New Crop of Monstrous 4K TVs

Another series of TVs which will take home entertainment to another level!! are you ready for it? Saw this in  newspaper.. seems really nice.. so does the price.. Will you be ready to spend this big amount on TVs.. probably same amount as cars like Accord/Camry!!! Depends on your priorities.. How much time you spend on your cars vs in front of TV.. or do you like more comfort and safety while going to office or you care about more bigger better experience in the evening while watching games or movies..

On the other hand.. assuming 8 years of life for such TVs... it will cost you 3K per year.. Assuming you watch them 300 days of year... it will be $10 per day just the cost of display.. which is not that much.. Obviously, you will be spending another 4-5 dollars on content, electricity..  Let us say $15 per day.. for $15 two people can go and watch movies in theatre.. Live games can cost more.. may be you will have to sacrifice a weeks worth of super TV.. Ideal thing would be to enjoy all sort of things without worrying about these small things like $10-15 per day.. but for that our economy needs to grow much more faster and everyone needs to make much higher income levels..

then I am sure there will be 240K or 2.4 million dollar worth TVs as well.. what would be next to 3D/4K TV? May be something like a entertainment room where you will be sitting right in the middle of actual content.. theater kind of experience.. only difference would be that you will be right on the stage and you can probably roam around with holograms adjusting themselves so you get best viewing angle and you can change your view to top view, bottom view and what not.. just kidding.. but you never know if someone is already working on these type of TV or entertainment system sets..

there is no end to it as innovations will continue to drive new things and new prices.

Now we race to get Ultra-HD TV

Wondering.. where this will end up. I think Ultra-HD resolution is more relevant for Ultra-Large Size TVs. I don't think that it will make much sense to make Ultra-HD TVs in 40-50 inch range. Not for now.. I am guessing that this is one of few last opportunity for Sony to come back in TV market where they lost big time to Samsung. They lost to Samsung not on quality but I guess more on price/performance ratio. Same will apply for these Ultra-HD TV launch. It is expected to be really highly priced. However, if they price it really Ultra-High-Price.

While pricing it, they should think about gaining customer confidence and changing their Ultra-High-Price TVs perception to good value for money TV. This good value for money perception is currently owned by Samsung and I am sure they will do everything to keep it that way. Sooner or later, Samsung will also launch these Ultra-HD 4K TVs. Sony has very short window of opportunity where they can think about customers instead of thinking their own profit and loss. Even though, there is no guarantee of Sony's turnaround but still there is some chance which has showed up after long time.

I am not planning to go and get these Ultra-HD TVs anytime soon. Though after watching them it may change. Though, again.. I am not sure how much content will be available for these 4K TVs. Only up-scaling is not going to justify higher resolution. They will have to come up with better Blu-rays. It is their chance to revive slowing down Blu-Ray disc sales which internet streaming is killing day by day. You can get 4K content on internet as well but it is going to need real fat pipe or some buffering and hence significant lag.

But then there is even bigger problem on disc based as they might need player upgrade which can be even more slower. This entire ecosystem is so messed up.. I wish that we had Gig Ethernet at home just like we have telephone line.. that would have solved most of these streaming bottlenecks and we could easily switch to complete streaming based solution rather transporting these discs all the places..


Sony to debut TVs with ultra-HD

Diagonal measure will be 84 inches, with ‘4K’ resolution

By Peter Svensson

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Highdefinition TVs roughly quadrupled the resolution of the sets that came before them. Now, the industry is poised to do it again. By December, U.S. stores will sell a TV set with four times the resolution of today’s best HDTVs, Sony said Wednesday. The set will measure 84 inches on the diagonal, making the screen area four times as large as the common 42-inch set.

Executives said Sony will reveal the price of the set next week. There is, for now, very little video content available that can take advantage of the higher resolution. With some work and know-how, a computer connected to the set can display video in the ultra-HD “4K” resolution.
The set will also do its best to “upscale” TV, DVD and Blu-ray movies, so they look better.

Phil Molyneux, chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, said the situation was no different from the launch of the cassette tape, the CD or the DVD.

“We always get this question when we launch beautiful new technology: Where’s the content?” Molyneux told journalists at an event in New York. “Did we bring the content to market? Yes, we did.”

The resolution of the set is 3,840 by 2,160 pixels. It’s known as “4K” because it has nearly 4,000 pixels on the horizontal edge. That compares with 1,920 by 1,080 pixels in “1080p” sets. More pixels allow TV makers to make bigger screens without compromising sharpness.

Sony makes digital projectors operating at 4K resolution for movie theaters.

The TV industry has been looking for a technology that will get consumers to upgrade their HDTV sets. Sales are slumping after an initial wave of upgrades from standard-definition sets, and 3-D sets attract only a small number of consumers.

Apple has slowly been quadrupling the resolution of its devices, starting with the iPhone 4 two years ago. This year, it released iPads and MacBooks with ultrahigh- resolution screens.

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SONY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sony’s new ultra-HD 4K TV sets with resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels are scheduled to be in stores by December. Prices will be announced next week.