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Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed. It's worth considering that a good chunk of HDTV market penetration may well have been due

by roc 14y ago

Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed. It's worth considering that a good chunk of HDTV market penetration may well have been due to other factors: size/weight/power -- and the price quickly reached a point where it was roughly on par with what people had paid for the old tube tvs they were replacing. So why not? 3D/4k/8k -- these don't have any advantages over their predecessors, except that they deliver "more/better" on an axis that people demonstrably don't care too much about.

matwood 14y ago
Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed. Agreed. I know 1080p looks great and all, but 1080i/720p for many is good enough. Going from SD to any HD is such a huge jump that the next levels are only incremental and generally not worth the cost. Content restrictions are where the next revolution needs to happen. Commoditizing the cable operators away from the content is key.
Shivetya 14y ago
HD is great for sports. Far too many people associate HD television with DVD/BluRay etc when the draw for many has been sports. Now, for some of us it has been the BluRay and similar, but I am oddity amongst my friends who all watch the game in HD
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I thought that would be the big draw for 3D, having sports matches in 3D but it quickly disappeared out of the interest and went back to normal within 6 months.
sliverstorm 14y ago
Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed. This isn't a consumer choice, from what I can tell. Existing distribution networks don't want to deal with the data rates, and 1080p video is actually pretty taxing so a lot of slightly older hardware is too slow.
j_baker 14y ago
3D/4k/8k -- these don't have any advantages over their predecessors, except that they deliver "more/better" on an axis that people demonstrably don't care too much about. People don't care about picture quality? I mean, I get what you're saying, and I get why these technologies may be stillborn. But I think it's wrong to say that people don't care about these things.
- cube13 14y ago
  People do care about picture quality, but the problem now is that there's very little content that's actually in native 1080p. A lot of content is being consumed through Netflix, Amazon, or other streaming services, and most of those don't offer 1080 streams for everything. Add in the fact that most homes in the US literally cannot stream 1080p content, which is really the main barrier to all of those. I really don't think that the 4k/8k techs are stillborn. It's just going to take a long time for the content providers to catch up.
  - baddox 14y ago
    > A lot of content is being consumed through Netflix, Amazon, or other streaming services, and most of those don't offer 1080 streams for everything. And don't forget video games. This will probably change with the upcoming generation of consoles, but many Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games run a much lower resolution. Halo 3 runs at 640p [0]. Halo 4 runs at 720p (finally technically "HD") [1]. Black Ops 2 on PS3 appears to run around 720p [2]. [0] http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12821 http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid... [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-26-frank-oconnor-on-how-halo-4-gets-the-most-out-of-the-7-year-old-xbox-360 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-26-frank-oconnor-o... [2] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-black-ops-2-face-off http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-black-ops-2...
  - brigade 14y ago
    Well, 1080p requires theoretically 2.27x more bits than 720p. Though in practice it's a good bit less. HEVC promises to halve bitrates relative to H.264, so 1080p HEVC would need about the same bitrate as current 720p. So it shouldn't be too long before bandwidth isn't a significant issue for steaming 1080p. Of course, 4k needs another 3-4 times the bitrate, so it'll probably take another codec standard (~1 decade) before it becomes as widespread as 720p is now.

by roc 14y ago

matwood 14y ago

Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed. Agreed. I know 1080p looks great and all, but 1080i/720p for many is good enough. Going from SD to any HD is such a huge jump that the next levels are only incremental and generally not worth the cost. Content restrictions are where the next revolution needs to happen. Commoditizing the cable operators away from the content is key.

Shivetya 14y ago

HD is great for sports. Far too many people associate HD television with DVD/BluRay etc when the draw for many has been sports. Now, for some of us it has been the BluRay and similar, but I am oddity amongst my friends who all watch the game in HD

nicholassmith 14y ago
I thought that would be the big draw for 3D, having sports matches in 3D but it quickly disappeared out of the interest and went back to normal within 6 months.

sliverstorm 14y ago

Even with HD, it's worth noting how little 1080 content is consumed. This isn't a consumer choice, from what I can tell. Existing distribution networks don't want to deal with the data rates, and 1080p video is actually pretty taxing so a lot of slightly older hardware is too slow.

j_baker 14y ago

3D/4k/8k -- these don't have any advantages over their predecessors, except that they deliver "more/better" on an axis that people demonstrably don't care too much about. People don't care about picture quality? I mean, I get what you're saying, and I get why these technologies may be stillborn. But I think it's wrong to say that people don't care about these things.

cube13 14y ago
People do care about picture quality, but the problem now is that there's very little content that's actually in native 1080p. A lot of content is being consumed through Netflix, Amazon, or other streaming services, and most of those don't offer 1080 streams for everything. Add in the fact that most homes in the US literally cannot stream 1080p content, which is really the main barrier to all of those. I really don't think that the 4k/8k techs are stillborn. It's just going to take a long time for the content providers to catch up.
- baddox 14y ago
  > A lot of content is being consumed through Netflix, Amazon, or other streaming services, and most of those don't offer 1080 streams for everything. And don't forget video games. This will probably change with the upcoming generation of consoles, but many Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games run a much lower resolution. Halo 3 runs at 640p [0]. Halo 4 runs at 720p (finally technically "HD") [1]. Black Ops 2 on PS3 appears to run around 720p [2]. [0] http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12821 http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid... [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-26-frank-oconnor-on-how-halo-4-gets-the-most-out-of-the-7-year-old-xbox-360 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-26-frank-oconnor-o... [2] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-black-ops-2-face-off http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-black-ops-2...
- brigade 14y ago
  Well, 1080p requires theoretically 2.27x more bits than 720p. Though in practice it's a good bit less. HEVC promises to halve bitrates relative to H.264, so 1080p HEVC would need about the same bitrate as current 720p. So it shouldn't be too long before bandwidth isn't a significant issue for steaming 1080p. Of course, 4k needs another 3-4 times the bitrate, so it'll probably take another codec standard (~1 decade) before it becomes as widespread as 720p is now.