Discussion Topic: 4K and 3-D Consumer Displays are Coming. Is This a Good Thing?

You may have noticed that there are several 3-D movies being advertised as coming to your theaters soon. They seem mostly to be animated films, or movies that have a lot of CG environments, but it won’t be long before we get conventional movies that are shot in 3-D. This means the Blu-ray discs will have 3-D versions, and already there are some that come with red/blue glasses in the package so you can watch them in 3-D. A few new HDTVs have a port for a special device that transmits signals to polarized glasses, making the left eye and right eye lens alternating light and dark in synchrony with the movie. We obtained one of these HDTVs (rear projector), but have yet to see the 3-D device that is supposed to connect to it, so I can’t complete the review.

We also are getting reports that 4K displays (approximately 4 thousand pixels wide instead of 1,920) may be shown at this year’s CES, in preparation for release as consumer products within a year.

Well, we are just now getting all of our new DVD players with HDMI v1.3a output, receivers with HDMI inputs, and displays that will show 1080p. It’s all starting to work properly.

Is this a good time to introduce so much new technology in the HDTV arena?

Where is the 4K bandwidth going to come from? It has 4 times as many pixels as 1,920 x 1,080. Satellite and Cable are already crammed to the top with channels, most of which are not high def, and the compression is so high, the images are really not all that great. Way, way too many artifacts.

Blu-ray discs would not hold an entire 4K movie, so new technology has to be developed with more storage.

The HDMI jacks in our receivers would probably not accept the high bit rate needed for 4K movie discs.

And what about the signal that has to accompany the audio and video on HDMI that goes from the player to the receiver to the flat panel display to trigger the 3-D transmitter to our polarized viewing glasses? How much are you willing to spend to buy a full set of those glasses so your family can all watch the movie in 3-D? Are you like so many of us that recently purchased a flat panel HDTV because the price finally came within reach of our budgets? Are you ready to toss that one out for a new 4K HDTV that shows 3-D movies in the near future? Are you prepared to deal with the glitches that will certainly occur with such a big change in the technology?

I think like many issues in life, we are charging ahead to new technology before the old technology works.