I'm not saying this is my genuine opinion, but for all the equivalent reasons back in the day of Black and White TV, we didn't really need colour 😁

Stoobie

olvisab wrote:

So I wonder, If we really need a 4k def tv ?

You've forgotten the most important point - most terrestrial broadcasters do not have the bandwidth (or demand) to stream any 4K TV. As you say, HD channels have reduced in quality as Sky and others have reduced the bandwidth.

Most Brits struggle to stream HD movies via Apple TV at (3GB each), never mind 100GB 4K downloads. It's a pipe dream.

I would say, absolutely Not. Why buy technology when there is mainly crap produced to it? I'm happy with my current video stuff. I dont even have 3D, no reason good enough yet.

4K is the next stage of tv screen progress.Content will be on Bluray or Download and not forgetting 4K Games which will be driven by the New Ps4 With 4k Proccessing!

Panasonic already has  20" to 28" 4K monitor which will go on sale and at the right price things will take off and as 1080p sets stop being produced 4K will take over in time!

Up scaled Dvd looks so so but Blu looks good,4k even better but your eyes can only see so much and there is a point in time when you get to a res that you cannot see the diffrence but 4k is something you should notice! One of the good things for 4K is home projectors! Clearer pic's and maybe bigger screens if you have the room!

Chris Townsend wrote:

I'm not so sure. BT were advertising their new 10 terabyte broadband speed for their new fibre, and Netflix want to start distributing 4k on their Network starting next year.

Good luck getting it. Advertising is one thing, getting it is another. This is my area :)

Four major issues:

1) Fibre cabinets are a rare find. Your exchange might be fibre-enabled, but the cabinet also has to support FTTC. Most do not. I can't find many offices in Bath which have access to fibre. My home doesn't in a central BA1 area. Same with Yorkshire. Fibre-enabled exchange, no cabinet.

2) FTTP is required for such bandwidth. Providing FTTP is incredibly expensive for existing homes. Most FTTC users often report slower-than-expected bandwidth as they are more than 500m from their exchange. Most Brits with fibre still only receive an average 5Mbits/s as they are so far from their exchange.

3) Servers. The biggest bottleneck is providing the content from fast enough servers, a reason why Apple are building huge datacenters. You need to be able to push the data fast enough. People do not realise that most commercial servers sit on a maximum throughput of 100Mbit/s. Maximum. And that's with 1 person connected (getting 100Mbit/s). 10 people connected to the server, the max is 10Mbit/s/person and so on. Therefore the servers delivering the content, from most providers, is a bottleneck. In addition, the routing. We have no end of issues with our Australian customers downloading content from our German server. The routing causes problems for relatively small 200MB files. Give them a 1GB file (100x smaller than a 4K movie) and they simply cannot get it on their computer. The routing between Germany and Australia is so poor that the download crawls along, even though the server is on a 1GB/s pipe.

4) Capped broadband. As customer's are demanding cheaper broadband (few home users want to pay over £15/month for broadband), their broadband is capped at 100GB of data/month or less. One 4K download would wipe this in one go. Impractical. Even if they have an unlimited broadband connection, there's a fair use policy and 4K streaming will cause issues. Either users will have to pay more for their broadband (as ISPs have to rent their bandwidth) or capping will be more widely enforced. 

Lots of obstacles. Don't believe the PR :)

moxxey wrote:

Chris Townsend wrote:

I'm not so sure. BT were advertising their new 10 terabyte broadband speed for their new fibre, and Netflix want to start distributing 4k on their Network starting next year.

Good luck getting it. Advertising is one thing, getting it is another. This is my area :)

Three major issues:

1) Fibre cabinets are a rare find. Your exchange might be fibre-enabled, but the cabinet also has to support FTTC. Most do not. I can't find many offices in Bath which have access to fibre. My home doesn't in a central BA1 area. Same with Yorkshire. Fibre-enabled exchange, no cabinet.

2) FTTP is required for such bandwidth. Providing FTTP is incredibly expensive for existing homes. Most FTTC users often report slower-than-expected bandwidth as they are more than 500m from their exchange. Most Brits with fibre still only receive an average 5Mbits/s as they are so far from their exchange.

3) Servers. The biggest bottleneck is providing the content from fast enough servers, a reason why Apple are building huge datacenters. You need to be able to push the data fast enough. People do not realise that most commercial servers sit on a maximum throughput of 100Mbit/s. Maximum. And that's with 1 person connected (getting 100Mbit/s). 10 people connected to the server, the max is 10Mbit/s/person and so on. Therefore the servers delivering the content, from most providers, is a bottleneck. In addition, the routing. We have no end of issues with our Australian customers downloading content from our German server. The routing causes problems for relatively small 200MB files. Give them a 1GB file (100x smaller than a 4K movie) and they simply cannot get it on their computer. The routing between Germany and Australia is so poor that the download crawls along, even though the server is on a 1GB/s pipe.

Lots of obstacles. Don't believe the PR :)

Just got FTTC, firstly had to buy an N dongle for my (old) lappy as the G wireless adapter within limited my wireless connection speed to ~19Mbps. With N dongle I get a wireless download speed of ~38Mbps a real step up from my previous 1.5Mbps ADSL connection - but it just doesn't seem that much better during normal web browsing, the limits are elsewhere as Moxxey says. On the one occasion I've used a P2P site the fastest speed I noticed during the download of a 2Gb file was ~2MBps (or ~16Mbps) - less than half my maximum capability. (Of course others can also use the same connection and get similar speeds) but it seems quite rare to ever approach the maximum on a single download from normal sites.

I believe 4K will be especially useful when used in bigger screens (and projectors) as well as large computer monitors. Regarding the content there is still a long way to go but personally I very rarely watch TV. I prefer films, series and documentaries of my own choosing and I have no problem downloading them and waiting a while before I watch them. As was mentioned previously gaming can take advantage of the higher resolution but as of today Sony states that the PS4 will not support 4K gaming, only video playback and photos.