HD TV Not Enough? Upgrade to Super Hi Vision!
05.29.07 - 02:44pm
I just love the Japanese. Really, Super Hi Vision? If the name itself doesn’t make you laugh then perhaps the resolution will. 7680 by 4320 pixels of cinematic glory, possibly in the comforts of your home. HD TV is currently at 1920 by 1080 while Digital Cinema sits at 4096 by 2160 pixels. I just can’t imagine having slightly less than 4 times the resolution of a digital cinema screen, it would just make my head hurt. According to the NHK Science & Technical Research Laboratories Super Hi Vision will deliver “images so real that viewers feel as if they were actually at the site of the broadcast and find themselves attempting to touch what’s on the screen.” I already get overwhelmed when I go to IMAX theaters with multiple attemps of trying to jump on screen (I kid, I kid) but I cannot imagine what this would do to my perceptions, would I try to walk into my TV?
Bandwidth has and probably will always be the limiting factor in getting information from the world into residential areas. I’ve talked about this a few times in the past and the situation isn’t getting any better. Current HD TV transmitted over cable networks is heavily compressed with the MPEG-2 codec with some broadcasters jumping onto the MPEG-2 H.264 train. These codecs do a decent job of saving bandwidth but they can’t perform miracles. Smooshing together the 24Gbps signal for a SHV signal into a stream that is possible over current networks is something that would require a dedicated computing cluster just for the decoding. Oh you crazy Japanese, I suspect they’ll have SHV rolled out in 2 years.. maybe? Back to watching my DVDs on my lame 1680×1050 monitor.
Edit! I found a great way to solve the bandwidth problems! Piggyback off your neighbors with the Slurpr WiFi aggregator! Now your neighbors won’t have to blame everyone else for downloading porn, it’s just your SHV TV set with it’s 22.2 channel sound system.
Revelant Links
Wikipedia Entry about HDTV
PC World Article on SHV
NHK Article about SHV
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