4K: When HD is not Enough

This year, TV manufacturers descended upon such industry confabs as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with a new mission: promoting ultra HD.

A decade ago, the consumer electronics industry kicked off a highly profitable revolution, presenting a new television display format — high-definition (HD), which offered a vastly improved picture over the traditional 640 x 480 resolution. 

Most of us adopted, swapping out our big, bulky CRT sets for fancy plasma, LCD and LED flat-panels capable of the new 1920 x 1080 format — marking a far more successful worldwide embrace of flat-panel HD displays, than 3D-capable sets.  

We also upgraded our pay-TV packages to receive the new HD channels that media conglomerates collectively spent billions to launch.

But at CES this year, the message to consumers and the TV industry was: 1,920 pixels are not enough. The new buzzword is 4K, with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 — essentially double the pixels of garden-variety HD.

TVs capable of 4K display are now available, with manufacturers including Vizeo and Panasonic selling entry-level sets for as little as $999.

The problem is, there’s no 4K programming on your cable or satellite box right now to watch. And there’s no disc format, à la “ultra Blu-ray,” to support it.

However, Netflix made itself a hero across Japan, China, South Korea and everywhere else televisions are made, announcing at CES that it would work with eager manufacturers to soon begin streaming its shows in 4K.

TV makers Samsung and LG also introduced huge, ultra-high-end models with resolution qualities beyond the limits of human eyesight.

LG’s new 105UB9 model, for example, is a massive 105-inch ultra HD TV with a resolution of 5120 x 2160. It’s called a 4K set, but it’s really beyond 4K.

The so-called smart TV also offers the latest in gesture and voice control — no more searching for the remote — and its viewing surface is notably curved.

The 105UB9 also presents its picture in a 21:9 aspect ratio — as opposed to the 16:9 aspect ratio of traditional HD — delivering a cinematic display akin to the movie theater. 

What will these fabulous 105-inch curved sets cost? With no MSRPs announced, the picture remains hazy. But it won’t be cheap, considering that a lesser LG model — with an 84-inch, non-curved 4K LED display — goes for $20,000.

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Story originally published in Emmy magazine issue No. 2014-01.