Rumor: Apple to launch 4k video format?

We shoot 4k frequently for commercials now (on RED). And many films are shot digitally at 2k or 4k.

I don't think that you'll see 4k in the home anytime soon, but Final Cut Pro only supports 2k right now. 4k support in the next FCS would be nice indeed.

I don't know if folks are getting "4k = 4096" confused with UHD which is 4320.

Why is 4320 such a magic (and desirable) number?

1080 x 4 = 4320
720 x 6 = 4320
540 x 8 = 4320
480 x 9 = 4320

All commonly used resolutions can be displayed with a 4320 pixel screen quite easily by simple pixel stretching. It doesn't require complex and expensive scalers that have been used previously for video up-conversion.

The point with 4320 isn't higher resolution that you can't see. This magic resolution makes the scaling very simple without the need for oversampling, interpolation, deinterlacing, etc.

I messed myself thinking of the resolution.........thats High High-Definition....
Woah...

Here's something to consider:

Apple has got this AppleTV device, and barely hasn't done anything with it, mainly because the TV part of AppleTV (especially those Sony Bravia TVs they almost always show the AppleTV with in the Apple Stores) are normally very, very expensive.

What if Apple had a deal with, say, Vizio or some other relatively low-cost provider of HDTVs and offered a bundle of the new AppleTV with a great HDTV that could be capable of everything the movie industry threw at us in future, up to and including 4K (aka better-than-1080p resolutuon)? Now THAT might turn a few heads. September can't come soon enough.

BJ

It blows my mind that people still have the attitude of "no one would ever produce something like that" in this day and age. It's not even about what's good for the market or the consumer anymore... it's about what will turn the biggest profit. Apple is the biggest tech company in the entire country. If they believe that create some super HD codec and going into the TV market is going to help them out and bring in more cash... they'll do it. And why the hell wouldn't they?

I find it hard to take you seriously, being that you don't know how to spell BluRay.

A wall with 1mm/pixel resolution is about 13 x 6.5 feet. We will have to start building larger TV rooms.

Japan is already planning on doing 8K this decade. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision ) If Apple tries to develop a 4K TV format, then it is just going to make a mess when Japan (and maybe the rest of the world in ~15 - 20 years) is doing 8K.

8K would seem like major overkill right now and probably will seem like overkill in 10 years, too, but 8K would allow growth for the future. 20 years from now, it might be feasible to make 100 - 150" "wall" TVs at an affordable price.

10 years ago 42" Plasma TVs (480p) were $15,000 and now HDTV versions can be found for ~$530 - 600.

What needs to be done (this time), is that 5 years before we make another switch, made all TVs at least support 8K and stop selling the "older HDTV systems". The TV might be only 720p or 1080p or it may be a 4K TV. Anyone that has an older HDTV older than 5 years can just buy a converter box, just like people had to do when we switched from analog to digital.

The current OTA should also stay in the standard for 8K TVs so television stations don't have to worry about converting. Later on, if they want to go to 8K OTA (if that would even be possible. maybe 4K OTA?), then it would in "theory" be a seamless transition.

Holographic discs should provide 1TB - 2TB of storage, which would be ample for 8K (at 628 Mbps a 3 hour movie would be 828 GB). 8K technology "should be good enough for anybody" until we can come up with true 3D technology such as the holodeck. ;)

Well, though I don't have access to it, it looks like Final Cut Studio 7 does support 4k. (FCP 6 maxes out at 2k, I think…) I have access to a theatre with two 4k projectors, configured for 3D work and hope to be creating some video art for that theatre in the next few months… Still not sure how I'm going to prepare my source material to make the best use of it, though. (And the projectors themselves are currently driven by linux clusters… at least 16 cores each, I think…)

I don't buy this. 4K is still some ways off. Apple may be ahead of the times, but it isn't this far in advance.

I'm not saying that apple won't introduce a format that could support the format in the next few years, but not now. 4K+ will become the norm soon, so it would be a good idea to future-proof content though.