Like all
technology, television needs a "next best thing" - something,
anything, to make current technology appear woefully inadequate and drive
consumers back into retail to part with more of their hard-earned cash.
Yet after the boost delivered by
HDTV and flat panels, the TV industry has struggled to find what that next
"thing" could be. Hopes had been pinned on 3D, but despite a
well-financed marketing boost from the likes of Sony and Samsung, 3DTV just hasn't taken off (the transparent cynicism of the
3D effort surely hurt: there was no consumer groundswell for the technology,
but there was a desire on the part of TV makers to spur another round of
upgrades). Sure, millions of 3D TVs are selling, but mostly because
manufacturers have made it an impossible feature to avoid if you're buying a TV
at a certain price.
Internet-connected
"Smart" TVs have been slowly gaining traction, but usage of the full
panoply of "smart" features remains modest and
isn't a reason consumers make a purchase. And according to DTC research, Smart
TV as a feature hasn't been enough to move the shipment needle. In North
America, DTC expects TV shipment growth to flat-line through 2014.
Enter 4K. Where 3D failed to
excite, 4K is sure to wow. At least, that's the theory. Where high definition
delivered 1920 x 1080 pixels to your screen, 4K promises to double that, to
4096 x 2160. The result, if the prototypes I've seen at the Consumer Electronics
Show are any indication, is an almost unbelievably crisp image. It actually
looks three dimensional - without the clumsy glasses and nauseating sense of
warped perspective.
Though 4K is still in its
infancy, excitement is building. At the Consumer Electronics Show, LG and Sharp
displayed working demos of a 4K TV. Several high-end video cameras from Canon
and Red now record in 4K which means 4K movies won't be too far behind.
So is 4K a revolution? The next
big thing? Maybe, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to arrive. It will
be years, if not a decade or more, before you'll be kicking your flat panel to
the curb for its 4K successor.
At the National Association of
Broadcasters show, many encoder manufacturers said they saw little demand on
the horizon for 4K. The biggest reason is bandwidth. Many were doubtful that
that the MPEG-4 compression codec could handle 4K - meaning that the
development of a next-generation compression standard would have to arrive to
drive 4K adoption. Considering that there are still many broadcasters using
MPEG-2 even as MPEG-4 gains traction, the time horizon on 4K-in-the-home and a
next-gen codec will be long indeed.
Then there's the viewing
experience. As Geoffrey Morrison has painstakingly documented, the
human eye cannot even resolve the pixels in a 4K screen unless you're sitting
uncomfortably close to the TV or you opt for a set that's over 77-inches large.
Suffice it to say that neither option is all that appealing.
4K makes sense in a movie
theater, in other words, but not so much in the average home. So with 4K ruled
out for the near term, we're left waiting for the next best thing to juice the
TV market. Your move, Apple.
