The next big thing will be 4K and the format is coming soon
Hyderabad: The great Canada-born media guru, Marshal McLuhan, used to say: “If it works, it’s obsolete!” Buyers in India who might have invested in jumbo-sized TVs last year — 50-inch or bigger — will ruefully empathise. They were told that LED TVs with high definition (HD) — capable of viewing all those Blu-ray DVDs was the ‘in’ thing.
Now, all that is history. UHD or Ultra High Definition effectively quadruples the number of pixels or coloured dots in a HD picture of the same size. This is also referred to as 4K. UHD is the standard for displays, while 4K is the standard that video producers use to create UHD content.
So much for the definitions. In reality, there is no 4K or UHD content out there at all. Last week at the CommunicAsia show in Singapore, visitors could see the transmission of a football match beamed from London in 4K — to large screen TVs from Sony, Samsung and LG. These makers will tell you that even with HD content, a UHD display will auto sharpen the image — but that is like saying, you can upscale flat video into feeling like 3-D.
This situation will change fast — in two ways. One: the silly asking prices for UHD TVs — upward of Rs 2 lakh will fall with demand. Two: With 4K TV transmissions some years away, you will find content providers “upscaling” all those old films and TV shows to UHD standards. Meanwhile, there is a way out for UHD TV owners anxious to get their hands on matching content — Do It Yourself!
I recently got to try out the Sony Xperia Z2 smartphone one of the earliest in India, with the ability to shoot video in full 4K.
When coupled with its 20.7 megapixel camera and a suite of cool editing tools —like “Background defocus”, the ability to blur the background like the pros; and “Timeshift”, which lets you create slow motion — this is the closest I’ve ever come to a ‘phone handycam’.
So, why would I spend extra on a bulky handycam, when my phone lets me shoot at higher resolutions than 95 per cent of the cameras out there? And the Z2 is waterproof — in fact they want you to shoot while swimming! I’m not saying the Z2 is the only phone today, to capture 4K videos. But its one of the best powered, currently under the Rs 50,000 mark.
