Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs

Re:Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs by lvevjo on Thursday April 10, 2014 @03:14AM (#7564607)

In terms of display tech, I am much more excited about OLED, which makes a significant difference in image quality compared to what you get with the 4K LCD TVs that are available now. Not to mention that there is very little 4K content as of yet, though this will change soon enough.

Even when you have a TV that supports 4K (i.e. sufficient number of pixels + HEVC decoder chip in order to use services like this), a very large screen is needed for viewers to appreciate the higher resolution at a sane viewing distance:

http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-televi...

The article mentions an average bitrate of ~16 Mbit/s for the streamed content. Even with the awesome compression efficiency of HEVC, I would expect noticeable compression artifacts with such a low bitrate. Consider that Blu-rays (usually encoded with AVC) often have a video bitrate much higher than that. Is this going to look any better than Blu-ray? I doubt it. Better than Netflix's 1080p streams, though.

In any case, this is good news. The relentless march of technology continues! Let's hope for consumer OLED 4K TVs in the near future.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs by DiabloD3 on Thursday April 10, 2014 @03:20AM (#7564624)

Blurays may be 25mbps H264 for 1080p, but Netflix is 6mbps for their highest quality stream. Also, bitrate used by increasing the resolution but keeping the quality the same does not scale linearly, and H265 will also improve compression for <4k streams.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs by aquadrop on Thursday April 10, 2014 @03:32AM (#7564671)

If they stream 1080p at 6mpbs, I doubt that streaming 4k at 16mpbs have any sense, probably marketing dictates them to do it. You could get more quality by increasing bitrate without any hardware hassle. Content producers spend much effort and money to create HQ, high-bitrate picture and then you flush it down the toilet scaling to low values. And post production for 4k image is much more compute intensive and much more expensive.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs by klapinat0r on Thursday April 10, 2014 @03:35AM (#7564690)

I don't know which surprises me more: "an average speed of 15.6 Mbps would be required to stream its 4K content" or "only 15% to 20% of households have the speeds necessary"

Isn't that an absurdly low bitrate?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs by jordanthoms on Thursday April 10, 2014 @06:00AM (#7565046)

I'm pretty sure Super HD 1080p is around 10mbps actually.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs by jpmattia on Thursday April 10, 2014 @09:48AM (#7565999)

> The article mentions an average bitrate of ~16 Mbit/s for the streamed content.

HD 720p/1080i for broadcast is about that rate, so quality-improvement for going to a higher resolution will be quite dependent on coding efficiency.

[ Parent | on HN ]