4K Broadcasting Speculation

[JLCitadel]

Alright boys and girls, Christmas is here! err... *Ahem*.. CES! And as we all know with CES comes the wonderful news and information surrounding a ton of tech releases which we are all excited for. For a few years now we've seen 4K TVs now 8K TVs and 4K Monitors coming to CES and getting closer and closer to general consumer purchase prices. As far as I'm aware and please do correct me if I'm wrong, current television broadcasting standards, as well as most general YouTube videos are NOT in 4K. Not only that, but most ISP and Cable Companies do not offer a bandwidth that supports 4K for television or enough bandwidth for 4K streaming in reasonable amounts of time. With the general consumer coming closer and closer to being able to afford 4K, do you think this will push or force these companies to start improving the bandwidth as well as television station broadcasters to up their services to 4K? What opinions do you have on this subject and how do you think the next year or two will play out with broadcasting, recording, connectivity, and bandwidth?

 

As always try to keep the thread informative and productive with posts.  

[TheDigitalRealm]

I think 4k will be a luxury for a long Time yet. Yes, the hardware may become cheaper, but Cable companies will be charging a huge premium just like some still do today for HD content. I know for much of rural southwest England the ISPs just can't provide the bandwidth to stream 4K yet, it will all take a lot of time to implement fully.

[What's_Bro?]

I don't know about the situation in the US, but here in Switzerland I have 150 Mb down and 15 up (so no problem for the bandwidth). Plus I heard that at CES some companies would present 4K TVs under 1000 bucks.

The real problem for me is the actual adoption of this technology, I think it would take at least 2 more years.

[SMURG]

Like @TheDigitalRealm says, it'll be a luxury for a long time yet. What I'm looking forward to is 4K Blu-ray. Frankly I find it incredibly stupid that films like The Hobbit are shot in 4K and then shipped in 1080p, on a medium which could easily hold the same film in native resolution (you can get 128GB onto a quad-layered Blu-ray disk iirc). 4K Blu-ray neatly avoids the internet bandwidth problem, and would give physical media a reason for being again - The Hobbit in 4K would be reason enough for me to buy a 4K monitor, lame as that sounds lol.

[JosipK]

Guys you have to consider the whole production process. Eventually we will all have 4K but a lot of things has to happen before that.

Companies and Studios have to replace their cameras with 4K or greater, they have to get new workstations to be able to edit and produce the content...

 

I think that in the beginning 4K video will be streamed in a lower bitrate to cover more bandwidth limits and then it will probably increase over time. 

[TheDigitalRealm]

Like @TheDigitalRealm says, it'll be a luxury for a long time yet. What I'm looking forward to is 4K Blu-ray. Frankly I find it incredibly stupid that films like The Hobbit are shot in 4K and then shipped in 1080p, on a medium which could easily hold the same film in native resolution (you can get 128GB onto a quad-layered Blu-ray disk iirc). 4K Blu-ray neatly avoids the internet bandwidth problem, and would give physical media a reason for being again - The Hobbit in 4K would be reason enough for me to buy a 4K monitor, lame as that sounds lol.

I think that if it does happen it would make sense to have 4K Blu-ray first, maybe by the end of this year or early 2015. From a business perspective it gets more people buying 4K TVs who won't be paying for 4K Cable or have the Bandwidth to handle it. I would definitely invest in 4K if Blu-ray came to support the format. I still buy physical media, simply because I like to have a physical product, and I also have a pretty decent library of physical DVDs and blu-rays.

Guys you have to consider the whole production process. Eventually we will all have 4K but a lot of things has to happen before that.

Companies and Studios have to replace their cameras with 4K or greater, they have to get new workstations to be able to edit and produce the content...

A lot of movies are already shot and edited in 4K. The production process is already there for 4K, it's just the consumer level support and better Infrastructure in regards to bandwidth.

[SMURG]

I think that if it does happen it would make sense to have 4K Blu-ray first, maybe by the end of this year or early 2015. From a business perspective it gets more people buying 4K TVs who won't be paying for 4K Cable or have the Bandwidth to handle it. I would definitely invest in 4K if Blu-ray came to support the format. I still buy physical media, simply because I like to have a physical product, and I also have a pretty decent library of physical DVDs and blu-rays.

A lot of movies are already shot and edited in 4K. The production process is already there for 4K, it's just the consumer level support and better Infrastructure in regards to bandwidth.

Spot on. I buy physical media too - although, my Blu-rays only ever get read once, and that's only so I can rip them to a digital copy. Keeps the quality as good as possible and just makes it so much more convenient for me to access. A 10GB file on my file server is a lot less cumbersome for me; Blu-ray just offers me a convenient way to obtain said file.

[MrImnotMLG]

There ways to get around it with Blu-Ray players but with ISP's. I don't think they will change for a LONG time. I think they will still sell 3Mb/s for $30 here but the appropriate speeds may be upwards of $150+ per month.

[JosipK]

A lot of movies are already shot and edited in 4K. The production process is already there for 4K, it's just the consumer level support and better Infrastructure in regards to bandwidth.

 

Just a few movies are shot in 4K and movies wont drive the mainstream adoption.

[Blue fellow]

I'm still waiting on 1080P broadcasting  :lol:

[Puppet]

I'm still waiting on 1080P broadcasting  :lol:

 

This :lol:

 

A lot of places still don't get HD broadcasts. No matter where you are, there was a decent gap between affordable 1080p monitors/tvs and actually getting it broadcast to you.

 

To be honest broadcast is dying off, by the time it will become feasible I imagine most people will be streaming/downloading their content.