Duration of HD ( as a system ) ?

[Kurth Bousman]

OK , we know how long ntsc and pal lasted , how long do you think HD will last before they invent something bigger , sharper, better ? Many people are buying into the cheap hd camera revolution. When will they have to upgrade their systems for superhd ? To look at the canon h1 vs. xl1 , the entry level was almost tripled . Most want their investments to last at least as long as the vx1000 did ? Of course the vx cost about the same as the fx1 almost 10 years later . But ....What are your thoughts ? thanks Kurth

[Chris Hurd]

Good question. The "next big thing" coming around the bend already has a name... UHD, or Ultra High Definition. Because you know, whatever we have now is never enough, right? Where do you go from High Def, well you go to Ultra High Def. I believe both 2K and 4K systems fit within the definitions for UHD. See our RED Camera forum for some insight on a 4K UHD camera coming up hopefully before this time next year.

[Mike Marriage]

I personally think 720p is pretty good for TV sized screen (up to about 42") and 1080p on anthing up to cinema sized. I don't know if we really NEED more than that - but if people will BUY more than that, they will make it and sell it!

Obviously UHD etc is handy for IMAX and all that jazz.

[Robert M Wright]

There are very few HDTV monitors/televisions that will actually display more than 720 lines of real resolution. I noticed lately that Sceptre has come out with a 1920x1080 37" LCD HDTV (ASTC tuner built in even) that is selling for around $1600 street price. That's awfully tempting.

[Steven White]

Even HD has a long way to go before there are no compromises... Right now we're beefing about CCD resolution, sensor size, resolving detail etc. I predict there will be several generations of HD technology - by the end of which HDV and DVCPRO-HD will be extinct, replaced largely by uncompressed or marginally compressed 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 workflows.

At this point, I would argue HD will be around in the home for a long time. The human eye can simply not resolve HD detail, let alone UHD. What HD allows us to do is make bigger displays that appear sharp, and focus on a specific part of an image to resolve a lot of detail. With images moving at 60 fps, it's impossible for us to see everything that's going on in the picture. How big a screen do people really want in their homes? That will limit the necessary resolution for a displays.

On the very high end HD will be replaced by UHD - but I expect this will only be for digital Cinema projection and digital IMAX, since the magnification is so much higher. UHD acquisition will allow for more accurate digital effects and compositing... but most of that will be lost by the time we see it.

There's only so far you can go in terms of resolution and colour while maintaining a 2D image that can be appreciated. I expect at some point a new display technology will emerge that changes the way we look at things, but I doubt it will be UHD.

-Steve

[Robert M Wright]

You might stop and consider that in still digital photography, a 4 megapixel image is pretty much a bare minimum to produce 8"x10" prints. That said, I believe that 1080/60p will likely become a standard for video that we will take hold in a few years and probably last for quite awhile. Image compression will be around for a long time (if not forever), for some very practical reasons (like RF frequency range available for OTA broadcast being finite). While gazing into my rather cloudy crystal ball, I also foresee cable-tv and satellite providers gaining more ground on OTA broadcast, because they don't have their hands nearly as tied and can easily (relatively speaking) move to using MPEG-4 compression to get significantly more out of their bandwidth.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Higher resolutions could take advantage of technology like this. It sure would be nice not to have to worry about focusing while shooting!

[Robert M Wright]

You should forward that link to Sony, JVC, Canon and Panasonic!

[Kurth Bousman]

Michael - I've seen that posted here ( or elsewhere ) before- I agree ! That is cool. Kurth

[Keith Wakeham]

I think HD is going to be a fair limit for resolution for a while. 1920x1080 is pretty much 2k and most people have a hard enough time picking out detail differences between DVD and broadcast HD currently if their not... need i use the word... videophiles.

So I think HD is going to be around for a while but what I suspect will happen is things will improve. I think 720p will be seen less and less over then next 20 years while reserved more for things like sports while progressive 1080 will become standard for movies and television shows. We will also see better compression algorithims on both the capture and playback areas and higher bandwidth video along with going from 4:2:0 to more 4:2:2 and finally to more 4:4:4 and increase in bit depth from 8 to 10 or 12 bits. This brings us to a limit of what a human eye is really capable of seeing and where our point of no return comes in.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Where I think UHD will come in, is with the next generation display systems that only the super rich can currently afford, which is in the video wall concept. Until then...HD will likely be the standard, perhaps for the next 15 years or so? some are predicting home standard video walls by 2020, but I sorta doubt it.

[Steven White]

Originally Posted by Robert M Wright

You might stop and consider that in still digital photography, a 4 megapixel image is pretty much a bare minimum to produce 8"x10" prints.

Yes, but you sit and stare at a print for about 1 minute... while with video you look at it for at most 1/24th of a second. The limitation is the eye and your brain. You simply cannot resolve all the detail of a 4 MP image in a short period of time.

-Steve

[Robert M Wright]

One thing is for certain. 25 years from now, we will all be playing with some slick toys that haven't even been dreamed up yet. This is an amazing age that we live in.

[Robert M Wright]

You're eye/brain may not be able to perceive 4 megapixels of detail all at once, but you can sure tell the difference between a 8"x10" print made from 2 megapixel and 4 megapixel images, at a glance.

[Robert M Wright]

One of the reasons that the differance between SD television and HD television viewing often isn't more pronounced, is that much HD content doesn't actually achieve the full HD resolutions.