Welcome to the New Wave of 4K

Like the Imagine Dragons song Radioactive:
“Welcome to the New Age, To the New Age”

4K- Ultra HD is here In its 3840 x 2160 glory

To quote a line from Dark Knight’s Bane,
           "To the Uninitiated”
Its four times better in resolution.
The sets made their debut this year at the
Consumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas.

    

  

Every televison manufacturer was there showcasing their models, 

the first major manufacturer to make it out the gate was Sony.

So to make this information more accessible and relevant at this moment I will stick with only Sony, It’s not a bias, but if you want to get into Specs and actual costs from its initial sales then go with what is out. The real benefit of this new wave of technology,is that LED television sets are dropping considerably compared to last year.At the Electronics show set sizes ranged from 50, 80, and 100", and the coolest feature I saw was autostereoscopic capability, which allows us to view 3D content without glasses. Nintendo tried a variation of this with one of their portable gaming consoles I recall, uhmm, Like I said in the beginning,

welcome to the New Age.

 I took photos of the sets at a local Sony store with my very low pixel camera phone, it clearly does not give it justice. But of course the images were photographic in nature. They played 007 Skyfall, and I found with

 standard HD Sets, when there is quick motion on film, detail clarity is kind of lost momentarily in some cases. I did not find that with 4K sets. Its unmatched. So let me address the why; Simply put; Hollywood studios all produce films in 4K, its now the standard for directors who shoot digitally. Films like Hobbit and Pacific Rim are recorded on Red Epic, which is a 4K digital HD camera system. Televison projects like the series Justified is also shot using this technology.

With Sony they have included a Triluminos display, which allows us to view regular content shows with better picture colour quality, and the Dynamic Edge LED feature gives pictures that crisper darkness and vibrant brightness that is even better than traditional HD... Its odd, I’d never thought I would say High Definition as being traditional, since I still use a standard TV set. Which brings me to the next question, isn’t HDTV simply good enough, I just purchased a HD set not too long ago and I know a number of people who’s HD sets aren’t calibrated correctly so they are not getting the full benefit of their HD technology in recent years. And to really and truly benefit from 4k you need to sit really close to your televison set or get one well over 60" which in all honesty its not a practical alternative. Well, back at the Sony store you’ll find two or more leather seats with an 80" 4K set at the perfect distance away.

Whereupon you are invited to sit down and enjoy what Ultra High Definition has to offer, it’s a killer sales pitch, I suggest looking at the various prices and sizes, I noticed bigger isn’t always the most expensive, as the case with Sony televison sets. I found a 65" cheaper than a 55". All have a built in WiFi so you can stream netflix and content at the usual 480 or 1080p, but the chip technology will display it at far more superior level. Some manufacturers are looking at a REDRAY 4k consumer players to market your content at a 4K Level , but until other companies come out with full product launch its an alternative speculation for now.

4K as a phyiscal recording and physical playable medium is no where near ready.  The transferring of actual 4K content through current forms of multi-media platforms (ie. netflix); The data crunch on servers plus costs would be enourmous and extremely time consuming even at High Speed. This also means plyable products won't be available anytime in the next few years. But again, conversion software is here to bridge that gap  to make all things accessible. Which is good for us all, if  you have a Blue Ray collection longer than both my arms and legs. Dropping all that investment to embrace a small expensive market is unwise. Nothing as I write this blog is allegedly in the works to replace Blue Ray.....  Do any of us remember VHS?........   All systems go... Radioactive, Radioactive!