Ultra High-Definition Video: Will it Supersede Blu-Ray Within a Decade?

With all the championing of Blu-Ray being the seeming final frontier in high-definition video, hearing about the prospects of an 8K ultra high definition being right around the corner might give another incentive for people not to invest in something new. But everybody should know that Blu-Ray's 1080p video resolution wasn't necessarily intended as the end of the road in what we could do in making video entertainment the ultimate experience in our homes. And we should have had the warnings that we'd have the advancement right when Blu-Ray becomes the new mainstream DVD format for most people. After all, the push toward Blu-Ray came smack-dab in the middle of when standard DVD was at its peak.

For a lot of people, that's the whole problem from the get-go. While a lot of reasons are behind why Blu-Ray has languished in sales (something supposedly picking up during the holiday season), a lot of people have probably assumed that investing in Blu-Ray will be for want when something new will come along faster than lightning.

That's either a very smart or dangerous frame of mind from the American populace. In the world of technophiles, progressing faster is a godsend--and even I admit to being impatient at times in what digital video could potentially be. Blu-Ray is beyond stunning, though, which can't help but make you wonder whether anything more would have to be officially designated as something close to virtual reality or just a little bit too much to handle for avid movie watchers. When it comes to enveloping yourself into a movie or video game, that blurring of reality could raise serious questions about mental and physical health.

No, I'm not suggesting we bring some kind of Brechtian approach to digital entertainment that helps bring a psychological detachment to the compelling ultra high resolution images. We'll have to leave that up to the viewer him or herself and whether he or she chooses to stay in reality while assimilating more realistic images. Once you see what's coming in digital video, however, it'll be a lot more challenging to avert our eyes away from staring at the screen for long hours.

It shouldn't be surprising to you that Japan is proposing an ultra high-definition video format as something mainstream before the next decade is even over. Officially called Super Hi-Vision (or SHV for those who love the technological acronyms), Japan is truly the leader in high-definition since the beginning, though not alone in wanting to promote SHV as an international standard. Considering the U.K. was experimenting somewhat with higher resolution levels on their TV broadcasts already in the 50's and 60's, there isn't a shock they want to jump on the SHV bandwagon. The same goes for Italy that now forms a triumvirate with UK and Japan to demonstrate what a higher video resolution looks like.

And what it looks like is hard to fathom unless we see it with our own eyes. When you have a picture that's more than 16 times greater than the 1080 pixels currently available, imagining it is practically impossible.

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So is there a demonstration available somewhere? Well, Japan still considers it experimental, but they've demonstrated it a few times in the last five years, albeit brief tests because of the massive pixel resolution. You'll gasp when you see 7680 x 4320 pixels applied to this technology that will someday be called UHVTV for Ultra High Vision Television. When Japan tested it for the first time in 2003, the test lasted only eighteen minutes, yet blew everybody away at bringing a picture clarity nobody thought could be possible just ten years ago. Of course, building a camera to capture the images for SHV is still a huge undertaking and had to be assembled bit by bit via the tech gurus in Japan.

You might find it hard to fathom hearing about a SHV camera crew filming a nature documentary in this format ten years from now. Professional high-definition cameras were already a chore in portability for nature documentarians in recent years, particularly those who filmed the HD masterpiece "Planet Earth." An SHV camera could ultimately be too heavy to take anywhere outside of a studio until years after the fact when the camera inevitably becomes light as a feather.

All of the Herculean tasks required to make SHV a workable reality isn't lost on Europe, even though the U.K. and Italy both think that plowing ahead sooner is beneficial to everybody. Believe it or not, the U.K. already demonstrated SHV several times, mostly in 2008 when a longer demonstration was shown to be possible. The first test from early 2008 was in Japan where the BBC and Italy's RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) joined in to show how SHV could be transmitted live via a long distance. It was only a transmission within Europe rather than across oceans. Nevertheless, it was a monumental achievement that set dates for more tests through this last year.

The most recent test as of this writing was in October 2008 when the BBC demonstrated SHV again at a technology show. So, really, the U.K. seems to be pushing it more than even Japan is at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, it shouldn't be a surprise when the BBC was utilizing higher resolution levels on TV (compared to America) decades ago, most notably during the first moon landing coverage in 1969.

As I've constantly noted in many of my articles, America steals from the British all the time when it comes to entertainment. In the coming decade, we may steal from their technology if the U.K., Italy and Japan get their way and a universal SHV standard is met as Blu-Ray finally achieved after loads of doubt and tug-of-war with HD DVD.

But get ready for the sound hear 'round the world of people throwing their massive Blu-Ray collection on the floor in frustration a mere three to five years after spending a fortune to upgrade from standard DVD...

Source:

http://www.ultrahdtv.net/