Apple Working on 4K 'Ultra HD' Television Set for Late 2013 or Early 2014 Launch?

[E.Lizardo]

At the distance I normally sit from my TV (about 10 ft.), 1280x720 is retina quality. 1920x1080 is retina from 6 ft. Just sayin.

IsThisRetina.com

People don't want to hear that.Looks like we are in for another pixel war like the one in digital cameras.4k is a complete waste.No human can see a difference at normal viewing distances.Period.The exception being projectors.Sadly development money will be spent on chasing pixels instead of increasing contrast ratios and color accuracy,etc.Cable isn't even in 1080p yet.iTunes content?No bandwidth for that in the near future.3D bombed so they need something new to make you think you need.
Google around for some unbiased tests and you'll see what a waste of money it is.

 

[e-coli]

If its wall'd like the iPhone and iPad then I think I'll take the Samsung copy offering, it'll probably not look as pretty but if I can connect to my NAS and external HDD's to play what the hell I like.... I won't care!

Yeah. I'm sure that in-television UI is intuitive and friendly.

BTW, I play whatever I want though my current Apple TV and on all my ios devices, so this comment stinks of trolling.

The walled garden argument is so tired. Android is just as much a walled garden. The ecosystems are the mobile equivalent of Mac vs PC right now. Amazon content is the only truly open content out there.

 

[SpiderDude]

Neat

There goes the low price tag...

 

[Risco]

Fully agree, if I had to bet I would even rate the probability of an "iWatch/wearable Apple iThing" coming in late 2013 higher than an Apple TV set.

iWatch is a certainty, which is why Samsung and others are scrambling to get theirs to market at or around the same time as Apple rather than give them a 6 months head start or longer like other new product launches.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

Cool now I'll be able to natively watch my 4k videos off my Gopro

 

[drew0020]

People don't want to hear that.Looks like we are in for another pixel war like the one in digital cameras.4k is a complete waste.No human can see a difference at normal viewing distances.Period.The exception being projectors.Sadly development money will be spent on chasing pixels instead of increasing contrast ratios and color accuracy,etc.Cable isn't even in 1080p yet.iTunes content?No bandwidth for that in the near future.3D bombed so they need something new to make you think you need.
Google around for some unbiased tests and you'll see what a waste of money it is.

Comparing pixels on a camera to a television is an ignorant statement. Completely different animals here. You may not like 4K (anyone can have an opinion), but there is a significant difference with a well mastered source.

I do agree about contrast ratio and color accuracy although an ISF calibration for around $300-$500 will help make any set more accurate (some moreso than others). Most people don't care nor do they want to spend the money to see an accurate picture. Others will argue 720p is good enough or they will tell you they cannot see a difference with Blu-ray and Apple TV movies. In that case stay in this forum if you cannot appreciate the differences of each.

For those who really want to learn more about technical stuff I suggest AVS forum and/or Secrets of Home Theater and Hifi. Interesting reads to say the least.

 

[Carniphage]

iWatch is a certainty.

Apple won't be releasing an iWatch. It's a gag to mislead rivals.

 

[mm201]

4k belongs on the desktop, not in the living room. As it is, at a normal viewing distance, the 1080p TV in my living room has a higher angular pixel density than the rMBP in my lap.

Call me when there's a 24" 3840x2400 screen (more modern than the IBM T221) I can buy at a reasonable price.

 

[CausticPuppy]

I've always had an idea that Apple would make a TV. I'll bet any money (joke?) that it'll cost $3,000+, though I could be entirely wrong.

The current crop of 4K TV's are in the neighborhood of $20,000.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

4K a waste of money at the moment

There is so little 4K content available at the moment, to pay out huge sums on money for a 4K screen is a nonsense. Better to wait until there is more content, better delivery systems and cheaper screens before taking the plunge. Quite a bit of what 4K is available, is upscaled 1080P, so there is no real improvement in image. Also there is not a 4K delivery system in place unless you have in excess 70 mbps fibre optic broadband or a new generation of satellites are launched. The overall Internet infrastructure which is already creaking at the seams, cannot handle the extra bandwidth required, if a significant section of the community want to download 4K simultaneously. Blu-Ray is a possibility for the future but the HVEC compression standard needed for 4K is not yet agreed.

Where 4K does make a real difference is looking at photographs. My camera takes 5968 × 3984 pixels and whereas they look OK on my Philips 1080P TV and Mitsubishi 1080P projector, they would look so much better on a 4K screen. This would not however, justify the current cost.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

8k Retina iTV coming out 3 months later.
Retina iTV has twice the graphics performance and four times the pixels.
Siri and iCloud only available on Retina iTVs.
Retina iTV is completely redesigned and features a thinner 0.1 mm edge.
Retina iTV features Time-Travel, "Travel back to any point in time and watch the shows you missed, iCloud records all shows from every channel. Free yourself from managing storage on your DVR."
HBO Go now available for free for all Retina iTV owners.

That's awesome. I can go back in time and watch my show live instead of watching a recorded version in the present.

 

[rei101]

4K? That is a feature, not an experience...

Apple is a consumers electronics company finally.

Having a 4K TV is a feature, but where is the experience? Where is the innovation?

Any other company can come with a 4K TV in no time and at a cheaper price, be careful if not before Apple.

 

[iBug2]

iTunes content?No bandwidth for that in the near future.

I beg to differ. H.265 is just around the corner and it's going to cut down bitrate by 100% for 1080p. So for 4K, which is 2K vertical resolution, you'll only need twice the bitrate instead of 4x. If you can stream a 5GB movie, you can stream a 10GB one as well imho. The only problem is the percentage of available content that'd make sense at 4K. Most TV shows are being shot and mastered at 1080p. So converting those to 4K is a waste. Old movies are not worth it either. But new movies which are shot/scanned at 5K (5K vertical) will be nice.

 

[Matrixfan]

I would like to have an updated Thunderbolt Display first! The retina resolution would be really useful in that case. It's a bit weird that there are no rumors regarding th TBD.

 

[deconstruct60]

No "4K" is a standard motion picture format. There are already a lot of movies distributed in this format.

The "problem" is there is no cross media 4K standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Resolutions_of_common_formats

There is a cinema 4K ( 4096 × 2160 ) and UltraHD ( 3840 × 2160 )

UltraHD is relatively new as a standard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high_definition_television ; Rec. ITU-R BT.202 )

the difference would mean a return of "pan and scan" for movies (or at least scan unless scaled down and letterbox inserted)

Pragmatically it isn't a big factor as pointed out in other posts. Most 4K movie content is processed down to 2K for editing, mastering. Doing something similar to Apple's "pixel doubled" retina display where a smaller canvas of pixel dimensions is used for the app but the number of physical pixels is more to enhance perception. It is different in that the extra pixels are just used in a fixed conversion but same in that a "more than enough" info is used to compose the pixels.

Same with the iMac. I hate throwing out a good LCD screen when I need to upgrade the computer. I'd hate it even worse if the screen cost $25K

A $5K (or more) computer wouldn't be an "iMac". There is no way the other components wouldn't also mutate if the screen by itself was over $4K.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Blu-Ray is a possibility for the future but the HVEC compression standard needed for 4K is not yet agreed.

Yes it is, it was agreed upon by the ITU on January 25th.

 

[deconstruct60]

Where 4K does make a real difference is looking at photographs. My camera takes 5968 × 3984 pixels and whereas they look OK on my Philips 1080P TV and Mitsubishi 1080P projector, they would look so much better on a 4K screen. .

That's questionable. Pixel peeping all the way down to the single pixel level generally exposes artifacts. You do want some good down-scaling that will drop the artifacts. It isn't the 1080P , it is how big you are blowing up the size of the photos. A 4K projector could do a better job of making bigger photos on a wall than a 1080P projector would.

The real question is how big is big enough.

 

[Delegator]

No way they can achieve the necessary margins

I just don't see how Apple can achieve their desired profit margins in the TV market. Displays are a commodity market in which the premium on new products lasts for 18 months at most. And, the purchase life cycle on televisions is 3-5x that of laptops, let alone mobile phones. I have a TV that was very expensive when I bought it...13 years ago. It is still going strong, outmoded only by its lack of HDMI.

For a TV to work from a profit perspective, Apple would have to accept lower than usual margins and then make money off the content being delivered to the TV. Even there, I see problems. I doubt that many people want the smarts built into their TV; the set-top box/display combo is much more flexible and easier to upgrade. There is a reason that Apple TV and Roku do their thing for $99 and pass through any subscription fees. The main thing lacking in the streaming content area is unification: there are too many sources to which I have to pay too many fees and use too many different devices to access. But Apple hasn't been able to fix those problems so far; attaching a 4k screen to them won't help.

And, how many people have been burned by the automatic software update that changes or eliminates a feature that they used to like? I personally wouldn't pay a premium for my television to be locked into whatever decisions are made in Cupertino about changing the UI, licensing issues with this or that studio and iTunes, and so on.

Maybe Apple will surprise me and come up with a truly innovative product in this space that makes me want to spend extra on their brand. But, I'm skeptical.

 

[Carniphage]

I just don't see how Apple can achieve their desired profit margins in the TV market.

To disrupt the TV market, the trick will not be delivering an iPod. The trick will be delivering an iTunes.

Apple's assault on television will be a rethinking of the entire television distribution platform. Not a TV-set.

 

[everything-i]

H.265 halves the data requirement will providing a slightly better image.

Although I doubt I would get an Apple 4K TV is the short term, hopefully it means they will also be producing retina monitors.

I'm so used to looking at my retina iPhone and iPad that my 1080p 40" TV looks a little soft, even with Blu-Ray. And my iMac looks really pixelated. I'm looking forward to the better images and reduced eyestrain that retina brings.

While it is true that H.265 significantly reduces data rate for a given picture quality it is also the case that current H.264 1080p streaming is of pretty poor quality. H.265 is going to give us high near BR quality 1080p streaming but is still way short of getting a decent enough quality 4k stream. I would say we are still a good 5 years away from 4k being a realistic commercial proposition. By then there may be enough of the world with good enough data connections to handle the necessary bit rates to make 4k work commercially. Then of course there is the problem that for most people 1080p is all they are going to need because they just don't want an 80" screen in their lounge so will see no actual benefit from 4k. Lets face it 1080p is no where near saturation on consumer uptake to going to 4k now really makes very little commercial sense.

----------

To disrupt the TV market, the trick will not be delivering an iPod. The trick will be delivering an iTunes.

Apple's assault on television will be a rethinking of the entire television distribution platform. Not a TV-set.

This seems spot on to me, its the whole distribution system that is the problem with television. TV sets are just fine as they are, its getting the content that is where the problems are.

 

[derbladerunner]

To disrupt the TV market, the trick will not be delivering an iPod. The trick will be delivering an iTunes.

Apple's assault on television will be a rethinking of the entire television distribution platform. Not a TV-set.

There would be more rumors of negotiations if Apple would be near launch, no? Apple is a global company, securing content in the US wouldn't be enough. Apple would need to have negotiations with dozens if not hundreds of important content holders worldwide.

At this point, why not just buy out Netflix or a similar company to get content rights?

Also, Apple doesn't make a lot of money in content, this is a myth, see iTunes revenue and earnings in Apple's total. Same for other companies, Netflix is not very profitable, operating margin was near 0% lately.

Apple makes most of its money on hardware.

 

[everything-i]

I beg to differ. H.265 is just around the corner and it's going to cut down bitrate by 100% for 1080p. So for 4K, which is 2K vertical resolution, you'll only need twice the bitrate instead of 4x. If you can stream a 5GB movie, you can stream a 10GB one as well imho. The only problem is the percentage of available content that'd make sense at 4K. Most TV shows are being shot and mastered at 1080p. So converting those to 4K is a waste. Old movies are not worth it either. But new movies which are shot/scanned at 5K (5K vertical) will be nice.

Halving bit rate is going to give you decent quality 1080p as apposed to the poor quality over compressed 1080p streams we get now. This is still way short of what is required for 4k with any kind of decent quality. Remember a 1080p stream today is still beyond the bandwidth of many and it is going to be years before any but the very best broadband connections are capable of delivering good enough quality 4k to make it worth having. This will happen at some point but it is years away which is why bringing out 4k TVs in the next year or so is not really commercially viable.

 

[Carniphage]

There would be more rumors, no? Apple is a global company, securing content in the US wouldn't be enough. Apple would need to have negotiations with dozens if not hundreds of important content holders worldwide.

I think the US Television market would the the first to be cracked. The technology isn't the issue here, just getting the product to market is the real battle

There have been numerous reports of TV negotiations.

At this point, why not just buy out Netflix or a similar company?

Not talking about streaming a handful of movies.

 

[jasondeno]

so does your post

(see http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/boggle+the+mind)

Heh, I guess you just don't watch enough exceptional cinema.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blades_of_Glory_(film)

 

[carlgo]

To disrupt the TV market, the trick will not be delivering an iPod. The trick will be delivering an iTunes.

Apple's assault on television will be a rethinking of the entire television distribution platform. Not a TV-set.

Still, nice that actual hardware seems to be in the mix, not just Apps and people screaming at the screen.

Make the screens here. They just come rolling out of machines anyway. Costs...again, a machine-made commodity. They can be made cheap.

Oh, just set back, you can't tell the difference. Yes you can and there is no reason contrast, blacks, etc can't be done right as well.

Somebody mentioned bandwidth. Bandwidth is the Holy Grail, not devices, as everything Apple wants to do is now controlled by ATT and VZ and their stupid cell towers...