Sub-Zero

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01/...47d20270000019

Adam Tyner

HDMI 2.1 supports 10K as well.

Obligatory "just because higher resolutions are supported doesn't mean the death knell of 4K will be ringing any time soon" disclaimer.

mattysemo247

Time to junk those 4K TVs! Just PM me and maybe I'll be nice to take a couple off your hands.

E Unit

Also announced at CES - Sony, and Panasonic will be entering the OLED market. Samsung is going with the quantum dot stuff. Sony's 2017 models will have both HDR and Dolby Vision.

big e

Oh for f@&k's sake. This is why I don't give a shit about 4K.

At least Panasonic is making TVs again.

story

I wonder if they'll ever make the last thing. Okay, wondering over, because no, they won't.

Josh-da-man

I'm guessing that 8k is just upselling.

I'd wager that most tvs sold are 55" or less, and the average person is not going to see any benefit of anything over 1080p in their living rooms, sitting ten feet away from their screen.

Maxflier

Dynamic High Dynamic Range?

Coral

I'll wait for the next iteration, Ultra Dynamic Super HDR. That will be the one to get.

This is how you turn consumers off - keep changing standards and formats and leave people feeling bad about the money they already spent.

480p to 1080p so quickly... from DVD to BD. Then 4k TVs comes out, and soon people realize they don't have HDR... and they're still selling 4K TVs without HDR (or limited HDR) - pissing off even more people. Now 8k is coming and yet another new format will be released with yet another iteration of HDR?

More reason to avoid physical formats.

I realised a couple weeks ago that I officially don't know a single person who buys physical formats anymore. The last of the holdouts caved in.

Streaming is king. The more standards that change and formats that are released - the more people will run to streaming.

RIP physical formats.

Adam Tyner

To be fair, nearly a decade passed between the launches of DVD and Blu-ray.

HDR is a mess for sure, but at least UHD BD does mandate that every disc support HDR10, so as long as you have a set that supports that as well, you're guaranteed to be covered.

I wouldn't fret about 8K. If there's ever a physical 8K format -- and I very much doubt there will be, at least not in the sense of DVD/BD/UHD BD -- it won't be any time soon. HDTV was on people's lips nearly forty years ago, and look how long it took that to become a commercial reality. Plus...y'know, diminishing returns and all that. I have zero doubt that 8K displays will arrive sooner rather than later, but meaningful content support is far, far off on the horizon, if it ever comes.

Streaming, which started supporting 4K before UHD BD (though not at the same level of quality)? Or these services with their own HDR issues (Vudu limited to Dolby Vision, for instance)? The likelihood that to watch everything you want, you may have to subscribe to many different streaming services, and even then there'll still be gaps where the TV shows/movies you want to watch aren't available?

By no stretch of the imagination am I saying that optical media is the One True Way, but streaming services are awfully messy in their own right.

Coral

That's really not a long time. You have to remember, a good chunk of people jumped on DVD 3-5 years in, so to them BD was released way too soon.

Most people aren't going to buy a movie/show on a physical format just to watch it one time because it's not available on the streaming service. They'll either download it illegally or just wait for a streaming service to offer it and watch many of the other content that's available. If this were such a big issue, then DVD sales wouldn't be declining and BD would've taken off.

People are aware of the limitations of streaming, but it offers enough key advantages to eclipse the downsides. I even have to admit that the idea of going to a store to buy a movie/show (or ordering online) seems pretty archaic to me nowadays. I found out last week that my 77 year old uncle was set up with Netflix a while back - and he doesn't speak fluid English and isn't very tech savvy. Even to him, buying a movie/show feels so old-fashioned now.

Josh-da-man

1080p, 4K, 8K, HDR... these things are meaningless to 99% of the population. Unless you're a hardcore tome theater nerd, you'll have no idea what HDR is.

Most people out there are running their HDTVs in torch mode with the soap opera effect on.

rw2516

Doesn't old school film max out at around 4K? Wouldn't Lawrence of Arabia in 8K have the quality of setting a tv to zoom?

Adam Tyner

1080p sets were on the market before Blu-ray. 4K sets were on the market before UHD BD. There were competing HDR standards before UHD BD was around. I might be misinterpreting, but it sounds like you're blaming optical media formats for these shifts (higher resolution displays, competing standards, etc.) and point to streaming as a way to get away from that, but that's not true at all.

Coral

I'm not putting the blame solely on physical media - I also blame the hardware manufacturers as well. Too many standards and formats have changed so quickly that it's turning many people off.

Other than the obvious advantages of streaming, it also allows people to just avoid the whole issue of being stuck with a short-term format - and doesn't force people to jump on the latest hardware. They can also just stick with their 1080p TVs for a while longer because 720p/1080p is the max. the majority of streaming content is offered in. It just allows people to put the brakes on things.

In any case, I forgot which thread I was in - discussion of streaming and the decline of physical media should be done in the other thread.

Dan

What I see a lot of people say is that 35mm film is "about" 4K and 70mm film is "about" 8K. But it's not that simple because film doesn't have resolution in the same way a digital image does. I'm willing to believe that a 35mm (or hell, even a 16mm) film could benefit from an 8K scan instead of a 2K or 4K scan, although I don't have any proof that that's the case. You'd have to see side-by-side comparisons done using the same print, I imagine.

bunkaroo

Don't give a shit about 8K, but I'm happy to see more manufacturers entering the OLED market. I was really disappointed in the Sony 70" LED panel I tried a couple years back and returned it so I won't bother with their certain to be overpriced model, but I'll definitely be interested to see what Panasonic does.

Doctorossi

One thing does excite me about the prospect of 8K which is that 8K is pretty close to the nominal limit of the best of human visual acuity, meaning there's nowhere practical to go from there with regard to spatial resolution. When we get there, we can pretty much say we're done with the whole resolution question and move on to other concerns.

Adam Tyner

The OLED that Panny showed off at CES isn't being released in the U.S. for some reason.

E Unit

Yeah, limited to Europe. I wonder why that is? And their claiming their OLED's are way brighter than any others. Shame we can't get in on these.

Geofferson

4k, 8k, OLED...heck, I'm still running my 2 Panny Plasmas and am not complaining. Haven't seen the 4k in action so maybe I'm consciously sheltering myself so I don't.

DthRdrX

Panasonic abandoned the US market awhile ago.

The most important thing at CES to me is LG's "wallpaper" OLED. They may eventually get cheap and large enough to replace most projector setups.

Adam Tyner

...although they're using an LG panel!

I'm very interested in seeing how Sony's OLED stacks up next to LG's. I was disappointed to hear that nothing in LG's 2017 line supports 3D, so I'm holding out a little hope that Sony might (although they too are using LG panels).

E Unit

LG panel, but Sony tech - which to me is where the value is. From what I've been reading, the LG panels are produced by LG Display, which sells to LG, Sony, and soon to be Samsung. yeah, I'm hoping the Sony tech will be able to give it the right picture we've been seeking.

Adam Tyner

Ditto. I'm curious to see what kind of a premium that comes at.

I'm not super-savvy about the mechanics of 3D, so I'm not sure if 3D support is something that would be in Sony's hands, or if it's a limitation of the panels that LG provides.