Panasonic Unleashes Glasses-Free 3D 103-inch 4K HDTV
Who needs 84 inches when you can have 103!
While television titans Sony and LG have been busy launching their own 84-inch 4K HDTVs, Panasonic unveiled its own monstrosity at this year's IFA in Berlin, Germany. Measuring in at a massive 103-inches, the plasma HDTV claims to be the world's largest glasses-free 3D display. Along with most of the other new displays on the IFA floor, this display features a 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution.
Unlike LG's 84-inch display that can be purchased for $22,000, the Panasonic one is still in its prototype stages with no information on a potential release date or price range. Which isn't too bad, considering the price tag certainly won't be wallet friendly by any means. Luckily for those of us with smaller display needs and smaller wallets, Panasonic also has several 20-inch 4K displays in its IFA showroom.
On the other hand, for anybody who thinks 103" of ultra-definition viewing isn't enough, Panasonic also has a demonstration of its 145-inch 8K "Super Hi-Vision" TV. With a massive resolution of 7,680 x 4,320, the TV features an image quality that trumps regular HD 16 times. As beautiful as all of these new 4K displays may be, sadly, it will still be quite some time before they reach more affordable prices.
But the 4K refers to the horizontal resolution of the screen, so you're right too in a way.
1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600
3840 x 2160 = 8,294,400
not saying that has anything to do with the naming, but don't get it twisted.
~8MP vs. ~2MP.
That IS 4x the pixel count. Time to go back to school.
IB
But the 4K refers to the horizontal resolution of the screen, so you're right too in a way.
Howze the 3d look? Visible from all angles? Thats what I want to hear about...
Up to the present, we've always measured resolution in shorthand by the number of vertical pixels, e.g. 720p, 1080i, 1080p. But the true number of vertical pixels changes based on aspect ratio: if a movie is 16:9, it truly can have 1080 vertical pixels, but if it is 2.35:1 or a different aspect ratio, it can still be 1920 pixels horizontally, but it is no longer 1080 vertical pixels.
To avoid confusion over aspect ratios incorrectly representing resolutions, the decision has been made to switch to tracking the horizontal resolution. Also, they decided to round it for convenience. Next-gen is 4k, followed by 8k. Current, by the same system, is 2k. Each time, they are doubling the width (and height follows suit), which results in 4x the resolution per step-up.
What I don't know is if we'll always use numbers under the rounded figure, like 1920 under 2k or 7680 under 8k. Some have attempted to establish exactly 4,000 pixels horizontal, and others 4,096 pixels horizontal. It probably doesn't make that big of a difference visually, but as resolutions increase, our specifications stray further and further from the actual measurements, just like selling hard drives listing the capacity assuming a TB is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, rather than the actual space which comes out less, since our computers see each TB as 1,099,511,627,776. Not a big deal with the old MB hard drives, but when we start seeing petabyte and exabyte arrays it is increasingly deceiving, since the rounding errors are compounded with each larger prefix.
you could watch the Hobbit which is shot at native 4K to your hearts content.... and then you can purchase all your favorite films all over again as they are upscaled and cleaned up again for this new standard. Sadly TV shows shot in SD or early HD will have a hard time looking good on these new displays... Film upscales well as it is analogue (rough equivilant to somewhere between 4K and 8K from what I understand), and newer movies (after Phantom Menace I believe) started shooting in 4K. But everything from TV, and all movies shot in that awkward time between digital and 4K digital will have a rough time transitioning, and when 8K hits simply nothing will look quite right on it.
If you are up-scaling from 1080p to 4k, it should look great, just each pixel of content is represented by four pixels of the TV. It wouldn't be any worse than 1080p, certainly. Unlike uneven resolution multipliers, you don't have to try to represent an image across pixel numbers that don't line up. Same with 4k into 8k.
I'm no expert on image processing, but if they develop (or already have??) some system of guessing what pixels should come between pixels, or can shade pixels like anti-aliasing, potentially 1080p could could better on a 4k or 8k screen than it does on a 1080p screen.
Alternatively, we could just use the 8k screen to simultaneously watch all three Lord of the Rings movies and the first Hobbit movie, all in 4k. =D
The 4 in 4K has nothing to do with UHDTV being 4 times bigger than Full HD. It has to do with the number of horizontal pixels which are almost 4000, hence 4K. Also the 4K resolution has appeared in movie theaters prior to TVs, and usually have 4096 horizontal pixels. 4K is the successor of 2K that has 2048 horizontal pixels.