Far be it from me to find fault with filmmaker-great Steven Spielberg or with author Ernest Cline. But as effective and entertaining as Ready Player One is, its depiction of what VR will be like 25 years hence is, conceptually, ridiculous. <Spoilers ahead> One major problem involved in forecasting VR’s future—other than any extrapolating of […]
Archive | 4K
What Will Be The Legacy of Legacy Formats?
Recent reports of the demise of the compact disc feature elegies tinged with funereal nostalgia for what was once a bold, new and literally shiny technology. Those might as well have been elegies for all physical media including the CD’s video packaged-media analogues: DVD and Blu-ray. Neither of which is quite ready for a final […]
Industries Differ On Categorizing HDR Performance For 4K UHD TVs
Different sets of definitions used to promote high dynamic range (HDR) supporting displays have the IT and CE industries approaching customer education from varying perspectives. It’s not unusual for computer and consumer electronics marketers to take contrasting approaches to solving the same problem. For example, the two industries have long championed different digital connector standards—DisplayPort […]
Get Ready: 8K TV is Next Up
At the recent CES 2018 in Las Vegas, the managers of the new Sharp Corp. rolled out their vision for an 8K consumer video future featuring 8K Super Hi-Vision (SHV) TV. Sharp, now under the direction of giant Taiwan electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision/Foxconn Electronics, has set its sights on leading the development of this […]
Are There Killer Apps for AR and VR?
Restless grumblings are rocking the virtual reality (VR) world. Previous rose-colored projections are undergoing hasty revisions as disappointing VR hardware sales reports trickle in. We’re shocked that folks don’t like putting stuff on their heads that completely blind them, forcing them to grope around to find the controllers, bumping into walls or furniture, and looking […]
HDMI 2.1 Spec Arrives in Time for Christmas, Most Products a Year Away
The HDMI Forum started the clock on the next generation of television and video performance when it formally released completed specifications for version 2.1 of the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) on Nov. 29. With compliance testing still in the works, however, many supporting products are probably still a year away from full integration. The […]
VR’s Rocky Road to the Mainstream
For Mom and Pop America to buy into a new technology, they first need an answer to their inevitable “why do I need it?” question. And the answer to this question ends up being more want than need. To get to that “want and can’t live without it” stage, content must be particularly suited to […]
UHD Blu-ray’s Narrow Opportunity Window
My wife loved Wonder Woman. No, to paraphrase Woody Allen, love is too weak a word for how she feels about the initial adventures of the Amazon princess—she luuurved it, she loaved it, she luffed it (two Fs, yes). She l’ed Wonder Woman so much, we’ve seen it three times in the theater. (I am […]
Will the FCC Put the U.S. Back on the Information Slow Lane?
With a new U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman in place, new policy proposals are emerging. The U.S. has always been a bit of a laggard compared to other developed economies when it comes to the availability of suitably fast “broadband” connections. But there has been recent progress in upping those speeds—now from 4Mbps downloads […]
The Coming 1K/2K to 4K Upconversion Disconnect
A couple of months back I received a distressed email from a reader. It seems he bought a new 4K TV and eagerly hooked up his DVD player, believing his new UHD would make his old DVDs look lovely. You can guess the inevitable: disastrous results. Imagine blowing up a postage stamp-sized photo to billboard […]