Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)
Reminds me of the "wall tv" from Fahrenheit 451:
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/summary.html
Here is the UHDV article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03next.html
<quote>
June 3, 2004
WHAT'S NEXT
Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER
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?"
</quote>
Reminds me of the "wall tv" from Fahrenheit 451:
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/summary.html
Here is the UHDV article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03next.html
<quote>
June 3, 2004
WHAT'S NEXT
Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER
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?"
</quote>
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