Broadcast and Technology: 4K about to jump the chasm?

4K here to stay and is the next kid on the block.

The next big thing, 4K consumer units are now coming down in price and early adopters now look certain to be joined by the early majority in the next 6- 12 - 18 Months. A market place edging towards the 4K UHD trend.

Really!!, do we really believe that in the year that we will know someone with a 4K TV? It is an extremely fast paced industry, with the convergence of broadcast and technology arenas the growth and evolution is at warp speed.

So with consumer units coming down in price (still expensive for my liking), slowly but surely. Then we need to start seeing decent 4K content. From live events, such as sports and concerts to high profile TV serials.

But to cover the gaps from producing and delivering true- pure 4K content we need a filler to get us over the hump.

We have seen this before when we moved from SD to HD. What occurred to the existing SD content???

That's right it was up-converted to High Definition. So I can see the same happening here with the trillion minutes of 2K HD content being up-converted to 4K.

The good bet is that we will see a number of 2K to 4K up converts taking place. Simply taking a 2K pixel and quadrupling it in size. But this adds no quality to the newly generated 4K image and quite frankly may even reduce the image quality and look really bad. So a major degree of enhancement or digital manipulation will need to take place during the conversion process.

On the flip side manufacturers have begun to equip standard 1080P players with 4K upscaling capabilities. While this is definitely an improvement over imagery that has not been upscaled, it still does not compare to true 4K resolution. Just as with DVD players that upscaled their content to 1080P, upscaling noticeably reduces the appearance of blockiness and jagged edges, but falls short when it comes to depicting more detail.

You have to read Scott Wilkinson's piece at AVS FORUMS which discuss's and reviews the Technicolor and Marseilles Demo "4K Image Certified" Upscaling.

According to Technicolor :

the TECHNICOLOR IMAGE CERTIFICATION DELIVERS HIGH-QUALITY 4K CONTENT

4K TVs can replicate the Hollywood movie experience with a stunning image at home.

The problem is not having 4K content.

Now, imagine seeing a standard 1080 Blu‐Ray disc movie upgraded to a stunning 4K image.
Technicolor is now making all of this a reality.

Up-convert processing enables makers of Blu-ray players and set-top boxes to solve the 4K content dilemma.