Angry Robot

Ultra HD

What happens after HD? Is a question I was wondering about, and happened to catch a post-NAB blurb on the topic.

Ultra HD, or “Super Hi-Vision” (what a name!), is what Japan’s public broadcaster NHK proposes.

ultrahd vs sd and hd

It’s 7,680 × 4,320 pixels of resolution, as opposed to SD’s 640 × 480 and 1080 HD’s 1920 × 1080 px. 16 times the res of HD. One minute of uncompressed footage would take up 200 gigs of space.

I’m not sure you would really want to be super high if you were watching that.

I used to constantly have the argument with my film pals about whether digital tech would replace film, and they used to tell me it would never happen. (One of them is now a manager of digital cameras at a big camera maker.) One of the big arguments in favour of digital over analog tech is: although suchand such digital technology may not at present surpass the analog equivalent – say, HD is not better than 35mm film – just give it time and eventually the digital option will be both cheaper and much higher quality than the analog. You can’t fight the robots.