Is 4K a game changer?

[scorpiontail60]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

If 4K is 8 MP, and my camera can take 12 MP...

4K movies would look like junk compared to still images in motion from my camera

EXACTLY. Which is why we need to eventually progress to 8K, which is a whopping 32 megapixels (!).

However, because 8K is such a gigantic resolution leap, hardware and bandwidth is still so far away from being able to push 8K video. Even the highest end graphics cards have difficulty playing 4K games @ 60 FPS; for 8K it would be a slideshow. You have to SLI multiple GTX 780 Tis just to get something like Crysis 3 to run at a solid 60 FPS at 4K on medium settings.

As far as bandwidth goes, as 8K video is 16x the resolution of 1080p it would require 8x the bitrate of a well mastered 1080p Blu-ray if you were using the HEVC codec (HEVC is twice as efficient as AVC, which is what Blu-ray uses.) Most BDs are authored at 20-30 Mbps so 8K will require bitrates around 200 Mbps using HEVC. 4K on the other hand could easily manage 50 Mbps bitrates.

So you can see 4K is a very important stepping stone to 8K just like 720p was a stepping stone to 1080p. 4K is very doable with current tech which is why we need to be launching it now so we can be ready for 8K another 5-10 years from now.

Originally Posted by I KEEL YOU

Why do you keep using this flawed and flat out WRONG argument?

I love how you say that 1080p is "only" six times the resolution of SD, yet 4K is four times the resolution of 1080p but it will somehow be "an even bigger leap".

Uh.... HOW may I ask exactly??? Last time I checked (in first grade math), 6 is a bigger number than 4, so if 1080p has 6 times the pixels of SD and 4K has 4 times the pixels of 1080p, then how will 4K be an "even bigger leap"? Please explain this to me. And I'm only talking on a purely technical level (numbers), and not even taking the human factor/diminishing results, which is also very relevant to this discussion.

Since you obviously are incapable of comprehending how big a leap this is in text form then perhaps you should look at a graphical representation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:8K...FHD_and_SD.svg

If you still don't get it, well, you're helpless and I have nothing further to say to you.