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4K resolution

Also called 4K, refers to a display device or content having horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels. Several 4K resolutions exist in the fields of digital television and digital cinematography. In the movie projection industry, Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) is the dominant 4K standard. In television and consumer media, 4K UHD or UHD-1 is the dominant 4K standard. By 2015, 4K television market share had increased greatly as prices fell dramatically during 2014 and 2015. By 2025, more than half of US households are anticipated to have a 4K-capable TV (2160p), much faster than the adoption curve of FullHD (1080p).

Definitions

4K resolution refers to a horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels. The use of width to characterize the overall resolution marks a switch from the previous generation, standard high definition television, which categorized media according to the vertical dimension instead, such as 720p or 1080p. Under the previous convention, 4K UHD would be equivalent to 2160p.

There are two main 4K resolution standards:

  • The DCI 4K resolution standard, which has a resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels (256:135, approximately a 1.9:1 aspect ratio). This standard is widely respected by the film and video production industry. The DCI 4K standard has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of DCI 2K.
  • The 4K ultra-high-definition television (UHDTV) or "UHD-1" standard, which has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 (16:9, or approximately a 1.78:1 aspect ratio). This standard is mostly used in consumer television and media. This standard has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of 1080p.

Many manufacturers may advertise their products as UHD 4K, or simply 4K, when the term 4K is traditionally reserved for the cinematic, DCI resolution. This often causes great confusion among consumers.

YouTube and the television industry have adopted UHD-1 as its 4K standard and UHD-2 for NHK/BBC R&D's 7680x4320 pixels UHDTV 2 with their basic parameter set is defined by the ITU BT.2020 standard. As of 2014, 4K content from major broadcasters remains limited. On April 11, 2013, Bulb TV created by Canadian serial entrepreneurEvan Kosiner became the first broadcaster to provide a 4K linear channel and VOD content to cable and satellite companies in North America. The channel is licensed by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to provide educational content. However, 4K content is becoming more widely available online including on YouTube, Netflix and Amazon.  By 2013, some UHDTV models were available to general consumers in the range of US$600. As of 2015, prices on smaller computer and television panels had dropped below US$400.


History

The first commercially available 4K camera for cinematographic purposes was the Dalsa Origin, released in 2003. YouTube began supporting 4K for video uploads in 2010 as a result of leading manufacturers producing 4K cameras.  Users could view 4K video by selecting "Original" from the quality settings until December 2013, when the 2160poption appeared in the quality menu.  In November 2013, YouTube started to use the VP9 video compression standard, saying that it was more suitable for 4K than High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC); VP9 is being developed by Google, which owns YouTube.

The projection of movies at 4K resolution at cinemas began in 2011. Sony was offering 4K projectors as early as 2004. The first 4K home theater projector was released bySony in 2012.

 
Samsung UN105S9 105 inch ultra-high-definition 4K television.

In February 2014, HIGH TV (High 4K) launched the first ultra-HD, 24/7 general-entertainment TV channel available worldwide. The channel was the first of its kind and featured a unique mix of entertainment, lifestyle, extreme sporting, movies, and everything in ultra-HD quality, with about 200 hours of new content each year. The High 4K team already distributes the channel to pay-TV operators, IPTV, mobile, WebTV, etc., as well as distributing 4K content worldwide.

Sony is one of the leading studios promoting UHDTV content, as of 2013 offering a little over 70 movie and television titles via digital download to a specialized player that stores and decodes the video. The large files (~40GB), distributed through consumer broadband connections, raise concerns about data caps.

In 2014, Netflix began streaming House of CardsBreaking Bad  and "some nature documentaries" at 4K to compatible televisions with an HEVC decoder. Most 4K televisions sold in 2013 did not natively support HEVC, with most major manufacturers announcing support in 2014.  Amazon Studios began shooting their full-length original series and new pilots with 4K resolution in 2014.  In early 2014, adult sites started offering 4K video content. 

Home video projection

Despite rapid price drops beginning in 2013 for viewing devices, the home cinema digital video projector market saw little expansion, with only a few manufactures (only Sony As of 2015) offering limited 4K-capable lineups, with native 4K projectors commanding five-figure price tags well into 2015 before finally breaking the US$10,000 barrier.  This despite criticisms that at normal direct-view panel size and viewing distances, the extra pixels of 4K are redundant at the ability of normal human vision. On the contrary, home cinema employs much larger screen sizes without necessarily increasing viewing distance to scale. JVC has used a technique known as "e-shift" to extrapolate extra pixels from 1080p sources to display 4K on screen through upscaling or from native 4K sources at a much lower price than native 4K projectors. This technology of non-native 4K entered its fourth generation for 2016.  JVC used this same techcology to provide 8K flight simulation for Boeing that met the limits of 20/25 visual acuity.

 

Resolutions
Ultra-high-definition television 3840 × 2160 1.78:1 (16:9) 8,294,400
DCI 4K (native resolution) 4096 × 2160 1.90:1 (256:135) 8,847,360
DCI 4K (CinemaScope cropped) 4096 × 1716 2.39:1 7,028,736
DCI 4K (flat cropped) 3996 × 2160 1.85:1 8,631,360

 Ultra HD

UHD is a resolution of 3840 pixels × 2160 lines (8.3 megapixels, aspect ratio 16:9) and is one of the two resolutions of ultra high definition television targeted towards consumer television, the other being 8K UHD which is 7680 pixels × 4320 lines (33.2 megapixels). UHD has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of the 1080p HDTV format, with four times as many pixels overall.

Televisions capable of displaying 4K resolutions are seen by consumer electronics companies as the next trigger for an upgrade cycle due to a lack of consumer interest in 3D television.

Digital cinema

  4K DLP CINEMA. A Texas Instruments Technology.

The Digital Cinema Initiatives consortium established a standard resolution of 4096 pixels × 2160 lines (8.8 megapixels, aspect ratio 256:135) for 4K movie projection. This is the native resolution for DCI-compliant 4K digital projectors and monitors; pixels are croppedfrom the top or sides depending on the aspect ratio of the content being projected. The DCI 4K standard has twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of DCI 2K, with four times as many pixels overall. DCI 4K does not conform to the 16:9 aspect ratio, so it is not a multiple of the 1080p display. 4K digital movies may be produced, scanned, or stored in a number of other resolutions depending on what storage aspect ratio is used. In the digital cinema production chain, a resolution of 4096 × 3112 is often used for acquiring "open gate" or anamorphic input material, a resolution based on the historical resolution of scanned Super 35mm film.

Streaming video

YouTube, since 2010,  and Vimeo allow a maximum upload resolution of 4096 × 3072 pixels (12.6 megapixels, aspect ratio 4:3). Vimeo's 4k content is currently limited to mostly nature documentaries and tech coverage. This is expected to grow as 4k adoption increases. Recently YouTube opened 4k to all users.  High Efficiency Video Coding should allow the streaming of content with a 4K resolution with a bandwidth of between 20 to 30 Mbps. VP9is also being developed for 4k streaming. In 2015 YouTube started to offer 8K resolution Video. Ultra-high-definition television (also known as Super Hi-Vision, Ultra HD television, UltraHD, UHDTV, or UHD) includes 4K UHD (2160p) and 8K UHD (4320p), which are two digital video formats proposed by NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories and defined and approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).


Recording. The main advantage of recording video at the 4K standard is that fine spatial detail is resolved well. If the final video quality is reduced to 2K from a 4K recording more detail is apparent than would have been achieved from a 2K recording.  Increased fineness andcontrast is then possible with output to DVD and Blu-ray. Some cinematographers choose to record at 4K when using the Super 35 film format to offset any resolution loss which may occur during video processing. With the Axiom there is open source hardware available that uses a 4K image sensor.