YouTube moves solidly into the future by supporting 4K content
By Darren Murph 
posted July 9th 2010 6:04PM
posted July 9th 2010 6:04PM
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted July 9th 2010 6:04PM
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Nice! Now give me a monitor that supports that res!
@Ninetysix Sweet, hope they make one of those monitors.
P.S. YOUTUBE FREAKIN' ROCKS!
@Ninetysix and a camcorder too... what? iPhone can't do that?
@Ninetysix
Not until we have operating systems with Resolution Independence. Any idea what text would look like on even a 30" monitor? Really wish that feature was coming soon. Either way, awesome for youtube to be ahead of the curve.
@spass
What the FU@K does the iPhone have to do with this? Why must people keep bringing it up in irrelevant places. Engadget does that enough without your help.
@statickeith only a matter of time they start allowing downloads of this content....then, having to pay for a subscription. Its a hop, skip, and a jump away from istockphoto.com
@Ninetysix My monitor does!!!
@Ninetysix I think a 30 inch Retina Apple Cinema Display will actually have a purpose now.
@adokimus
Maybe because it lacks support for Flash? A plug-in necessary for this and other internet content to be viewed on your super-phone. Therefore you do not have "the whole internet in your hands" like all mighty Steve said when he launched the device. Or maybe because Apple just lost 1% of its market share and Android grew 4%. Or maybe its because we love to read your funny arguments, defending the device that does not do its primary task correctly (make calls). The list goes on and on.......
@rstoplabe14
Dear god.
I know you may hate this phone, BUT STOP TROLLING.
This article has nothing to do with said device.
@SolidSnake
I think this is going to fall into the
" funny arguments, defending the device"
category, yay, I need to get the popcorn and Coke ready!
@Ninetysix
If 1920 x 1080 is 1080p, surely 4096 x 3072 is 3072p, not 4096p?
Been bothering me for a while...
@FORDY
I think your logic makes sense.
@Ninetysix : With the speed (and quality) that streaming content is evolving I dont see why someone hasn't started providing local and premium TV this way and dump cable. (am not talking about hulu or youtube like content, but real HD TV)
All you would need is an internet connection and you can get full HD local and premium TV in an instant. You could simply go to a website and purchase you TV subscription and customize your channels and It wouldn't matter if you lived in a jungle, once you have a proper internet connection you are set.
@Gatejcr11 retina is a mobile display lol it doesnt do 1080, same thing with amoled
@Ninetysix
Why? This whole resolution competition is silly.
@adokimus
Do NOT feed the trolls.
@Ninetysix
Next hit in the market: magnifying glasses for your monitor so you can keep wondering what you'll do with such high res.
@huzzlehoff
Speak for yourself, Johnny.
Even 1080p has some visible pixels with screens larger than 100", which really isn't that large when it comes to front projection.
In a few short years, 4K hardware will be cheaper than 1080p us today, allowing even us middle class working stiffs access to some truly gorgeous video tech.
I'd trade all the 3D happy crappy in the world for high res, high refresh rate 2D any day of the week.
I think NTT has already drafted a spec that supports uncompressed 6Gbps 4k?
(drool)
@Ninetysix
How about we start with a link to one of these ultra res videos?
Did I miss the link?
@FORDY
I came here to say the same thing but you beat me to it. Sadly, Darren Murph's writing especially when it comes to technical details is not the best among the Engadget editors. Murph, you should have let Ben Drawbaugh cover this one.
@Ninetysix
4K is NOT 4096P. P stands for progressive, as in progressive lines of VERTICAL RESOLUTION.
Also, the "4K" digital cinema standard is not 4096x3072 (thats 4:3), it is 4096×2160
These facts are NOT hard to look up on the internet. There is no excuse for so many technical errors on Engadget's "technology blog"
@jrolls only because of the price. There aren't any limitations hardware wise. I believe LG or someone came out with an AMOLED TV. 15 inches and $1500. Maybe in 10 years AMOLED retina will be all the rage and completely affordable (yeah right) but until then...
@jrolls Actually most mobile device now uses OpenGL and OpenVG. As long as the original content can be vectored and is of HD quality (even 4G), then it can be viewed "Resolution Free". Meaning vectored graphics files have no discernible pixels and can be zoomed in or out without our eyes being able to detect them. This uses blending and anti-aliasing so the pixels are no longer square and actually overlap w/o any lines except in the actual content itself.
Like fonts are all being vectored on mobile devices. SVG fonts are fonts w/ a base of at least 300dpi. Both Android and iOS have fonts on the way this size. Actually iOS4 is using some high res fonts and vectorable icons. Android 2.2 will support these too, w/ Samsung Super Amoled 1280x720 pixel density screens out soon along w/ 2gHz SoC's by year's end in Galaxy S2 & Tape Slate!
@adokimus You're right. We're about halfway there. I have a 15" laptop with a 1080p screen and it is beautiful to look at media on, but setting windows' scaler to 125% only results in some apps recognizing it. Itunes/firefox/skype don't and the text is tiny. I have to use an addon in firefox to boost the text for each page at various levels and can only imagine it'd be worse on a 4k monitor.
Running ubuntu in a VM it seems to be more aware than Windows? I haven't spent much time with it though. Really though for windows 8 Microsoft need to enforce resolution independence and vector graphics for everything.
@Ninetysix Eyefinity with 6 1080p Projectors?
That way there will be no borders and that will be like... 7K
@Ninetysix
Bah. Their 720p is still lower bitrate than DVD's, why not improve that instead of going even higher resolutions. Oh, because its not marketable to normal people. Right.
@Ninetysix Youtube Poop in 4k resolution?
Can't wait
@One Love
I've been wanting that =.=
@FORDY That's what I was thinking too.
2010, and people still think the Internet can carry every TV show, movie, radio station, home video, and other application on the planet at once.
Wake up. You're not getting fiber to the curb. FIOS is discontinued, and the telcos that received billions in taxpayer money to upgrade their networks don't care about hard wires anymore. It's not going to happen. You're getting wireless crap from here on out, at ever-increasing prices.
Quality has peaked. Increased compression and fraud are the order of the day. To take compressed hash containing no more than SD's worth of real image detail and specify that the playback be blown up to 4K is simply a joke on the consumer. Stop cheering for fraud and start calling the perpetrators out.
@One Love
I have about 200 TV streams that can be played in about any media player. Most are standard def but I'd be happy to email them to you if you want.
@bandsaw
Mozilla Firefox + DTA Turbo/FlashGot...then just change the file extension back to .flv or .mp4. ;)
@Ninetysix
and a computer that can play the video
@ToeCutter
Dream on.
What you're seriously expecting is for Hollywood to release cinematic masters.
It's not going to happen.
Why would they
(just so a handful can claim it satisfies their 'need')?
You'll eventually (in many many years time) see a shift from todays 720p/1080i/1080p screens
(which right now across the world are hardly truly even close to the old NTSC/PAL CRT market penetration).
Maybe at some stage we'll see sets that can handle an upscaled image to 2K.......way in the distant future perhaps upscaling to 4k.
Maybe.
But I have no doubt that you will never be getting Hollywoods catalogue in master quality @ 4K.
I can't realistically see anything beyond 2K (at best) and even then for the vast majority 1080p is as much if not more than they will ever need (or use).
A/V enthusiasts with tunnel-vision specs and a head full of day-dreams about where things might go are probably the last people to accurately guess where the mass-market will be in 10 - 20yrs.
Way to much wishful thinking.
GoGo Youtube. Just want my 4k tv
I think you mean 3072p.
@Michoel
I also find it most interesting that the future display tech (4k) is going back to 4:3!
@Michoel
That's what i was thinking.
@Michoel You are correct. If Engadget's logic were correct, then current HD would top out at 1920p. The rating is for vertical resolution. :)
@Michoel
It's an option, though 16:9 4k is 3996 × 2160 and then Scope is 4096 × 1714.
@Michoel: Indeed, amateur mistake by Engadget, but they were just regurgitating what it said on the YouTube blog without actually spending any time thinking about what they were posting.
@meeku No, 4K refers to the horizontal resolution (in this case 'K' is a binary kilo, as in kilobyte).
@Michoel The standard, like most film standards is 4:3 to support squeezed anamorphic formats (eg. 2.39:1). Also, with Academy aperture 35mm film, although you shouldn't see the extra image, a full frame aperture at 4:3 is exposed and cropped in projection to 1.85:1 (1.66:1 in europe) to allow the extra image information that makes the images compatible with various projection and display formats worldwide.
We need 3840 x 1080 resolution!
That is dual-HD or dual 1080p so we can get real HD in 3D.
Anymore than that is just overkill and would only be necessary on screens larger than 65"; a size which most people dislike in their small living rooms. Because the human eye can barely pick up on the pixel density from distances over 1 metre, and with fast moving pictures/videos it becomes impossible. Sorry Apple's "Retina Display" is sweet but just a marketing gimmick, you won't notice the difference by going down to WVGA resolution at that screen size and distance from face.
Imagine that resolution on an 50" LCD-LED polarized-3D TV!!!!!!
@Kangal That's pretty much how the PS3 does 3D. But the resolution is something like 1920x2190.
In other news, house fires are sweeping across the nation, and Youtube's latest 4096p video tests may be the cause. More information at 11.
Youtube load times are so flaky I really wonder if this will help anything
"just pretend that your monitor can actually support a legit 4K feed" While most people aren't capable of watching 4K at native resolution, some people have monitors at 2560 x 1600, higher than youtube's 1080p.
@Damaga
Just whack 4 of those monitors into one system
Granted that "one system" will probably need the components of at least two pretty high-spec computers :P