Strangly people don’t seem to understand, that 4K for home use is something completely different. I believe it’s for pixel-peepers mainly. People who will be leaning close to their new 4K screen, marveling at pixel-level detail. But consumers are not pixel-peepers. They don’t focus on image quality, they try to enjoy the content. Sitting far away from the screen in a comfy sofa, probably having some food & drink on the side.

Many have posted good articles on this topic, Google it up.

Just don’t try to convince your selves and others, that 2K is dead and 4K is the new necessity. RED moving into 4K big time is great. But 4K still has to move into the mainstream (cinema, broadcast, streaming). And that is more than a couple of years away. By that time your new cutting edge 4K RED/Sony/Canon camera will be on eBay, and you will be convincing your self that you need the new 8K future-proof stuff – while the vast majority of people will still be happy watching 1080p content on their 40-50″ TVs.

In cinemas they usually only watch 3D because it’s the only option. They don’t know what’s resolution or dynamic range or highlight roll-off. They don’t notice overexposed areas, they don’t notice ugly digital chroma noise (such as was in Dredd). Quite often they don’t even notice 1080p/720p difference.

So why should they care for imperceptible 4K home experience? There are zero pixel-peepers among the consumers. Based on these opinions I believe that for consumers (vast majority of population) 1080p is quite enough. No one is going to throw it out of the equation just because 4K will be an option. 1080p will always be cheaper and faster to download. Convenience against pixel-peeping? Yeah right..

To be fair, consumers who watch DVD do so because this is what’s available to them. This statement is sillier than my silly statement. It’s akin to saying people like and use their walkman pre iPod.

Silly, silly me again on thinking that HD is new, shucks… I remember back in the early 80′s when I was in school the hype about future broadcast standards being adopted that would allow 800 x 600. Once the FCC made this a mandate and stations went a step further to 1080, we now see the push to 4k. The challenge is to engineer technology that would make bandwidth a nonissue. This will mean major upgrade for struggling news affiliates and small local stations. Some will be able to upgrade and others not so much. I’m sure that deals will be made to allow licensed distribution to these small stations so they too can offer 4k+ content vs HD. But alas, this ma be silly or the extreme of just plain crazy talk. Silly, silly me.

One more thing to think about… The psychological drive for consumers to own 4k devices once this is made available. This is another topic all to it’s own. This would require conversion models that fully explain behavior and desire. Fact is… 4K conversion has a tail and this tail is very long.

It’s silly to think 4K alone will make all of the content generated in this “pre-4K” era obsolete.