4K is Just the Beginning
Aug 13, 2014 8:34 PM, By David Keene
Having just come back from InfoComm 2014 and on the way to our Rental & Staging Roadshow in New York, there are several technology trends that continue to bubble to the surface at the midpoint of the year. 4K hardly needs an introduction at this stage— even if the technology is in its nascent stages in terms of market penetration. Of course, there’s a big difference between 4K flatpanel displays and 4K video projection. The former is being pushed by the big TV manufacturers, with significant crossover into the digital signage and retail worlds. Don’t underestimate the power of that largely consumer-side supply push. Combined with the almost unlimited budgets of televised sports on the capture and distribution side, that dynamic will bring 4K flatpanels to the commercial AV world faster than you think, not the least because 4K brings with it added advantages in terms of color space, high dynamic range (HDR), and more.
On the video projection side, in the staging market, we have been creating 4K for years. After all, you can edge blend any number of 1080p projectors to get 4K and more. All you need is a screen big enough.
Ditto for LED walls. Outdoor football and baseball stadiums are plenty big enough to create HD and even 4K, if you have enough square feet of screen. Just keep increasing the size of the LED wall to, heck, 100ft., 200ft., or more across. Doesn’t matter what your pixel pitch is; with acres to play with, resolution is whatever you want it to be.
Given the above, the introduction of true 4K from one projector, or 2K or 4K from a smaller LED wall, is a welcome development. What will really bring 4K projection steaming into your world is the concurrent introduction of laser-light-source projection. 4K, plus laser, for 60K-lumen UHD? Wow. If you have not seen it, you’ll be amazed.
As I write this, I’m headed to the Rental & Staging Roadshow where there will be representatives from Christie, Barco, and Digital Projection on hand to explain and demo the latest in video projection. Even as we move daily in a world with more and more video screens—in our hands and on public and retail walls—there is nothing like high-end video projection to get the magic of the image bigger, brighter, and better. Go big or go home, I say to our industry as we create live events to cut through the media clutter and wow our audiences.
