4K is here

[texshooter]

Anybody use this for photo editing?

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bokxOQ4xOA8

Say goodbye to your Eizo Display.
Say goodbye to your desktop PC
Say goodbye to your Wacom Cintiq and Intuos tablets
Say goodbye to your traveling laptop.
Say goodbye to your 17x22" inkjet printer.

And say hello to the Toughpad.

[digitaldog]

Say goodbye to your Eizo Display.

I don't think so (do you really know what that reference display provides)? Wide gamut? Internal calibration in the panel?
When NEC comes out with their 4K SpectraView, the above statement might be true (or Eizo will come out with a 4K too).

[D Fosse]

No, I'm not selling my CG yet...and I'm very comfortable waiting the whole 4K thing out. There's no rush. Having more pixels does no good if you can't trust them to begin with. There are so many things that are vastly more important in a display than resolution/size.

Rhetorical question: If you have the choice between a reference quality 1920 x 1200 and a mediocre 4K, at the same price point, which one is the smart choice?

[digitaldog]

Reference quality for sure. And I suspect my first (a Radius Pressview 17") had a lower rescission than 1920x1200.

[BernardLanguillier]

I had the chance to play with an early version last years and it is pretty amazing a device!

Cheers,
Bernard

[MrSmith]

i’ll still probably buy another 24-27in HD CG class Eizo monitor, i much prefer working on big pixels at 100% than interpolated retina type pixels to get a big enough image for fine retouching.
not to mention the wide gamut, brightness uniformity etc that a top class monitor has.

[D Fosse]

Yes, good point. Sometimes you do need to pixel-peep at 100%, and that's so much easier if the pixels are relatively big.

I don't doubt that 4K is visually stunning, but that's not what I need. I'm basically looking at the screen to find faults...not reassurance. My CG 246 is really good at finding faults 

[Telecaster]

Yep, I currently have no interest in a 4K display for editing. But for viewing...I expect my next TV will be able to handle it. Photos should look quite nice presented on a good 55" or so 4K panel.   

-Dave-

[Czornyj]

I had tested new NEC PA322UHD and NEC EA244UHD - both are super wide gamut GBr LED, hardware calibrated displays with high bit 3DLUT and digital uniformity compensation, so you get both ultimate quality and super sharp, print-like image, smooth text and vector shapes. I'm sold

[Alan Klein]

I saw 4k on a 65" HDTV at Best Buy.  It looks great.  Not for editing photos and 4K videos but for displaying them in a slide and video show should be terrific.

[alifatemi]

I don't think so (do you really know what that reference display provides)? Wide gamut? Internal calibration in the panel?
When NEC comes out with their 4K SpectraView, the above statement might be true (or Eizo will come out with a 4K too).

Eizo has come out already with its new 30.5" EV3237, although its not in its pro Color Edge range but I am sure they release its Coloredge model  soon:

http://www.eizo.com/global/products/flexscan/ev3237/index.html

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Thanks for info, nice to see you again on these forums!

Best regards
Erik

Eizo has come out already with its new 30.5" EV3237, although its not in its pro Color Edge range but I am sure they release its Coloredge model  soon:

http://www.eizo.com/global/products/flexscan/ev3237/index.html

[alifatemi]

Thanks Erik. Actually last year, I don't remember where, but I read an interview of  NHK Japan, proclaiming NHK is against 4K because they believe 8k technology is not far away and they already has the prototype; they had shown a big monitor with 8K capability and jaw-dropping picture in 8K, probably in CES. NHK believes that moving the whole industry to 4k now and spending billions of Dollars worldwide on 4K is just wasting the money and resources and also puzzling the consumer market and people because  if we wait for one or two years( and it was last year) we can move straight to 8k instead, which has far distinctive and more meaningful higher resolution and quality compare to current HD. Besides we give time the whole industry to adapt itself to new standards; Hollywood needs to upgrade its current technology, consumer companies like Sony or philips need time to release new UHD cameras, players, projectors and edit console, broadcasting and software/hardware industry also are lag behind worldwide. You remember how long did  it take for HD to reach to this point that now you can see HD TV in some houses? so NHK believes now that we are moving to upper quality, it is better be the ultimate 8K which is absolutely available right now. Shouldn't we consume the mother earth resources more wisely? Shouldn't we wait a little longer for 8K?

[mlewis]

The problem with 8K, apart from there being very little sources, is bandwidth.  4K video is pushing against current bandwidth limitations.  OTA broadcasts would have issues with the bandwidth required for 4K let alone any higher resolutions.  Streaming over the internet would require connections faster than most people have.  You can stream 4K now from certain providers but it is heavily compressed and you need a fast stable connection.  Then there are data caps.  Many people have those on their internet connections and 8k video would very quickly reach those.

There would be problems actually filming in 8K too.  These would be bandwidth related as well.  The storage devices would have to be very fast to cope.  Such items would not be readily available for a good while.

8K television sets would be horrifically expensive.  Manufacturing LCD panels with that many pixels and getting financially viable yields will take a while.

Hollywood films are not all filmed in 4K now.  Even if they are the digital intermediates often aren't in 4K and visual effects often aren't rendered in 4K.

[hjulenissen]

The problem with 8K, apart from there being very little sources, is bandwidth.
...

Offering 8k end-to-end with nice pixel-to-pixel detail is going to be demanding.

That is not to say that there is _no_ benefit from doing 8k in parts of the chain. By doing "oversampling", you can effectively work around many image scaling issues. A (hopefully large) 8k tv could show 4k content with great quality, and show high-quality still images with even better quality. The question remains at what screen size/distance/eye-sight you need to appreciate the quality increase, though.

-h

[alifatemi]

I don't know what NHK people had in their mind suggesting 8k, as they are one of important leaders  in HD generally but I don't believe industry is ready for them even for 4k; good news is photographers can benefit either format because we already have very high res files to feed our UHD monitors assuming they are built professionally hopefully by Eizo or NEC!

[Alan Klein]

Our current HDTV is 2k or around 2MP resolution.  4k is 8 MP.  8k is 32MP.  Is there enough bandwidth for 8k?

Resolution

Two resolutions are defined as UHDTV:[3][4][5]
4K UHDTV (2160p) is 3840 pixels wide by 2160 pixels tall (8.3 megapixels), which is four times as many pixels as 1920x1080 (2.1 megapixels).
8K UHDTV (4320p) is 7680 pixels wide by 4320 pixels tall (33.2 megapixels), which is sixteen times as many pixels as current 1080p HDTV, which brings it closer to the detail level of 15/70 mm IMAX.[4][13][14] NHK advocates the 8K UHDTV format with 22.2 surround sound as Super Hi-Vision.555

[hjulenissen]

Our current HDTV is 2k or around 2MP resolution.  4k is 8 MP.  8k is 32MP.  Is there enough bandwidth for 8k?

*Video codecs will only improve (i.e. compress a given stream into lower bandwidth for a given quality level).
*Bandwidths will improve somewhat (I have 30mbit/30mbit fibre today, 10 years ago I had 2mbps asymmetric)

Even if we often cannot feed an 8k tv with "optimal" content, having a high-rez display won't hurt. Whenever the bandwidth (or type of content) allows, there might be some perceivable benefit, and having a "semi-continous" display means that image scaling should be simpler.

-h

[Alan Klein]

For regular TV users, would there be a perceivable difference between 4k and 8k?  4k is available now.  How long before the codecs are available and the bandwidth for 8k?  The TV manufacturers are not going to wait.  They have to sell product.

I agree the cable companies aren't ready to transmit UHDTV either nor is there much available in 4k.  The advantage I see as a photographer, is that I should be able to have beautiful slide shows on a 4k or 8k UHDTV.  Also, rental disks on BluRay would be superb.   

[alifatemi]

NHK...:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089720/japans-nhk-tests-longdistance-8k-tv-broadcast-signal.html

http://advanced-television.com/2014/03/11/nhk-to-demo-8k-video-transmission-over-a-single-channel/

http://advanced-television.com/2014/06/19/nhk-pushes-on-with-8k-tv/