The vast majority of people won't own a 4K television, and even the select few who did buy into the hype won't actually be able to tell the difference from a normal viewing distance (though that won't stop them from telling everyone how much better it looks to them). You'll need a really huge screen (think front projector) to notice the difference with 4K, and 4K front projectors will be insanely expensive for quite a while.
This is 3D all over again and it's going to meet the same fate (dead man walking). I have a 1080p front projector with a very large screen, and I certainly wouldn't mind swapping my projector for a 4K unit, but: a) Front projector owners like me are not the norm, and b) I won't pay top dollar for a 4K projector (My 1080p Epson 8350 set me back about $1300 a little over a year ago and it puts out a great picture).
Truth is, even overly compressed 720p/1080p content looks acceptable on my big screen. Back in the early days, my first exposure to a front projector was a Sony CRT unit. Huge. Three RGB lenses. And 480p (if memory serves). Even DVD hadn't been invented yet (about 430 lines of resolution for laserdisc was the best there was). And, believe it or not, a huge screen paired with that was still an impressive sight to behold.
When it comes to movie watching, I'm a big believer in getting a *bigger* screen and not worrying so much about the resolution. Bigger is better. Get yourself a nice 1080p projector and a big screen and enjoy. For the same money, you could get a much smaller 4K TV, and if you sit 6" away from it you may be impressed by all of that extra resolution, but sitting close to a small TV makes for a poor movie watching experience.
And let's not forget the convenience factor. The world willingly gave up LPs and higher-bitrate CDs for the convenience of MP3. I'd love to watch a 4K movie in my living room, but right now I enjoy having my entire movie collection ripped and stored on disk, so that I can stream my movies at will to whatever room in my house I want to. With 4K you can forget about that. The movies will be too huge to store. So you'd better like having to deal with discs and having to sit through 10 minutes of commercials before you can watch your movie.
It's not true to assume that a vast majority of people won't own a 4k TV. You have to realize that these sets will become the new tv's "to buy" and as prices continue to drop, these 4k tv's will replace current HDTV's and the customer will end up buying the 4k tv if that is what is only being sold. It will take some time naturally, but the market will move that way. Try to find a CRT tv at a store now a days and you will probably have a hard time trying to do so. Once 4k tv's continue to flood the market, they will replace current HDTV's. This will be very different than 3D. 3D got a big hype because of Avatar, but in reality, that was almost the only movie the 3D hype lasted for. 4k/2160p sets will replace current HDTV's, not supplement them.
Most customers can't tell the difference between Blu-ray or DVD or even hear the difference between lossy and lossless audio, mainly because they don't know what to look for. The main thing they will notice is the tv's running at 240 mhz at the store and think it looks amazing, when it reality that just looks horrible. But in the end, they don't even know what to look for. Same way a person will see a cheap smart phone and a flagship smart phone and probably won't be able to tell the difference between the two. They will just end up buying the cheap one because it's just a smart phone. Won't notice the difference between the retina and non retina display. Or those that don't know the difference between the new flagship phones and the older ones. They just buy the new one because it's the "new thing." Not because they have a good understanding of it.
I guess if compressed 720p/1080i/p content works for you, that's ok. I on the other hand can easily tell the difference and I'll choose the Blu-ray version when ever I can. Which is why I usually give away the digital HD codes that come with movies. They just look and sound pretty bad compared to what I've been spoiled with.
Size is important, but picture and audio quality are much more important to me. I have a 65 inch HDTV and my general rule is to sit 1 foot away for every 10 inches of screen size. At least that is my good viewing position. So it's not true that you need a projector to see the difference in a 4k/2160p tv. Proper sitting distance will determine that. Just the same way that it isn't true that you can't see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 21 inch screen. The difference is just as noticeable as if it were a larger screen.
And in all honesty, it wasn't that the world gave up CD's only for the convenience of mp3. The convenience of illegally downloading albums and not having to pay for them did that. When people hear their music with tiny ear speakers, quality difference won't be noticeable, and the convenience of carrying more music in the form of mp3 changed the way people took their music with them, but ultimately, it was the ease of illegally downloaded music that drove down the music sales. Regardless of the introduction of digital albums, they failed to outsell their CD counterparts and did absolutely nothing to stop the declining music sales.
But yes, convenience does play a big factor, that's why Netflix leads the way as far as digital media goes. People much rather see what's on Netflix then buy an HD iTunes movie. Personally, I love the high quality of Blu-ray, for now, and I gladly enjoy putting in a disc, setting things up and sitting down to watch the movie. Which by then, the movie is at the menu already. If it wasn't, I don't have to sit through 10 minutes of commercials lol. I can easily skip them by pressing skip forward or the menu button.
You are right about compression. But most people don't care and will think their low bit rate streamed 4K movies have "ultra HD" look. Consumers are easy to fool and they will be.
I'm looking forward to 4K monitors for still photos dome with an SLR. Finally an electronic screen that is good enough
True, they won't notice. But as easily as they are fooled, they will still see the 4k Blu-ray movies and will buy them in the end. Which is why physical SD and HD sales still outsell their digital counterparts.
At least Sony has made a head start with their
Video Unlimited 4k download service. As you can see, it's not a streaming (yet) but a download service. If Sony went for this (major stakeholder in BluRay technology) then, for me, it's a sign of multimedia-future without physical media.
PS the new encoding standard (H.265) has been touted to keep data rates similar to current FullHD encoding. We'll see.
Yes, Sony had to offer 4k content for the people buying those new tv's. which is why we saw those "remastered in 4k" movie releases from Sony. When in fact those movies should have been scanned in 4k to begin with. It would just end up being that those are the movies sold in their 4k service. It's more of a stepping stone, offer something to the customers, until Sony and the BDA finalizes the .h265 encode and approve the BDXL, or larger discs for commercial use.
I honestly don't know what codec was used, I assume it was AVC, do these movies include lossless audio? And how large are these movie files?
.H265/HEVC will be very efficient, similar to how AVC was efficient when compared to Mpeg-2, but they can't run it to the ground either. This HEVC encode will be great to offer 4k movies at 80-120GB, but in the download market, there is no way they could offer that. I think HEVC will offer a better experience for those people streaming or downloading 1080p content. Now their low bitrate 1080p movies will look better if they use the HEVC encode. But compress 4k content by that much and you may end up with the same results you have now with streamed or downloaded 1080p movies.
