As the Consumer Electronics Expo rolls into Las Vegas for 2013, I'm willing to gamble that 4k video is going to play a massive hand in the show. With cameras like the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition and the Canon EOS 1D-C putting the new, massive-resolution video into more consumers' hands, more manufacturers are going to clamor to get the technology packed into their devices. It's not only cameras that are going to be introduced with 4k: some TV manufacturers, namely LG and Vizio, have already made announcements that their upcoming TVs will be packing 4k video support from 2013 on. So what's the big deal? Full 1080p HD video has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, a number that was just gaining some real meaning ten years ago as video production slowly began the switch from tape sources like DV and DVCPRO to memory cards. 4k video clocks in at a staggering resolution of 4096x2160 pixels, and looks astonishing if your computer and internet connection can handle it (a hint for that link: press the gear button on the bottom right of the video and select "Original" to view in 4k resolution).
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A visual representation of 4k video's titanic size[/caption]
4k has been one of the main video output sizes of RED cameras, which for the past several years have been a film industry standard for budgets that can afford them. Now, it can be had for $400 in a GoPro. Due to the massive size of just one video frame, some photographers have been simply pulling frames out of video and printing them as photographs. In essence, dawn has just crept over the horizon for the next TV, film and video standard. CES 2013 is going to be a massive broadcasting signal for the new technology (perhaps literally as well as metaphorically), and it should be interesting to see how this new resolution arrives into our technology. Check back here at the Unique Blog for this topic and other news from CES as the week progresses.