[falconeye]

Frankly, for the average home viewer in front of a normal sized TV at the standard viewing distances, their eyes can resolve better the HD detail anyway

I beg to differ. I regularly check out 4k displays and cannot agree.

Yes, when viewed from 4m distance, a 55" monitor will look the same in HD and 4k. But opposite to what experts say, the viewing distance to image size ratio (aka viewing angle) is no constant. Screens are getting bigger w/o people moving farer away. A 50" screen at 2m distance is actually quite pleasing to watch. For photo viewing, 1.5m is still ok. The point is that the viewing experience is much more immersive which is why I think the trend for wider viewing angles will continue, esp. should 3D become common (which I do still doubt). Because 3D over a narrow angle looks ridiculous, their is a reason why IMAX 3D always was wide screen.

Therefore, my experience is that HD looks soft at 40" and larger, and 4k looks soft at 80" and larger. But between 50" and 65", 4k delivers a spectacular viewing experience, like watching through a window, like somebody removed all the haze from the screen. Who has seen it immediately becomes 4k addicted. What's currently missing is the content, as screen prices dropped below $1000 already. But for photographers wanting to showcase their art, it already is the very best way to do, next to prints maybe.

[kadajawi]

Hm. Funny, I would say LCDs have a haze. When you look at a plasma that haze disappears. LCDs can't compete in terms of color, black, contrast, motion, ... These downsides are too big for me to accept a LCD screen. Even if I have to do without a bit of extra sharpness. To really see the extra sharpness of 4K you have to get really close. That's not to say there is absolutely no difference at "normal" viewing distances, but I'd say you'd have to concentrate. At least for me it's not worth giving up a plasma over it.

I've got a 1000+ Euro 24" monitor, which is as good as it gets for an LCD screen (at least amongst those I have seen, maybe there are some new expensive Eizos that are better), but just in terms of colors, motion etc. a 350 Euro 42" non FullHD plasma is between better and ridiculously better. I've also had mid range LCD screens next to the plasma, and again, even though the picture was sharper on the LED LCD, and even though I tried to adjust the LCD TV, there was no competition. Especially when I didn't use HD content. The only advantage the LCD had was sharpness, brightness (which can be a disadvantage at night) and lower power consumption.

But that's really off topic. We can be glad that they will hopefully implement 4K, there shouldn't be any downsides to it. I just hope bitrates will be higher, and who only wants FullHD can still shoot 4K if possible, and then downsample for a much sharper, clearer picture. He can also stabilize the video (hopefully the video that was already stabilized through the mechanical SR). Zoom in, pan within the frame etc. (Star Trek TNG was produced for 4:3, but sometimes they shot Cinemascope. So that they could pan & scan in shots that required green screens).

[PiDicus Rex]

LCD haze, yup,.. comes from the back-lighting. LED is better the Cold Cathode.

Plasma, yee-uck, blurry. I reckon there's something done in the image processing done inside the display, noise filtering or some such, but I have never seen a Plasma tv that I liked.

On all modern screens, first thing I do is turn all the 'enhancement' functions off, and then see what the image really looks like.

Now, OLED,... gives me a reason to give up my ex-broadcast CRT's.

But I still don't think there is any advantage in 4K over HD to average people sitting at home in their couches looking at broadcast images that we create. Most people can't even tell that the majority of what is broadcast as HD (here in Australia) is up-converted SD, or that what they see as 1920x1080, is really 1440x1080 stretched to fit.
And 80" TV's are the exception, not the norm.

4K, and 8K, offer plenty of advantages in the content creation side, but by the time it's in the viewers lounge room, via limited bandwidth and high compression of broadcast and cable, most of what you and I cherish in detail is gone.

That detail brings me back to wanting better CoDecs in all these ProSumer and Pro Grade cameras. More data means more detail, and that gives us more options on where we can send our footage.
Give the K3 (and the K-01 ) HD with CinemaDNG, and the mythic FF camera 4K CinemaDNG, put them on a decent tripod or shoulder rig, and I think I could produce vision that would make people think I was shooting on Epic or Alexa.

[kadajawi]

LCD haze, yup,.. comes from the back-lighting. LED is better the Cold Cathode.

Plasma, yee-uck, blurry. I reckon there's something done in the image processing done inside the display, noise filtering or some such, but I have never seen a Plasma tv that I liked.

On all modern screens, first thing I do is turn all the 'enhancement' functions off, and then see what the image really looks like.

Now, OLED,... gives me a reason to give up my ex-broadcast CRT's.

But I still don't think there is any advantage in 4K over HD to average people sitting at home in their couches looking at broadcast images that we create. Most people can't even tell that the majority of what is broadcast as HD (here in Australia) is up-converted SD, or that what they see as 1920x1080, is really 1440x1080 stretched to fit.
And 80" TV's are the exception, not the norm.

4K, and 8K, offer plenty of advantages in the content creation side, but by the time it's in the viewers lounge room, via limited bandwidth and high compression of broadcast and cable, most of what you and I cherish in detail is gone.

That detail brings me back to wanting better CoDecs in all these ProSumer and Pro Grade cameras. More data means more detail, and that gives us more options on where we can send our footage.
Give the K3 (and the K-01 ) HD with CinemaDNG, and the mythic FF camera 4K CinemaDNG, put them on a decent tripod or shoulder rig, and I think I could produce vision that would make people think I was shooting on Epic or Alexa.

Not sure about that. My CCFL LCD monitor looks pretty good, and IIRC high end monitors use CCFL instead of LED cause of their wider gamut. The haze I'm talking about might come from anti glare coatings? Though I don't like LCDs that don't have these coatings... better plasmas have some pretty nice coating that is like what would be used on glasses, instead of just blurrying the reflections as LCD screens do.

And I can absolutely not understand what you see with plasmas. There is no filtering, no denoising, no enhancements in a plasma (not that I know of). Well, there are some that have these features, but they are not needed. For a LCD it is hard to switch between colors, shades, brightness, ... it takes some time. That's why they can't deal with noise at all, and need massive filtering. There is the overdrive technology widely employed these days, but it is good at changing from black to white and back. But if it is from grey to a slightly darker grey...

On the other hand a plasma is very fast. It can display any content easily, no matter how noisy. The only thing you can't do is stand very close to the screen and observe it that way. Plasmas can only display something like 25000 or 30000 colors, the rest is done via dithering. Works very well, but you can't touch the screen with your nose. At any reasonable viewing distance there shouldn't be a problem, it shouldn't distract or even be noticeable.

OLED I'm not 100% convinced yet. They too can't produce 100% black, at least my phone can't (though it gets very close), but the burn in is quite bad. Colors are too saturated, but that can be calibrated. Colors, brightness etc. changes depending on how you used the screen. Say you always watch Cinemascope content on your OLED screen, and then you watch something 16:9, you may notice that the upper and lower part of the screen is brighter. Similar issue as with plasma screens. Also, only expect sort of affordable OLED TVs in 3, 4 years.

A plasma is the closest thing to a CRT you can get. It is relatively similar anyway. (SED is even closer to a CRT, but the tech seems to have gone no where...). I wonder what happened to Laser TVs... LG seems to have a projector using lasers that is pretty good, and Mitsubishi had rear projection TVs using lasers. I have never seen any of those though.

4K will look great on the next generation of discs. A Blu Ray for example looks much, much better than 1080p streamed through the internet, or through cable or satellite. As long as there is enough bandwidth there is an advantage. Even 1080p streams over the internet could look quite good if the encoder would be able to make use of all h264 features and have enough time/power to encode. Problem is some decoder chips can't decode those files then... I hope when they switch to h265 broadcasts/discs are specified so that device makers need to support it all at obscene settings.

I wonder what CRTs you have. 1080p ones? I've never seen one of those, except for 1080p capable computer monitors...

[kenyee]

What'll be interesting is what kind of external video recorder or SD cards is really needed for 4K recording.

In the footnotes of the GH5/GH4K preview was mention of it needing a prototype UHS-3 (3 channels instead of the 1 of UHS-1 SDXC cards). I'm actually surprised it needs that much speed because 200Mbit/sec should be under 30MB/sec...

And it should be interesting to see whether Sony/Canon respond to Panasonic pushing the cost/performance edge...

[PiDicus Rex]

Won't be convinced on Plasma. Besides, they eat more power then CRT.
And yes, mine are PC monitors set to sRGB, and ex-Broadcast frequency unlocked Sony Trinitrons capable of over a thousand lines of resolution, modded to match 16:9 vertical deflection.
(My 'formal' qualifications are in electronics, specifically TV and Videotape systems)

OLEDs on phones are different to OLED screens for broadcast cameras, but yeah, on price, they'll be pretty steep for a while yet.
But damn,... do they help make for SHARP! focus

Kenyee : Yes, I've been wondering the same thing, the easiest solution if I was designing a new camera, would be to fit a SATA controller and use mSata drives internally, which would also make it very easy to sell external 'branded' add-ons for a camera, such as a grip with a slot for a full sized SSD, dual mSata drives, or an external connection to a eSata drive.

[kadajawi]

Not so sure about power consumption. My 42" plasma is usually around 130-150W, and newer better models consume less. My 32" LCD from the mid 00s is around that consumption too, only the new 32" LED TV is around 30W. A 42" CRT would probably also consume a lot.

I see. Yeah there were some very fine CRT computer monitors.

Haven't seen those OLEDs on broadcast cameras. If you want to nail focus focus peaking can be a wonderful helper too though. You effortless know what place is in focus.

I wonder if DSLRs will get OLED screens any time soon...

Mh yes, SATA would be my choice too. For Cinema DNG I could imagine using 2 or more SD slots, and then saving each frame into a single DNG file, spread over the memory cards. Later copy all into a folder and merge.

200 Mbps is quite "low". Sony is using up to 600 Mbps for their 4K stuff IIRC, at least with the F5/F55, and their XAVC specs seem to allow up to 900 Mbps? Not sure if there is much benefit to that.

Oh, did I mention? The iPhone 5s does 4K...

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Last edited by kadajawi; 01-14-2014 at 04:19 AM.

[PiDicus Rex]

Sony have had OLED 7" and 11" displays available for some time now, the type that fit on studio cameras with box lenses and pedestals.

mSata instead of Sata - mSata drives are close to the size of SxS and P2 cards.

CinemaDNG is a sequence of DNG stills, with audio in separate files. The 'Compressed' version should be able to be written to SD, as BMD have already shown.

http://www.cinema-dng.com/?page_id=26