4K Screen Resolution Question

ZeitgeistGlee

Hey all,

Bit of a tech question here hoping someone can answer. I bought a 49" KS7000 from Richersounds back in January and I'm just wondering if someone can explain to me why the display resolution is 4096x2160 as opposed 3840x2160 that most "4k" content seems to be broadcast in? Is this the display equivalent of blu-ray vs HD-DVD (or VHS vs Betamax)?

Most sources seem to scale automatically (I need to manually change for my PC's HDMI but it's not much of an issue), but the question has had me curious for a while.

Cheers,
Zeit

The Ritz

The short answer is that 4096x2160 is the technical 4K standard and 3840x2160 is UHD, the consumer standard.

Confused ? there's more.......

The term “4K” originally derives from the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a consortium of motion picture studios that standardized a spec for the production and digital projection of 4K content. In this case, 4K is 4,096 by 2,160, and is exactly four times the previous standard for digital editing and projection (2K, or 2,048 by 1,080). 4K refers to the fact that the horizontal pixel count (4,096) is roughly four thousand. The 4K standard is not just a resolution, either: It also defines how 4K content is encoded. A DCI 4K stream is compressed using JPEG2000, can have a bitrate of up to 250Mbps, and employs 12-bit 4:4:4 color depth.

Ultra High Definition, or UHD for short, is the next step up from what’s called full HD, the official name for the display resolution of 1,920 by 1,080. UHD quadruples that resolution to 3,840 by 2,160. It’s not the same as the 4K resolution made above — and yet almost every TV or monitor you see advertised as 4K is actually UHD. There are some TV panels that are 4,096 by 2,160, which adds up to an aspect ratio of 1.9:1, and it loks like you've got one.


(I copied the longer explanation from the web, even I'm not nerdy enough to remember the detail of that off-hand.)

Ritz.

ZeitgeistGlee

Very informative Ritz thank you.