Earlier this week, I read rumors about Sony’s development of a new Playstation video gaming console. While some aspects of the rumors were completely unsurprising, like it’s going to be called the Playstation 4, one of the more interesting parts is that it going to come equipped with the capability to output 4096×2160 images, commonly referred to as 4k resolution. I don’t know whether these rumors are true or not, it could be based on nothing more then the 4K and Playstation 4 number-sharing coincidence. However, if it is true, it raises some very interesting possibilities that are worth speculating about.
The numbers in this article are going to get very confusing, so I’ll start off with an explanation of some of the more technical aspects of this potential technology. 4K is obviously drawn from abbreviating the first number of the resolution’s full specification, an image that is 4096 pixels by 2160 pixels. For those of people out there who aren’t familiar with how image density works, the basic idea is that the more pixels an image packs, the more clear and detailed the image will be. This also means that images with higher pixel counts can get enlarged, projected, or displayed on bigger screens than their counterparts before seeing any noticeable deterioration in image quality. The weirdness with resolutions comes from the fact that, due to the math used to calculate pixel counts, 4K is actually only double the resolution of 1080, the current high-end standard for broadcast high definition, despite what the numbers would lead you to believe.
For at least five years now, 4K has been the resolution standard in Hollywood for digital transfers for films. Digital transfers are the process of converting film to high definition video files in order to do digital post-production work. This kind of digital post-production has become ubiquitous within the industry. While many movies still shoot to 35mm film and use chemical processing to develop negatives, basically all movies spend at least some of their life-cycle receiving touch-ups in a digital post-production facility. Composite shots, blue and green screening, special effects, lighting adjustments, and even painting out unwanted background elements are all part of this process. Cleaning, sweetening, and rerecording audio, as well as soundtrack recording, also happens during this time, but is less directly relevant to the 4K issue. Finally, to prepare for projection, a digital print consisting of the doctored digital transfer and the touched up audio, is printed back onto 35mm film in order to be projected in movie theaters.
When the highest end digital film cameras were looking for a target resolution, they aimed for 4K. Digital video had often been considered too low quality, compared to actual film, for shooting anything other than television and occasionally cheap documentary work. There were a multitude of reasons for this, but one of the biggest was that the amount of information, or the resolution so to speak, captured by 35mm was so much higher than what could be gotten with a digital video camera. This has to do with a lot of technical concepts like how light is captured when exposing film relative to the censor size of a digital camcorder, but regardless of the details, the film snobs had a point. All of that excess of information in film could be transferred to digital form, in the shape of 4K video files, but digital camcorders simply weren’t capable of taking in that much information due to the limitations of the technology. Until recently, that is. RED cameras were the first to hit the 4K benchmark, followed by several competitors such as the Arri Alexa, by using massive CMOS censors to overcome the exposure limitations that plagued digital video cameras for so long.
This is all basically a preamble to make the point that 4K is, for all intents and purposes, the same resolution as what you see projected on the giant screen at a local Cineplex. So if this quality of video is something that a person can have in their house, what does that say about the future of media consumption? Obviously, there are some hurdles to overcome before people will have 4K in their homes, even if the Playstation 4 has the capability. 4K output isn’t any good unless there are 4K-capable displays as well. Sadly, no TVs or consumer projectors currently on the market can handle that level of high definition video. That said, LG showed off some early stage prototype 4K TVs at a tradeshow earlier this year, and if Sony wants to support a 4K Playstation, it is likely they will be developing some 4K TVs as well. There are also 4K projectors available if you have a large screen or wall that you use for a home theater, instead of the more traditional television. The downside with all of these options is the expense; that the LG TVs cost an estimated $32,000 and a 4K digital cinema projector, from a reputable company like Texas Instruments, costs a slightly cheaper $25,000. It is especially hard to justify those costs when many studies show that for the size of home theater screens, and the distance away the home viewer sits from the screen, the human eye can’t tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. 4K is really designed for the public theater environment. Even the professional grade screening rooms many Hollywood professionals have in their houses don’t have a screen large enough for 1080p to begin to look fuzzy or washed out.
So why get excited about 4K? If no one can tell the difference, what is the big deal? If 4K makes it to the home theater market, it could cause a major shift in the way consumers buy their media. For a long time, the concern has rested in the back of people’s minds that the media they buy today, be it VHS, DVD or BluRay, will probably be obsolete sooner than they would like. Given how quickly technology has been advancing lately, many people rightly worry that they may buy a BluRay today and by the end of the year it will be functionally obsolete. This is happening with computers, cellphones, and so on, so why not media? The interesting thing about 4K is that it changes this equation. Since 4K is the same standard that movies are projected at in theaters, it is safe to assume that when you buy a 4K disc of a movie, you don’t have to worry about it becoming replaced by a higher quality release of the same movie. With 4K, the home viewing experience reaches a zenith of picture quality that, barring gimmicky stuff like 3D, essentially future-proofs a person’s collection.
If everyone’s collections are future proof, than investing a lot of money to replace an existing hodge-podge of DVD, BluRay, and (heaven forbid) VHS, with all one video type. The question here is whether it will change the way studios sell people movies in the home market. On the one hand, such a switch will functionally end the double buying many people do to upgrade their favorite movies, cutting the profits of the studios slightly. On the other hand, DVDs have been very popular for years, even now with BluRays out they sell perfectly well, and the studios are perfectly happy to just put out DVDs six months to a year after the movie leaves theaters. All of the standard profit maximizing techniques will still be effective, like releasing a movie at a premium when it’s a new release and then slowly lowering the price as the movie ages. The only studio that doesn’t use this system is Disney.
Disney meters the availability of their films by placing them in the “Disney Vault” and then rereleasing on whatever the popular medium of choice is at any given time, on some unknown schedule. This creates artificial scarcity, and allows them to basically always charge full-price for new copies of the Disney classics. This works especially well due to the way Disney is branded, and because the back catalogue is so cherished, but one could easily imagine other companies adopting a similar approach to try and improve their home video profits if 4K is making their revenue streams dip.
Ultimately, there is a push and pull between the media makers and the media consumers. Media makers want to eek out every penny they can from their customers, and media consumers don’t want to not feel like they are getting ripped off. Whether being required to buy for the third time your favorite movie because now it’s on BluRay, or if it’s being forced to buy the digital only copy your computer or mobile device because they don’t have an optical drive, people are upset with the current swing of power towards the media makers, and are buying less media than they have in the past. Obviously, the mobile device market is it’s own can of worms, but it will be interesting to see if 4K movies really do future proof the home video market, and if the result has any effect on how studios and consumers find that compromise between studio profits and consumer happiness.