Time to junk your HDTV, here comes UHDV! [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Woochifer
06-03-2004, 01:44 PM
Very interesting article in today's NY Times about the future of high def video. Yup, looks like NHK (the Japanese broadcast network that was at the forefront of both HDTV and stereo broadcasts) is developing a standard for UHDV (Ultra High Definition Video). They're aiming for resolution 16x greater than HDTV and a refresh rate of 60 fps. Another kicker in all this is that they are proposing a 22.2 audio system (10 channels at ear level, 9 channels overhead, and 3 channels below, with two subwoofer channels)! I don't know about you, but this proposed system was obviously developed without spousal approval in mind! 9 overhead channels?! WTF!

And for this kind of system, we're talking LOTS of megabytes of data needed to do this. The 18 minute UHDV test video required 3.5 terrabytes of storage, which is the equivalent of about 750 DVDs! I guess even Blue-Ray won't suffice here.

At least, we still got a while before we need to scrap our HDTV investments, since NHK doesn't expect this to happen for several years. Anyway, the article's below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03next.html

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Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER

Published: June 3, 2004

HIGH-DEFINITION television may be only just beginning to catch on, but researchers at the Japanese national broadcaster NHK are already working on a successor. The format, called Ultra High Definition Video, or UHDV, has a resolution 16 times greater than plain-old HDTV, and its stated goal is to achieve a level of sensory immersion that approximates actually being there.

At a picture size of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels - that works out to 32 million pixels - UHDV's resolution trounces even high-end digital still cameras. HDTV, by comparison, has about two million pixels, and normal TV about 200,000 (and only 480 lines of horizontal resolution versus 4,000 with UHDV).

Add to that UHDV's beefed-up refresh rate of 60 frames per second (twice that of conventional video), projected onto a 450-inch diagonal screen with more than 20 channels of audio, and you've got an impressive home theater on your hands.

Of course, UHDV's current dimensions make it impractical for most homes. The NHK researchers are investigating how to squeeze all those pixels onto smaller screens.

But the project aims to do more than just make home entertainment more realistic. The UHDV standard may someday find applications in museums, hospitals, shopping malls or other places where a keener representation of detail might be desirable.

All of that is a long way off, however, because the standard is still in the early stages of development. UHDV "will take many years," said Fumio Okano, a researcher with the network. But NHK is familiar with long-term projects: it began developing the HDTV standard in 1964, and the first high-definition content arrived only in 1982.

The pixel count of UHDV may be impressive, but as anyone who has tried to watch TV on a sunny beach knows, pixels are not the whole picture. "Resolution is only one of the key measurements," said John Lowry of Lowry Digital Images, a company in Burbank, Calif., that digitizes films at the highest possible quality for archival purposes. Perhaps even more important than pixels, he said, is the dynamic range of an image, which is measured in terms of contrast ratio. The eye can perceive contrasts between the brightest white and the darkest black of roughly 100,000 to one, whereas today's best projectors can only muster levels of about 4,000 to one.

To achieve truly realistic images, Mr. Lowry said, "the blacks have to be really black, while still seeing the glint off a diamond."

So while current projection technology cannot meet the demands of UHDV, the standard excels in other crucial areas, for example breadth of view. While both UHDV and HDTV use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio (standard TV uses 4:3), HDTV offers only a 30-degree field of view horizontally, whereas UHDV's massive screen size expands this to about 100 degrees, said Mr. Okano, who said his research indicates that this angle is where "immersive sensation" peaks.

In developing UHDV, NHK has also focused on sound. The standard calls for 22.2 sound: 10 speakers at ear level, 9 above and 3 below, with another 2 for low frequency effects. It is a setup that is well beyond the level of the multichannel systems currently in vogue, like the 5.1 surround system.

All those sound channels and all those image pixels add up to a lot of data. In test, an 18-minute UHDV video gobbled up 3.5 terabytes of storage (equivalent to about 750 DVD's). The data was transmitted over 16 channels at a total rate of 24 gigabits per second, thousands of times faster than a typical D.S.L. connection.

The realism creates other complications. The NHK is studying the physical and psychological effects of UHDV on audiences. One concern is a kind of motion sickness, which researchers attribute to a combination of the wide viewing angle, the massive image and the on-screen motion.

There are other reasons to shy away from maximum reality, some of them aesthetic. "There is a very common practice," Mr. Lowry said, "of putting a filter on a camera just to soften the image, to reduce the resolution." Movie stars are now learning the hard way that high-definition is hard on human imperfections: blemishes and bad makeup invisible to conventional TV suddenly jump to the fore when filmed in high-definition format; how will aging celebrities fare with UHDV?

But UHDV's developers do not intend the standard exclusively as a vehicle for Hollywood, or even for sports or news, where HDTV has flourished. They point to potentially useful applications in medicine, education, or art appreciation. The new format has also been designed to be compatible with other standards - unlike, for example, IMAX, a 70-millimeter film format that has unsurpassed quality but a unique infrastructure that limits its mass-market potential.

Are audiences even warming up to high-definition television? While sales of HDTV sets are gradually increasing, the growth remains less than spectacular. With only 15 million to 18 million HDTV sets currently in the United States, "we haven't even scraped the tip of the iceberg yet," said Vamsi Sistla, an analyst with the research firm Allied Business Intelligence.

Navigating the jungle of standards and terminology remains confusing, and a complete high-definition set (including tuner) costs several thousand dollars. Consumers, Mr. Sistla said, "are not too keen on the nitty-gritty. They're looking at the price point, at sexy flat screens.''

The NHK is still years from having to worry about how to sell UHDV to consumers. Perhaps the format will always be out of reach for most consumers. However, while it took 40 years, HDTV eventually gained a foothold.

"I applaud them," Mr. Lowry said of the NHK. "They are reaching off into what a lot of people might call never-never land at the moment. But why not?"

topspeed
06-03-2004, 01:53 PM
No thanks, I'll just wait for the new hologram units being developed in conjuntion with Bose.

nick4433
06-03-2004, 02:44 PM
22.2 you say? Wooch, for a while I thought you were making this whole thing up my friend. Man, I am not going 6.1 yet as there isn't the "right" kind of space required for 6.1 in my listening area yet. I have seen and heard many a 6.1 systems sound like crap with crappy seperation in the back and you talk about 22.2!!

Well for those that are interested in the 22.2 system, now would be a good time to start buying those additional speakers so you'd have all 22.2 ready in the next 5-7 years. (LOLOL)

Woochifer
06-03-2004, 03:06 PM
22.2 you say? Wooch, for a while I thought you were making this whole thing up my friend. Man, I am not going 6.1 yet as there isn't the "right" kind of space required for 6.1 in my listening area yet. I have seen and heard many a 6.1 systems sound like crap with crappy seperation in the back and you talk about 22.2!!

Well for those that are interested in the 22.2 system, now would be a good time to start buying those additional speakers so you'd have all 22.2 ready in the next 5-7 years. (LOLOL)

Nickster -

Y'know, I once made just a sarcastic reference to 22.4 as a rhetorical response to what I then though was a mad dash to "7.1"! Little did I know how close to reality that madness actually was.

Maybe I should just up the ante right now: Golly gee Nick, next thing you know those crazy audio companies will start jamming 56.8 formats down our throats!

Now, let's see if someone's insane enough to propose THAT kind of system! Hope this doesn't get too widely distributed, someone's liable to think that's a brilliant idea.

Terrence has said that DTS already has capacity to go well beyond 7.1 discrete, and recently had good things to say about T. Holman's 10.2 demonstration system. Just as a practical matter, I think overhead channels are where I draw the line (and in the past, I've commented that T. Holman must not visit too many typical living rooms because I'd love to hear him tell my wife where those 10 speakers and two subs should go!). My 5.1 setup has already been moved around a couple of times and having 9 overhead speakers and 3 floor level speakers to account for just wouldn't seem feasible for anything other than a dedicated theater room. It took me two years to piece together all of the speakers for my 5.1 setup. At that rate, a 22.2 setup would take me 11 years to put together! At the end of that process, then who knows what other upgrades will await me. Crazy...

Woochifer
06-03-2004, 03:13 PM
No thanks, I'll just wait for the new hologram units being developed in conjuntion with Bose.

Holographic?! Yikes, that's almost as science fictioney as direct synaptic inputs (which I guess would make all home theater systems obsolete well after I'm pushing daisies!)! I guess if Bose is developing it, are they going to do any direct/reflecting chicanery with the opticals as an extension of their "stereo everywhere" edict? :)

woodman
06-03-2004, 03:18 PM
Ah, the Japanese - what a race!

They single-handedly took our technologies and improved on them - refined them - and found ways to mfg. them for less costs - developed business styles that are (or at least should be) the model for the rest of the world to follow - did things that anyone would applaud as just good, common sense approaches - then, they can turn right around and launch themselves into LooneyTunesVille and take extremism to a whole new level in an attempt to elevate it into an art form!

22.2 channels of audio, indeed! How totally absurd! 3.5 Terrabytes of storage for an 18 minute program! How totally absurd! 32 million pixels! How totally absurd! 16 channels of RF bandwidth? Ya gotta be kidding me! The U.S. government rejected the idea of Hi-Def television when the NHK proffered a proposal that required only 6 channels of RF bandwidth (36 MHz) to transmit.

I must applaud the ingenuity that went into developing this, but ... it will never, never, never, ever "fly" as a commercial entity - and "you can take that to the bank" as Baretta used to say (before he was arrested for murdering his wife that is). The author of the article also displays his ignorance of television technology when he says ... "... only 480 lines of horizontal resolution". This is a common misconception - that 480 is a horizontal resolution figure, when in truth it's the number of horizontal scanning lines or, in a fixed-pixel display, the number of pixels in the vertical plane - which translates to vertical resolution.

Lastly, I think that by authoring such an article - although it IS interesting in and of itself, it's in reality actually doing a disservice to the TV mfg. industry that is trying to entice people into buying new TV sets to take advantage of the coming digital era in TV. Now, along comes an article which (some) people will take as a sign that what they're being touted to buy is really a "pig-in-a-poke" ... soon to become obsolete! Tsk, tsk.

Glad you brought it to our attention though, Wooch

topspeed
06-03-2004, 08:56 PM
Holographic?! Yikes, that's almost as science fictioney as direct synaptic inputs (which I guess would make all home theater systems obsolete well after I'm pushing daisies!)! I guess if Bose is developing it, are they going to do any direct/reflecting chicanery with the opticals as an extension of their "stereo everywhere" edict? :)

It was a joke. You know...a gag. Hurl.