One of the biggest technology trends hitting every level of consumer electronics in the last year has been the demand for an ever sharper, crisper, higher resolution picture. This trend of increased resolution has been further fuelled by the real world adoption of the 4K TV in 2015. While 4K is not in itself a new idea (4k televisions have been unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in the past), it was in 2015 that 4K television became a realistic proposition for most consumers. This is a result of a huge price reduction for 4k televisions – now moderately priced at below £1000 in the premium market, and below £500 for a lower end set. An added factor is big brand streaming services like Amazon, Netflix & YouTube who have now also introduced 4K content.
In 2015 that 4K television became a realistic proposition for most consumers
The television while being the most common way watch 4K content is not the only appliance in our homes to see a 4K bump. Every new generation of smartphone, smartwatch, laptop, and tablet tends to include resolution as staple improvement to the spec sheet with each generation. 4K has now become the next new ‘must have' feature for your smart phone.
So, what is 4K?
4K, often referred to as Ultra HD, is the next evolutionary step from Full HD (1080p) and HD ready (1080i / 720p) which has become the standard for most content delivered digitally across the globe through television broadcast, internet streaming and digital disk formats like Blu-ray.
Tech Tip - Today, most traditional broadcasters do not actually distribute their content in Full HD / 1080p, and instead opt for HD ready formats like 1080i (interlaced) or 720p which require significantly less bandwidth but can unfortunately compromise the image quality.
1080p/i formats deliver images through 1,920 x 1,080 pixels in width and height respectively whereas 4K doubles those numbers to give us an overall resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels.
Rather than image quality doubling as you might think, 4K actually delivers 4 times as much detail as you can see illustrated below:
1920 x 1080 = > 2 Million Pixels, 3840 x 2160 = > 8 Million Pixels
For the consumer, this means a sharper & smoother picture, greater level of detail and greater depth of. Of course some of these improvements will not be solely down to the resolution increase but instead some of the many feature improvement included in modern televisions.
Much of the 4K feature set is not actually set in stone however, with many of the big technology players within the market still fighting it out over what has to be supported/included to count as a 4K set.
In fact, digital cinema displays use 4K content at a higher resolution of 4096 x 2160 while most 4K televisions on the consumer market define 4k as 3840x2160 which is not strictly 4K.
This is where the term UHD or Ultra High Definition is used to describe these sets instead of 4K; this allows the manufacturers to bypass this issue.
There are so many numbers and paper specifications but how does this translate to me and you?
Well, recently I purchased my own UHD LG 40" Smart Television - LG-40UF770V.
The UHD LG 40" Smart Television - LG-40UF770V.
This was to replace a Samsung 1080P panel which developed a fault outside of warranty so I had to put my hand in my pocket and buy a replacement.
After viewing 10-15 sets during my travels I found that my old TV was lacking in colour depth compared to what was available on the market at the time.
The highlights of the TV for me were:
- Screen size 40"
- The low price
- Smart TV features like WEB OS 2.0 (Netflix, Amazon video, Spotify)
- A 4K Feature set: 4K at 60 FPS, HEVC, HDMI 2.0
A quick review of multiple internet audio visual forums provided information on best distance to size practice. The decision to go 40" was made with the following considerations in mind: the diameter of the room in which it sits, the distance from which it's being viewed and the cost of the unit.
Web OS 2. drove my other major purchasing decision since this provides a slick smart television feature set powered by a quad core ARM processor. I would not consider smart features normally when looking at TV`s however 4K content is not mainstream yet. To access 4K content when streaming online, a HEVC decoder is required, and televisions without HEVC cannot currently stream 4K content on Netflix. Some set top boxes are now incorporating this functionality, but this was not available at the time of purchase.
To access 4K content when streaming online, a HEVC decoder is required
HDMI 2.0 also provides the necessary bandwidth required to support incoming Ultra HD Blu-ray players which will bring true 4K content at 60 FPS, helping to future proof the set.
All content displayed on the TV is displayed in 4k regardless of the source whether that be Blu-ray in 1080P, DVD or streamed content due to a built in 4K upscaler.
In short, it should prove to be a good investment for years to come.
Technology pressures
The higher the resolution, the higher the necessary bandwidth and storage requirements of the content. Though technology is forever moving forward to meet these needs with regards to DVDs and Blu-rays, network bandwidth may not necessarily improve at the same rate.
Many internet users for example, may not have the necessary connection available from their ISP to download uncompressed content in real time, and some will struggle to download an uncompressed film overnight.
To stream 4K, Netflix suggests an internet connection of 25mbps or greater to do so, however it is generally believed that you can get by with 15mps - if this is constantly available. Fear not though, as the average UK download internet connection is 24.72Mbps which means that streaming should be possible for most.
If I wanted to download an uncompressed full length film, how long would it take at 24.72Mbps?
If I wanted to download an uncompressed full length film, how long would it take at 24.72Mbps?
Granted Netflix, Amazon and every other video streaming service out there will be using compression for download, but in doing so the resultant quality of the picture will not be the same as 1080p on Blu-ray.
A quality comparison of 4K, HD and DVD formats
This is even more complicated for audio visual professionals, where these pressures are much greater. Bandwidth requirements for a single 4K stream uncompressed come in at 9.2 GB/s.
Star wars: The Force Awakens has a run time of 135 minutes, this would result in a 72.77TB of storage or the joint capacity of 1455 Blu-ray disks, 37 x 2TB HDD's, or over 53 million floppy disks to store the uncompressed 4K film!
Nobody would want to change Blu-ray discs 1455 times during a film (or once every 5.5 seconds), that's why compression is so important in the consumer market, but audio visual professionals need to work with lossless, uncompressed media.
As you can imagine, facilitating the editing and playback of this data in an uncompressed format is a huge undertaking and in most cases involves a dedicated high performance storage device inside a server system or an external SAN.
Boston has a comprehensive range of products that can enable systems to work with 4K, including a range of Igloo storage range products and our Datascaler-L all of which are optimised for the delivery of uncompressed video to multiple clients. Utilising Intel Lustre* we are able to use multiple storage targets in parallel, enabling the client to receive the aggregated bandwidth of all of them, enabling tens of gigabytes a second to be delivered with ease.
Boston dataScaler-L
'dataScaler-L' Storage System leverages industry-leading storage platforms and the Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre file system to power the world's highest performing supercomputing and commercial high-performance computing cluster applications.
Boston's dataScaler-L Storage System
In the event that you do buy a 4K camera or phone, all those 4K quality pictures of your cat have got to be stored somewhere and this will require many, many hard drives.
Our 90 bay JBODs are one such example where we can provide huge capacity in a small space – in this case just 4U. Supporting up to 10TB HDD's - this monster has up to 900TB of raw capacity, and it can be accessed through two 16 port SAS 3 expander modules, giving both high availability and increased bandwidth options.
The Boston 90 bay JBOD
A further evolution within the storage space is the support for the next generation SAS interface, coming in the form of 12Gbit/s SAS or otherwise labelled SAS 3. Here at Boston we work closely with Broadcom (previously known as Avago Tech / LSI) to provide well known, well tested HBA`s and hardware RAID add-on cards.
The main improvement between SAS 2 & 3 is the interface speed increase from 6Gbit/s to 12Gbit/s which is from 750MB/s to 1500MB/s per port – doubling the potential throughput. This means that a standard 8 port card has the potential capability to deliver up to 12GB/s and hit those uncompressed figures.
Of course, even the fastest disk interface still requires an equally competent disk to back it up, so Boston work closely with Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung and SanDisk to validate and benchmark the latest enterprise grade HDD's and SSD's to complement our arrays.
A Broadcom 8 port internal SAS 3 controller
Likewise our partners Mellanox provide us with high bandwidth, low latency and high message rate networking. While there are many different options provided such as Infiniband, most network users will be on Ethernet (whether you know it or not).This is where Mellanox`s Spectrum 25GbE / 50GbE / 100GbE range comes in. This range is the latest and greatest, this has evolved from the 10GbE and 40GbE standards that have been industry wide for some time.
How does a typical 1Gbit connection fit compared to the massive pipes above? Well here is how long it would take to transfer a 100GB Ultra-HD Blu-ray via each connection
How long it would take to transfer a 100GB Ultra-HD Blu-ray via each connection
If we apply the same logic to how long it would take to move the 72.77TB required for the new Star Wars above through a 1GbE link then we get approximately 6-7 days. Compare that to just 1-2hours by 100GbE Mellanox and you can see why it's so important to get the right interconnect.
To deliver the same bandwidth, you could either go crazy with loads of 1Gbit connections
Or alternatively provide your customer with a neat and ready to go 100GbE solution from Mellanox
When it comes to working with 4K on the desktop, our Venom workstation range can provide a range of configurations that incorporate the best of breed components from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, SanDisk and HGST to name but a few.
The Boston Venom 2500-0P
Don't just take my word for it, have a look at our reviews from multiple well known publications and see how these solutions speak for themselves.
- Techradar Review: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-mac-desktops/boston-venom-2401-12t-1275622/review
- V3 Review: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/review/2308858/boston-venom-2306-7t-workstation-review
- Digital Arts Online: http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/reviews/workstations/boston-venom-2401-7t-review-first-workstation-with-intels-new-xeon-e5-2600-v2-chips/
- ETeknix: http://www.eteknix.com/boston-venom-2500-0p-gaming-pc-review/
If Physical workstations are too bulky for your customer or they wish to centralise & secure their data then we have an alternative option for you. NVIDIA's GRID 2.0 allows you to virtualise your 3D workstation and protect it in your server room or DC. The latest generation brings forth the latest Maxwell GPU architecture and further software enhancements, like the enablement of Linux workstations and Windows 10 virtual desktops for the first time, making it a better time than ever to get started.
NVIDIA GRID 2.0
Whatever you need, contact your Boston account manager today to get all the latest information on these technologies and bring your customer into the light side of the 4K rebellion. If you wish to try before you buy or need some help configuring the perfect solution please get in touch.
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