What Single Innovation In Video Is On The Horizon

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Hi Amir

The question says it all. What in your opinion is the single best innovation in video that is ready to debut and will rock our world as "something I must have?"

Is it 4K, better 3D, H.265/HEVC, better streaming video or ????
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
I don't know what is "ready" to debut but can talk about some things that have been ready to debut for years but haven't :).

1. Flat panel. You know the story here and it is OLED. Contrast is the problem with LCDs. Adaptive back lighting helps with LCD contrast but ultimately the device cannot shut off the dark pixels completely by polarization. Some light always escapes leading to lower contrast. OLED lights up each pixel on its own so doesn't have this problem. The problem it has is getting 2 million little light bulbs to all shine equally with the same color and not age rapidly. And oh, be cheap to manufacture. Major CE companies rushed toward OLED because they are losing money on normal flat panels. The market has become quite cost sensitive though so success here hinges on making OLED in these sizes cheap. That is a challenge.

2. Projectors. Contrast again is the holy grail here. Current projectors have become quite good but still shy of what we can see. Laser projectors are thought to be one solution to this problem. But despite many announcements, real home theater projectors are not available to use. There is some progress on the theatrical front though. See technology and this dumb-downed comparison here: http://www.laserlightengines.com/why-side-by-side.php.

Outside of there, there is not a lot going on on the hardware side. As I noted above, the bottom has fallen out of the profitability of almost any consumer electronics equipment. As such, there is little incentive to drive massive technology changes by the big boys. Recall all the money that was thrown at Blu-ray??? No longer do companies want to place such large bets. There simply is no money to be made to recoup major investments. Combine that with the fact that the game is in software, services, etc. where companies like Apple and Google are strong and you see maybe the end of the era for the innovation from traditional CE companies.

The biggest development is on the content side. We are going through a very rough transformation of the business, not unlike what we went through in music. There is no leadership and hence innovation. The only major change was Netflix bringing subscription rental to masses online. But that runs counter to profitability of the studios so the business is transforming more to on-demand, all-you-can-eat, Television as opposed to movies. The goal is clear though: you should have access to any movie at any time with highest fidelity. I just saw the trailer and positive review of the latest Star Trek movie. Why can't I just now go and pay/watch it??? My gear is good enough for a high fidelity experience. But it is sitting in "off state" because I can't get that movie to watch.

I remain hopeful that we will solve the above problem and get universal availability and access to movies at our fingertips. The technology pieces are all there. It has to be stitched together intelligently.
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I have been reading that Samsung has been working on the new 5G network due on or about 2020. They say we will be able to download a movie in just a few seconds at at least 1 Gb/sec. This should really change things as to how content is delivered
 

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