Sorry in advance for the long post.
I think we'll eventually see 4K-based movies in home theater. It isn't going to happen anytime soon however. My guess is a minimum of 7 to 10 years before any 4K movie material arrives in the home video marketplace. Right now not enough Hollywood movies that use digital intermediate are mastering at 4K resolution. Most are merely 2K. Really even for the 7-10 year time frame to be feasible various electronics companies would have to be hard at work getting the foundation of a new video format established now. The first work on Blu-ray began at the end of the 1990s.
A number of computer monitors are already operating well beyond the 1920 X 1080 HD standard. Toshiba announced they are developing a 4K resolution 52" HDTV monitor that can also double as a high resolution, giant sized computer monitor. The new Apple 27" iMac has 2560 X 1440 resolution. Their bigger, 30" monitor has a 2560 X 1600 desktop. These are just examples pointing out the possibilities of going well beyond 1080p HD.
A lot of HDTV sets can double as computer monitors. I could certainly make use of a 4K based computer monitor. Such a display would not show all the detail from images I can take with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera (it takes 5616 X 3744 sized images).
Certain movies are getting new digital masters created in really high resolution settings.
Baraka established a new quality standard with its 5-perf 65mm footage being scanned at 8000 line resolution.
The Wizard of Oz and
South Pacific have received similar treatment. Some film scanners can go as high as 16K, although data storage requirements are massive for such an effort.
tigerfan33 said:
Won't 1.3 hdmi support deep color??
Yes. But to this date, I don't think any movie studios have released any movies on Blu-ray encoded at deep color bit depths. Even though Blu-ray can run at really high bit rates, the video is still very severely data compressed. A standard 1080p HD video stream uncompressed runs between 1.1 and 1.4 billion bits per second. That's a lot higher than the 20-40 million bits per second averages seen on Blu-ray. With various modes of deep color used, the video master could run at bandwidths over 3 billion bits per second. Squeezing the extra bit depth down into the bandwidth limits of Blu-ray would dramatically worsen data compression levels.
HDMI 1.4-based equipment will arrive in stores during 2010. The 1.4 standard will improve support for increased color bit depths as well as allow higher resolutions like 4K. It will also allow for dual 1080p video streams for full color 3D use. One thing I think is pretty cool is HDMI 1.4 will allow Ethernet over HDMI.
mike123abc said:
I have not seen complaints in DLP theaters where the resolution is 2k.
It depends the group of viewers whose opinion is being requested. Many average people just get snowed over by the "digital" buzzword and automatically think any sort of "digital projection" equals perfect picture quality. That's not really the case. A lot of variables are involved during production, post production and exhibition (showing the movie in theaters).
On average, digital projection is big step up for most theaters. It's not better than 35mm film projection done right. But digital projection is able to provide a more consistently good quality image when you don't have expert people running and maintaining the equipment.
4-perf 35mm film photography is still superior to any digital (video) based system both in terms of capturing image detail and resolving motion. Even if you under-expose a film frame you still get an absolutely discrete image on every frame. CCD and CMOS sensors are prone to ghosting and other sorts of smeary lag when used in low light situations. Major advances are being made with video camera sensors. So it's only a matter of time before they close the gap with film.
Plus film has its characteristic look. A lot of time consuming finishing work must be applied to electronic-based video footage to imitate the film look. It's not enough to simply shoot video in 24p. Nevertheless, as video camera sensors improve so will their color handling. In a few years they'll have the color depth needed to accurately imitate various kinds of film stocks.
Finally, a bit about Blu-ray.
I think Blu-ray is well on its way to quietly replacing DVD. Companies like Oppo have already announced they will no longer develop DVD-only movie disc players. The prices of BD players are dropping enough that it won't be long before most electronics companies dump DVD-only from their product lines.
It doesn't take long at all for anyone to get spoiled to the image quality of Blu-ray and HDTV in general. DVD is merely standard def, nothing more. I have a huge DVD collection that is now only gathering dust. I plan on selling nearly all of those discs over the next few months. I need to unload those things while I can still get at least some money for them. In another couple or so years I'd only be able to give them away for nothing.