Certainly an interesting discussion, and one that came up frequently at our recent SMPTE "Bits by the Bay" conference put on by the Washington, DC section of SMPTE. Here's a few big themes I saw.
1) 4K is a reality for production. Many big operators (Discovery and ESPN were the two mentioned by name) are building their next plants as 4K.
2) HEVC (high efficiency video coding) is what will make 4K distribution possible. This is another order of magnitude in coding efficiency over h264, which itself was an order of magnitude more efficient than MPEG-2. But just because 4K can be possible over the existing distribution doesn't mean that operators will find a business model to support 4K. HEVC is just as likely to be used to compress even more shitty-looking channels into the same bandwidth as it will be used to deliver great-looking 4k content. Will an MSO really sell the customer 1 channel of 4K when they can sell them 6-8 channels of HD, or 60+ channels of SD?
3) Do consumers really care? During a presentation on audio (one of several, as CALM was a focus of the conference), the presenter asked how many in the audience have surround sound systems at home. The vast majority of hands in the room went up. Then the presenter asked how many actually have their STB connected IN SURROUND to their surround system. Remember, this is an audience of broadcast engineers and technicians.
Of an audience of about 120, there were less than 5 hands raised.
In addition to that, a little story from home. I have an 83" rear-projection DLP that my wife thinks is way too large, and she keeps moving the couch away from it, negating my efforts at achieving cinema-like viewing angles. The other night, my wife was watching Fox. In our market, Fox is broadcast in HD on 27.1, and is simulcast as a heavily compressed SD on 19.3. Which do you think she was watching?
All that being said, I was recently at Crutchfield to have a new stereo put in my van. While waiting, I was ENTIRELY sucked in to the Sony 4K monitor on display, which was playing 4K content off the Sony 4K player. It felt exactly like the first time I saw HD in 1996.
Where does this all lead us? I don't know - I'm just an engineer trying to keep up with the Jones'. But what I do know is that 4K is already a valuable production tool. Consumer tolerance for lower quality and more choice, combined with the business models of the content distributors are what will drive adoption (or not) of 4K, not the manufacturers. That's been conclusively proven by 3D.
Cheers,
Ben Johnson
Blue Pixel Creates | bpcreates.com
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