Mobile industry has been one of the fastest growing sector for past few years now (though slowing down a bit now) . We see something new every day and it is amazing to observe that the industry a few years back was satisfied with Qwerty Keyboards and main softwares on the phone.
A screen resolution was rarely discussed and who cared what the processor in the phone was. These things were discussed in the computers and the laptops. You wanted to know what the resolution of the screen was and how big it could be.
On a parallel front, television screens were changing from being CRTs to LCDs and LEDs and the resolution became important and now we have TVs with HD resolution and going beyond. Now, we have mobile industry coming with 1080p HD screens and Televisions obviously needed something better to show off. Here comes 4K resolution!
4K means 4000p obviously. The standard has yet to be maintained and thus it is loosely defined as 4K resolution. The two major resolutions are-
1. 3840 × 2160
2. 4096×2160
These are also called Ultra HD (UHD) which is quite apparent. There are a few TVs in the market with this resolution and companies are just dipping their toes in this for now. The prices obviously are very high but they will fall with mass production.
But, my concern is something else…
It’s the Content!
HD resolution came over a decade back, but it took many years for HD content to get produced on mass scale became popular and available with ease. Even right now, after so many years only about one-fourth of TV channels are in High Definition. Obviously the condition is far better than 3D TVs, but I personally do not think 3D TVs are the right direction anyways.
UltraHD on the other hand is something that is in my opinion just a necessary upgrade. The content problem is something that will be a most important factor in determining the speed of its adoption.
Right now, the cameras are also very less which means making the content is also difficult to produce in mass or easily. HD content on the other hand can be produced so easily available. Even mobile phones can produce HD content these days.
It is this availability of content that drives a technology like this. It has always been said-
“It is a cycle. Content will be present when it can be seen on something. TVs will be upgraded when the content is there.”
Ideal scenario would be if the cameras in mobiles start creating UltraHD content. Then everyone could create 4K content.
Let’s see if it happens soon!
