random idiocy on the radio today

[Sava]

This is kind of a nerd rant, but bear with me.

During my morning poop, I usually listen to sports radio. It's a CBS radio station. Before a commercial break, former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason gave me a little nugget of wisdom. I only heard the second part of it. But it was enough to make me facepalm.

He was talking about 4k resolution TV's... comparing them to 1080p. He made the analogy that 4k is betamax and 1080p HDTV is VHS. He said 4k won't become a standard, despite the higher image quality.

Since we're gamers here and have some degree of technical proficiency, I won't bother with explaining video resolutions and whatnot. You can google "4k" if you are unfamiliar with the term. It's a marketing word. But it basically describes the next wave of high resolution monitors... 3840x2160 seems to be the one that will replace 1920x1080. The dimensions are twice as big. The total area is 4x the size. It's a significant boost in image quality across the board.

Basically... fricken awesome.

4k content is coming. It's not a competing format. It's a replacement for 1080p. It's not a product made by one company. It's a new standard that all companies will be adopting in some form or another.

It's certainly not VHS versus betamax.

And Boomer Esiason likely needs his children to show him how to use a smartphone whenever he gets a new one. He's a dumb NFL/sports analyst. In terms of technology? He's utterly retarded.

This isn't even a knock against older guys. It's not a question of age. It's a question of intelligence.

So yeah... there's my nerd rant of the day.

Han shot first.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Why ever take anything Boomer takes seriously?

[Sava]

Why ever take anything Boomer takes seriously?

I am highly susceptible to such trolls.

[snoopy369]

The betamax/vhs comparison is idiotic; but I don't know that he's wrong about 4K not becoming the standard, at least for a while. The problem is twofold:
1) "HD" TVs came out too recently, so a lot of people still have a very well functioning 1080p TV; while a small part of the population will buy new stuff because it's cool/better, a lot of people consider a $2000 investment to be an investment, like their car.
2) 4K is probably too high of resolution to be useful. 1080p is already too high for some sizes of TV - if you're watching a 42" or a 37" TV, 1080p vs 720p are the same as long as your'e 5 feet away or so. 4K will require much, much bigger sets (or much closer viewing) to be useful - so it will mean that at your 6 foot viewing distance, which before confined you to a 48" TV or less, now can take a 72" TV; but that 72" TV will cost you $3000+ even if they get the costs down significantly. People who choose TV sizes based on price will still want the 48-52" TV, and will end up not noticing the difference.

The other major problem is that higher resolution = higher bandwidth required to transmit content, and with so much content coming over IP nowadays you won't easily be able to support 4x the content without compressing it too much. Certainly 30mbps or higher would be fine, but not all that many people have that sort of connection speed; you're talking cable, and not the basic cable internet tier. Ten to twenty years from now that'll probably change, but not today.

The difference between this and the Betamax comparison of course is that there's no practical reason this can't come out 10 or 20 years from now; whereas Betamax had VHS as a competitor and had to beat it out right then or lose.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

My netflix downloads to my HD TV suck already. Need to nuke all the 4k right now cos I can't watch anything without constant buffering. Screw netflix and their constant need to offer everything in HD chewing up all available network bandwidth.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You need a better internet connection.

I get perfect Netflix streaming.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I do too on all my portable devices.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Get a Roku then or something.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

F*Cking Apple TV sux.

[snoopy369]

I use an apple TV to watch Netflix and don't have a problem - and that's on 6mbps ADSL.

[Sava]

The sheer size of 4k content will make it difficult to distribute online. If broadband speeds don't keep up, companies might embrace this. Why? Piracy. If streaming 4k content is difficult due to it's size, pirating it will also be more difficult. We might see multi-layered bluray type storage mediums become the norm versus online streaming. Companies wet their pants at the thought of nipping piracy in the butt. This is also a consumer friendly way of doing it because there's no need for restrictive DRM schemes.

There is a 4k TV already for sale at $1500. It's a cheapo brand named "Seiko"... but it's legit 4k. Prices are coming down fast. The proliferation of handheld devices is to thank for this. Those little TFT screens we walk around with, capable of viewing 1080p content... it doesn't cost much to shift production lines in order to produce monitors 20''-70''.

4k is coming faster than people think. It won't be 10-20 years. That's just silly. Remember when 1080p HD took over? It happened pretty fast. People were still wetting their pants about DVD's... next thing you know, 1080p content is the standard.

The main challenge is online distribution and bandwidth. It's become popular out of convenience. But it's not out of the realm of possibilities that hard copies could make a comeback if speeds can't keep up with file size.

Also, who is to say we won't see more effective compression methods helping to shrink things down?

[snoopy369]

$1500 for how big, though? If it's a 47" TV, then it's a waste of money at that size. You just can't see the difference unless you're so close it would be silly. I'm not talking about 4k inflated prices - I mean that right now, lots of people choose 47" over 62" because they can only afford 47". 4K's advantage is in the 62" and 70" and up; but lots of people today can't afford that (at 720p/1080p) and certainly won't afford it at 4k, even if the prices are similar to 1080p.

[loinburger]

The sheer size of 4k content will make it difficult to distribute online. If broadband speeds don't keep up, companies might embrace this. Why? Piracy. If streaming 4k content is difficult due to it's size, pirating it will also be more difficult. We might see multi-layered bluray type storage mediums become the norm versus online streaming. Companies wet their pants at the thought of nipping piracy in the butt. This is also a consumer friendly way of doing it because there's no need for restrictive DRM schemes.

People who want 4K video will buy the layered bluray discs, but people who want to pirate will just compress the video down to 700mb or whatever. Hell, people are already distributing ****ty cam-rips from shaky mobile phone videos taken in the theater.

[Sava]

$1500 for how big, though? If it's a 47" TV, then it's a waste of money at that size. You just can't see the difference unless you're so close it would be silly. I'm not talking about 4k inflated prices - I mean that right now, lots of people choose 47" over 62" because they can only afford 47". 4K's advantage is in the 62" and 70" and up; but lots of people today can't afford that (at 720p/1080p) and certainly won't afford it at 4k, even if the prices are similar to 1080p.

http://gizmodo.com/5994765/seiki-50+inch-4k-tv-eyes+on-how-the-hell-is-a-tv-this-beautiful-so-cheap

50 inches.

Apparently, you can find it for even less now.

There are no bells and whistles or "Smart TV" features. I don't need that crap anyways. I just want a monitor with a big fat resolution.

[Sava]

People who want 4K video will buy the layered bluray discs, but people who want to pirate will just compress the video down to 700mb or whatever. Hell, people are already distributing ****ty cam-rips from shaky mobile phone videos taken in the theater.

I agree.

But being quite active in the scene, I know that higher quality is always appreciated. Pirates will download the ****ty cams. It's like bragging rights. Oh look, I've seen so and so movie. But there are lots who don't even bother with that nonsense (myself included, for the most part). I may get a ****ty quality just to see the movie. But I want 1080p (and 4k!). If it takes me a day and a half to download a 4k rip, I may as well just buy it.

The way to defeat piracy is by making legit access more convenient and less of a hassle... and that includes pricing things reasonably. I'm not going to pay $100 every time Star Wars comes out on some new format. Piracy gives all the power to the consumer.

Without turning this into a piracy debate (if you need to disagree, you don't need to TLDR me in the face... just tell me to suck it), I'll just say that I have no problem paying for things. But when companies get too greedy and expect $30 for movies that were made years or decades ago... and who've already vastly recouped those production costs... sorry. I'm not going to do that. Copying a file basically costs nothing. A physical copy costs very little. It's all profit for them at this point. This isn't a carnival ride where it costs them money to provide me with the viewing experience.

To me, it's charity. It's paying tribute. The law says they have a right to the "intellectual property". That's fine. It's their work. But I've paid countless times to see movies, for the same movies on various formats. Some of these movies I know by heart... line by line. They are part of our culture. None of these people are standing in bread lines. They aren't getting their homes foreclosed on. They enjoy the greatest standard of living in the history of humanity.

So do I feel guilty about downloading something?

**** NO

And if anyone wants to be the anti-piracy white knight and blindly stand behind some idiotic principle of copyright law dictated by media companies... well, I tell those people to go **** themselves. GO **** YOURSELVES

Now I feel like billy bad ass. THANKS