» Posts Tagged ‘uhd’

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The biggest complaint about Ultra High Definition televisions is that their prices are still astronomical. Right now, if you want to watch 4K content, you don’t have too many choices in your home that won’t have you selling your car or refinancing your home. Things are certainly getting interesting though, especially as Sony just announced some $5,000 4K TVs, and a company from China, Seiki, is shipping a $1,500 4K TV (which has been on sale for as low as $1,200-$1,300). Is it any good though? Read on for some first impressions. More »

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Until more recently, the home theater/consumer side of 4K has been a bit beyond the reach of the average consumer. The $25,000 pricing of Sony’s 84-inch Bravia 4K TV, for instance, is simply prohibitive to all but the most enthusiastic home viewers — but Sony’s newly price-pointed 55 and 65-inch screens are poised to address that point, set to go for $5,000 and $7,000, respectively. And just in case you were wondering what (and how) Sony expects you to actually watch on such a thing, the company’s also unveiled its $699 FMP-X1 4K media player, plus an eventual distribution service, to go along with them cheap(er) UHD TV screens. Check out some more details below. More »

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It’s a safe bet Sony will not be left behind in the 4K home media arms race, but that’s about the only thing clear regarding the topic at this point, because Sony does not yet seem to have a clear strategy for 4K home delivery. Do you need Sony’s 4K TV to access it, or don’t you? It’s now looking like either will be answered “yes.” This is because another platform for a 4K delivery service will be the upcoming Playstation 4 video game console (which was strangely left out of their PS4 announcement, probably because 4K is only planned for video, not games, at the moment). While we don’t know too much about their 4K home delivery service yet, there’s talk about downloads up to 100 gigabytes or greater. But will this really happen, and more to the point, are 100GB downloads the only option for 4K? More »

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Several recent developments are helping to bring more 4K (or “more-K“) to your television screen than many of us might have anticipated, even a year ago. RED has big ideas for your home theater (pictured left), consumer electronics companies are starting to roll out some screens with very high pixel densities, media mega-vendors YouTube and Netflix will (or already do) support 4K, and to bring just about everything together, H.265 will be dilating streaming efficiency on 1 billion devices near you. 4K will likely find its way to you via the web a lot sooner than it will through your cable subscription — unless, of course, you live in Japan. To reinvigorate the country’s (somehow) floundering consumer electronics economy, its ministry of communications will be making 2014 the year of 4K in Japan. And perhaps beyond, not long after that. More »

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We consistently hear that 4K won’t be happening for a long, long time, especially considering plenty of broadcasters only made the switch a few years ago. I’ve been somewhere in the middle in thinking it won’t happen tomorrow, and it will happen sooner than 10 years. Solutions are beginning to show up from RED and Sony for 4K distribution (at least as far as movies are concerned), and of course we’ve had the cameras capable of 4K for quite a while now — with more on the way. Now it looks like the TV landscape could be changing drastically. LG and Samsung, two of the biggest display makers, have been having serious issues with OLED high definition panels, so instead it looks like they may be shifting focus instead to 4K panels. More »