There are already a few television display on the market with a 4k resolution (8 Mpixels). That is 4 times the resolution of present HDTV. The problem in increasing the screen resolution is that pixels have to become smaller and by getting smaller they lose brightness.

Structure of a metal oxide semiconductor pixel

Now Samsung has shown a prototype of 4k screen using a new electronic backplane based on metal oxide semiconductors, improving on the performances of today’s amorphous silicon. The increase in performances does not correspond to an increase in price making this new technology particularly attractive.

Ultra definition television, with screen matching our eye resolution are getting nearer to our homes. Just wait a bit more for them and for the fiber to provide the required bandwidth.

Many applications could be developed if we have the high capacity Internet access provided by the optical fiber at home. One of them would be online high definition games with multiple players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye

Star Trek Online Game

Nowadays, online games don’t exploit all our sight capability. The human vision is composed by binocular and peripherical vision, ranging from about 120 to 170 degrees, once we take into account the saccadic movement of the eye. On the vertical, we have a field of view of 135 degrees. Based on this information and assuming a 30-inch display and an observer at 30 cm from it, we would use just a field of 90×74 degrees.

http://www.icf.at/en/6000/how_much_bandwidth.html

According to the reference above, it would take about 15-20 Mbit/s to stream a single HD video but of course we can compress it to 10 Mbps without significant loss in quality. Now, imagine how much would be needed to simulate the feeling of immersion in an online game. This kind of game is rendered on a remote server that sends the HD video to the player. To have a sense of immersion in the game, fully exploiting our eyesight, we would need to receive at least three HD videos horizontally! And the double is needed to cover also the vertical! Thus we need about 60 Mbit/s to be immerse in game!

You might wonder about using a larger screen. Indeed moving to a 100″ screen would provide the sense of immersion in terms of vision angle. However, the HD resolution is too low with respect to the one of our eyes and if we were to look at such a big HD screen from a distance of 30 cm we would see plenty of pixels, red blue and green dots rather than a smooth image. To get  smooth image where no pixel is seen we need to move to the 4K standard (8 Mpixels) and that would require 70 Mbps of bandwidth.

Additionally, in many on line games, like point and shoot, what the player wants is the capability of looking in different directions, as he would do in a room by moving his head. This requires more screens. Whichever way you look at it true on line gamers are bandwidth hungry!

A lot of improvements need to be done in visual perception area and even more in what is related to games, to make this market more attractive. Of course, it is not just a matter of bandwidth, the careful design of the interface plays (!) a major role in this area.

I explained in the previous post why promising technologies, surely offering better resolution, have failed to win the market, so far. The returns on revenues, the beacon for any entrepreneurial initiative, is simply insufficient. Older technologies that can still be bettered with limited investment provides better returns.

Clearly, the situation would change if someone would start to invest in this new technologies and hit the market with a better product. But again: what does better means for the market? Unless there is a clear user advantage better just means a lower price. And here proven technologies, benefiting from production process optimization and continuous fine tuning are winning the game.

Providing a clear user advantage in the area of displays means to be able to show content that looks superior on a screen adopting the new technology. Hence, it means to have a content that would look better with a higher resolution display.

Today’s content is targeted to the television broadcasting chain and to the distribution via DVD and Blue Ray Discs, that is with a  2Mpixel resolution.

Moving one step higher, to 4k standard or two steps higher to 8k requires a dramatic change in the overall production and distribution chain.

A 4k 2hour movie requires over 100 GB (closer to 200 GB actually) of storage space, it won’t fit on a Blue Ray disc (it may take up to 4 BR disc to store it). An 8k 2 hour movie would require close to 1TB of storage (or 20 BR discs!). Whilst we have today several 4k video cameras (the 4k is used in professional digital movie making) used by professionals and we can expect mass market 4k video cameras in the next decade, we do not have, and will likely not have for the next 10 years, 8k cameras. May be beyond 2020 we will start to see the first 8k cameras and movie production.

It is likely that users will favour an evolution towards immersive 3D (and be willing to pay for it) well before being willing to go for the 8k.

The 4k is somewhere in between. My pick is that we are going to see an increase of interest in the 4k area, thanks to the convergence of video cameras on digital still cameras. Here the 4k is already a reality (in terms of still image, since this correspond to an 8 Mpixel sensor) and it would just take an evolutionary step to move from current HD to 4k  Mind you, I am not saying this is an easy one: it requires the availability of a much faster digital processor (10 times the present one), a much bigger storage capacity (in the order of 1 TB) but these requirements are likely to be met early in the next decade.