What the DEf??? (whats with high def?)

M

mrpink89

Was there always an obsession with high def picture? I'm 24 so I don't know how things were in the 60s or 70 and even 80s.
but growing up in the 90s I don't remember there being much talk, if not ANY talk about higher resolution T.V.'s and such.(however maybe I didn't notice)

But it seem's over the past ten years HD has exploded and yeah I don't mind it. but now 4k is coming into the scene. I ask, what's with the obsession with high def? does everything HAVE to be in perfect picture? some times grain is good. sure maybe it all comes down to the type of film. But has there always been such a societal obsession with high def picture as there is today?
 
Films have always been "high def", while it's a more recent trend in televisions. Sure - sometimes grain, or lower resolution, etc is good. You can always reduce the quality/resolution of your picture, add noise or grain, etc for stylistic purposes, but it's very hard to increase it; best to start with the highest-quality capture available to you so that you have as much information to work with as possible.

4k at this point is primarily an acquisition format, and the advantages are the flexibility it gives you in post. You can use the extra information to crop/reframe shots, stabilize or add motion in post, pull cleaner keys for greenscreen, etc.
 
The reality is when it comes to filmmaking, that traditional motion picture 35mm film can be scanned at a resolution of somewhere between 4-6k. We've had high definition an 4k acquisition for a long time.
We just haven't really been able to view it all that well.

That being said, there's nothing inherently wrong with watching old school SD, DVDs etc.
The DVD brought convenience over VHS, in addition to better quality, which is why I believe it did so much better than Blu Ray, which still does okay, but certainly not the adoption rate of DVD. Resolution alone is not necessarily enough to sway people.

I would say this. Think about all the numerous brands that sell television sets. There's plenty around. If everyone goes out and buys their TVs tomorrow, they'll all make a lot of money. But TVs are a multi-use device. How often do you buy a new TV purely based on the fact that your current one is a bit old?
So why all this technology push? Because it incentivises you to buy a new TV. If there wasn't constantly evolving and changing technology - pushes for integration and better resolution, there'd be nothing to get you to buy a new TV - and imagine how many manufacturers would go bust.

Just look at all the people who have bought 4k TVs without any supporting infrastructure to deliver 4k content to the TV.
 
Once you go high definition, there's no substitution. =D

Yeah, you just kind of missed it. HD was pretty much pie-in-the-sky before the nineties...for video, that is. Like IDOM implied, there was HD before that-----> film was HD. At least some film was.

But if you had been a videophile back then, then yeah, you would have been aware of the "obsession" with and talk about HD. It's easy to take for granted now, post HD TVs, HD DVD, and Blu-ray...or put another way, in the HD Age (like the Space Age, get it? :)). But before those things became a reality, we, those of us who loved movies and wanted to experience them on video and on home theaters the best that they could be, did plenty of pining for HD and for real HD products to hit the mass consumer market. Amen.

Trivia question. Did you know there was an HD VHS product on the market just before the optical disc options came out? D-VHS. I wasn't very interested in it, though, knowing that HD DVD and Blu-ray were coming soon. Although I see that you can use it to record from cable in HD. That would be cool.

And like IDOM said, I think it's Jax Rox who has pointed out that you really don't benefit from a 4K monitor much unless you're at 60 inches and above.
 
There's an industry push for hi-def -- more money for them all the while Hollywood is making basically the same overall crappy content.

Contents certainly did not drive the road down to hi-def. We've all been bamboozled! And they're here on this board, too.
 
We were certainly talking about HD in the 90's - hell, I think NHK was doing some HD broadcast in the 80's, and I believe The Fall Guy was the first US show to produce some episodes in HD. The problem was delivery & playback - it was neither practical, nor useful, for most people.

I remember a film professor I had telling us there would never be a widespread practical application for HD in the home because you couldn't tell the difference unless you were sitting too close to the TV. That was based on the fact that most people had 20-27" TVs at the time though, and anything bigger than that was impractical for the average home because it got so bulky, heavy, and expensive. LCD was a very immature technology at the time - I also had a typography book back then that actually claimed LCD would never be practical for high quality, full color display purposes. The technology was just too far from practical for most people to expect that it would become commonplace.

Now you can pick up a 60" LCD TV for $5-600, and you can literally 'pick it up' and hang it on a wall because it's so thin and light. That changes the whole equation, and makes HD in the home both affordable and practical for a huge chunk of the population.

4k is kind of in the same place HD was by the late 90's. We look at the way things are now and say "Who needs 4k? You can't even see the difference on most TVs!" - and it's absolutely correct to say that. But it's hard to predict what will be practical or commonplace in the home in 10-20 years.

At NAB this year I saw 1.6mm LED panel technology which can be used to build a screen of any size - from about 10 feet away you don't perceive the individual LEDs. While it's incredibly expensive at this point, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that within a decade that tech could become cheap enough that it's practical to simply cover an entire wall in a typical home living room with a display.

That may seem like a sci-fi, pie-in-the-sky prediction - but it's no more so than the idea that we'd all have high-definition 60" flat panels in our living rooms was in the 90's. And that's just based on tech that actually exists today - who knows what will emerge from the labs over the next decade or two. In the 90's it would have been absurd to suggest that millions of ordinary people would be carrying HD cameras in their pockets everywhere, everyday - let alone that those cameras would also be a telephone, pager, walkman, playstation, still camera, television, internet terminal, etc, and that they'd cost just a few hundred dollars.
 
I'm ten years older than you and was in college studying broadcasting in the late 90's. At that time nonlinear editing was all the rage and the technology was barely affordable to edit a standard definition picture. While HD was talked about, I don't think anybody ever predicted it would be the consumer standard the way it is now.

Compare to DVD players for instance - wealthier consumers started buying them in the mid 90's, and within five years they had completely replaced VHS. HD on the other hand took maybe 10 years and started in the same place that 4K is right now. It will take another 5-10 years for the technology to become affordable (both to consumers and to content creators). Then again it took 5 years for 3D technology to become affordable to the average Walmart consumer, and yet not many people seemed to care.
 
SixOhThree said:
HD on the other hand took maybe 10 years and started in the same place that 4K is right now. It will take another 5-10 years for the technology to become affordable (both to consumers and to content creators). Then again it took 5 years for 3D technology to become affordable to the average Walmart consumer, and yet not many people seemed to care.
Click to expand...

3D technology is almost there, I think. A couple years ago I purchased a 65' inch Vizio passive 3D at Costco for a little under $2,000 - Five years prior that would have been cheap for a non-HD TV of that size.

To be honest, I can't say whether or not I think 4K will catch in the same fashion as previous quality trends - There are still plenty of people who can't detect a large difference between an HD DVD and a Bluray - I certainly have trouble with it. I think 4K is more of a marketing scheme for those who always want the 'biggest and best' thing - Sort of like how Netflix boasts the 'Super HD' function (1080p) - I was never able to see the difference between that and their original HD function - But it plastered itself over my large TV marketing itself as being magnificent for my setup.
 
Actually, it looks like 3D is on the way out... Vizio's 2014 lineup doesn't have 3D at all. When the largest seller of TVs in the US drops 3D, it's a pretty good sign that the market just doesn't care about it as a feature.
 
ItDonnedOnMe said:
Actually, it looks like 3D is on the way out... Vizio's 2014 lineup doesn't have 3D at all. When the largest seller of TVs in the US drops 3D, it's a pretty good sign that the market just doesn't care about it as a feature.
Click to expand...
I was thinking the same. I noticed that Best Buy got rid of the big 3D display in front of the TV department, and the local Costco doesn't even stock them anymore.

I picked one up last year when it was very affordable and I rarely ever use the 3D feature. Prolonged viewing hurts my eyes after awhile. I've probably watched less than 10 3D films since I bought it.
 
ItDonnedOnMe said:
Actually, it looks like 3D is on the way out... Vizio's 2014 lineup doesn't have 3D at all. When the largest seller of TVs in the US drops 3D, it's a pretty good sign that the market just doesn't care about it as a feature.
Click to expand...

oh finally. praise all gods each religion contains for this blessing!
 
:lol: So if it really comes down to what will sell more TVs and get people to rebuy their video collections, have they already decided to abandon 3D for 4K as their "next big thing" to promote?

Just a thought about Blu-ray sales not taking off like DVD did, personally, I totally embrace and love HD. But I simply can't afford to, or justify, rebuying all the titles I have on DVD to upgrade to Blu-ray. It's just not gonna happen. Until I win the lottery. I gotta think there are lots of other folks out there in the same position, or who feel the same way. So my guess is it isn't a rejection of HD. It's just, you have all your DVDs, they're good enough, especially with players that can upscale them. So, the time was ripe for DVD to knock VHS (and Laserdisc) off. Not quite as ripe for HD to knock DVD out.

Also, the prices on Blu-rays were pretty crazy, and in the midst of the Great Recession, no less. There's another difference between the two, the timing and circumstances of their introductions. Nice that many titles have finally started coming down, closer to Earth in price. =)

But back to 3D, so what about theaters? Any interest among those to stop showing 3D versions? How have ticket sales been for them lately?
 
richy said:
:lol: So if it really comes down to what will sell more TVs and get people to rebuy their video collections, have they already decided to abandon 3D for 4K as their "next big thing" to promote?
Click to expand...

Based on Vizio's actions I'd say that's the case. They not only dropped 3D from their 2014 lineup, but also added 4k models starting at $1000 for a 50" TV - very aggressive compared to Sony, Panasonic, etc who are still charging $3-4k for their 4K models. Of course, Vizio hasn't actually started shipping the 4k models yet, so it may be that they jumped the gun a bit on their ability to produce panels at that price point in volume. But they're clearly betting on 4k over 3D at this point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top