re likely to see the kind of mass consumer purposeful upgrades that people made switching from standard definition to high definition again.

It would have to be something very big, such as a holodeck becoming a commodity consumer product.