How long will it be before 4K content is available in masses?

AT&T and Verizon (which was rolling it out, and then stopped, only to announce that they're probably going to start doing it again) seem to only be hitting areas where Google's gone first. And AT&T, Verizon, et. al. (save Google and a few of the smaller ISPs) have managed to get laws passed in some states that specifically block municipalities from having anything to do with starting up high speed internet service. I don't mind them mining my data, in exchange for fiber (after all, VPN service is fairly cheap), but its going to be a while before the monetization of that data actually pays benefits. Facebook and Google which are supposed to "know" all kinds of things about people, never seem to show me anything that I'm even remotely interested in (neither does Amazon, despite me buying all kinds of crap from them for nearly 20 years now). Eventually, advertisers are going to cop wise to this fact, and stop buying the data from companies like AT&T and Google, until they can prove that they've got a more accurate read on people. (Give them at least 5 years before that happens, though.)

@Tuckerfan I agree with you. I don't think it's going to be a quick process. The timeline I set was 10 to 20 years. I just don't think that internet speed will ultimately be the roadblock to mass adoption.

Ideally, the set makers will put pressure on the ISPs to up their data speeds, so even if Google doesn't expand their fiber service father than they already have, the rest of the US will see higher speeds. Of course, the technology to do mesh networking is falling in price, so folks may go that route, and tell the ISPs to go fuck themselves.

Don't remind me of that stuff, we were rolling out a national fiber network, but the new conservative government has declared that copper should be good enough for most people.

I don't think my EYES can do 4k.

I don't care, as long as Captain Winky works, so I say bring on the 4K/8K porn; which does exist, I might add.

I don't know, have you seen how much eyeglasses cost these days? 4K's not much more!

@Tex Hey, just parroting what I read

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/07/ces-vizio-ultrahd-4k-pseries-price/

Vizio for the win... 70" 4K TV that even has a pretty stylish look for $2600.

Samsung > Sony >>> Vizio, at least according to the engineers I work with and trust.

That was true a few years ago. I think they've come a long ways since then. I will of course give it the eyeball test before I buy one.

A wise course of action no matter which brand you buy.

Yes, the eyeball test.

4K Blu-Ray on the way!

Blu-Ray Disk Association confirms development of standards for 4K Blu-Ray are in the works.

Vizio is 5 guys in an office in NYC (I think its NYC), they call up Samsung and say, "What size panels you making this year? Great! We'll take XXX,XXX of 'em!" They then call Sony and say, "We'll take XXX,XXX of these chips." and so on, until they call up a factory in China and say, "You think you can squeeze in a run of our TVs between runs of Toshibas, Sonys, and Samsungs? Great! We'll send you the bezel designs today, and have the parts shipped to you next week." I'm not kidding. Vizio outsources everything, except the design, and they get their parts from the standard big name electronics manufacturers.

And there's nothing wrong with that business model, so long as you don't expect them to be first with any innovations. Insignia is the same way, except the 5 guys are employed by Best Buy. Early adapters should avoid such labels, but they're just fine for the rest of us.

How many terabytes a second is the transmission rate for 8K? I forget.

Uncompressed 8k/60Hz is 24 gigabits per second. That's close to a whole DVD movie every second.

I'll be interested to see how they've managed to squeeze that into 6MHz of bandwidth.

Review of some of Netflix's 4K content.

Lots more at the link.

Closer to a Blu-Ray isn't it? 25-50GB. A DVD is only 4-8GB or so, correct?

You're mixing up bits and bytes.

Yep. 24 gigaBITS = 3 gigaBYTES. A single layer DVD is around 4 gigabytes (or 32 gigabits).

Prediction: 1 to 2 years, based on the roughly similar transition time of Blu-Ray from niche to mainstream. Maybe shave a little off for the lack (at this time) of a format war.