4K TVs Continue To Rise Despite TV Shipments Dropping

[BoFox]

What you all of you think about this? https://research.nvidia.com/sites/defaul...5_DCAA.pdf

Wow, interesting - thanks for sharing!  Looks great, except for the artifacts as explained in Figure 10.  I wish the article would have made it more clear how often those artifacts would appear in games. 
Blurred texture, incorrectly merged, incorrectly discarded, and z-prepass artifacts probably won't be a common enough thing but I expect Nvidia to spend a lot of time making sure it's not an issue in the games we play (the z-prepass artifacts the most of all, especially).

Took me about an hour to think of a *potential* use for it that any of us would have, came up with one though. If you were running Morrowind with extreme mods and *MASSIVE* textures placing memory at a premium utilizing this approach could be viable. On a computation side this approach is kind of an interesting take on using an IMR shaders to gain some of the benefits of a TBDR.

I want to get that out of the way because, seriously, I am not trying to bash the guys that wrote this paper. Looking at what they were trying to do they succeeded, not only that but they seemed to iterate  several levels out of what we would typically expect to see at a first generation technique such as this.

This method of AA is so obscenely shader intensive it will not be viable outside of some extreme case situations with *very* narrow parameters. Ray tracing is cheaper then what they are doing. To compound the issue, it is simply giving you superior edge AA(versus normal MSAA) while doing fuck all for the rest of the scene. Again, I'm not trying to bash this implementation- what they were trying to do they did- figured out a way to get very high quality edge AA while using a significantly smaller memory footprint then any of our current approaches- they get a mission accomplished and some kudos for how much evolution of the technique they did prior to publishing- it is simply a *very* narrow window where this will be useful at all.

Perhaps Nvidia is working hard at developing new algorithms for exposing finer grained synchronization, to reduce threads needing serialization (which is basically the direction of the GPU tech progress anyway), so that this DCAA method becomes an attractive alternative to MSAA - not sure if Pascal will be implementing this, or if we'll have to wait for Volta?  Meanwhile, cards will be coming with 16-32GB of HBM2 memory most likely around Xmas, so the need for DCAA probably won't be so great until the next-gen console era arrives.  

Plus, I'd agree with Ben that resolution is king (at least for games that look as detailed as Crysis).  For older games, downsampling or SSAA makes sense as Quake 3 would look kinda funny at 4K.  Polygon edges on characters faces would look so razor sharp that the polygon corners would poke out of the monitor and give you a bleeding cut!  Even CS:GO looks a bit too sharp at 4K for my taste.  1440p seems about sharp enough for CS:GO - 4K on my 4K Gsync monitor just looks too unforgivingly razor-edged everywhere.

Nevertheless, I think both NV and AMD will be seriously focusing on bigger resolutions this generation.  5K is insanely demanding though (unlike how 5K sounds compared to 4K - a kinda lame naming scheme) but AMD and NV will have to try their best to stay ahead in case 5K monitors take the spotlight with review sites. 

For example, when we play Skyrim, I greatly prefer 4K with just 2xAA over 1080p with 8x SGSSAA.  It's certainly detailed enough as to not give a sharply polygonal feel, and looks much more crisp (as in less blurry) overall.

[BenSkywalker]

Oh yes, that's right - shaders!

On a 980 574ms for the merge stage alone depending on the scene. Tri SLI with perfect scaling would get you just under *six* frames per second. Keep acting like you got a clue kid.

What's the difference, Ben? I thought both variants of SGSSAA were sparse grid.

They are both cheap versions of stochastic, one of the issues I have with modern AA terminology is we were using all of these techniques dating back to the early 90s in some instances and we had different names for them then(and some of the names we had they just swapped, heh). Consistency on a frame to frame basis is the big differentiation. Using a consistent sampling pattern versus jittered offsets or straight randomness. 

Looks great, except for the artifacts as explained in Figure 10.  I wish the article would have made it more clear how often those artifacts would appear in games.

Simply a factor of granularity used in stage one and not truncating too much in the merge stage. In other words, you have a dial you can use- reducing artifacts close to zero would probably be several orders of magnitude more intensive then having a small margin of error- edge cases, as always, will be your undoing here.

Blurred texture, incorrectly merged, incorrectly discarded, and z-prepass artifacts probably won't be a common enough thing but I expect Nvidia to spend a lot of time making sure it's not an issue in the games we play (the z-prepass artifacts the most of all, especially).

This isn't from nVidia, they are hosting a doc that was written by what appears to be some University students. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it isn't something nV's developers are likely to be actively working on. RAM is cheap, TFLOPS of spare processing power, not so much.

Nevertheless, I think both NV and AMD will be seriously focusing on bigger resolutions this generation.  5K is insanely demanding though (unlike how 5K sounds compared to 4K - a kinda lame naming scheme) but AMD and NV will have to try their best to stay ahead in case 5K monitors take the spotlight with review sites.

5K will likely pick up about as much traction as 2K- in other words, very little. The reason 4K is such an easy swap is it is a clean pixel perfect downsizing for 1080p content. 5K won't fail, but 4K will be *the* standard until 8K picks up.

[BenSkywalker]

Typical of you to cherry pick the worst possible result.

You said we had plenty of shader power, their numbers laughed at you, not my fault.

The tests happened on a 980 not a 970 btw (you should try not to pluck "facts" out of your arsehole....)

Illiterate? My post isn't edited dipshit.

I don't expect a 970 to be the target for this AA method in any case, as I said before I expect nvidia would use it for Pascal or Volta and I also expect that they would implement some of the hardware improvements identified in the paper for both performance and quality reasons.

960GTX 38GPixel peak

4K = 8Mpixels

With an overdraw factor of 4, the 960GTX has enough pixel fill to easily clear 100FPS @4K. I am using a 960, not the 980 which  was used in the test(despite your insane strawman) to give you an idea of where current limitations are on video cards already- *without* using this approach for AA.

[BenSkywalker]

Illiterate I guess. I quoted you talking about the 970, I never mentioned it in relation to this white paper at all- look at YOUR POST WHERE YOU QUOTED ME. I said 980, for fucks sake, its' like you are creating a new level of stupid in this discussion...............

[BenSkywalker]

You had it as 970 originally.

MY POST ISN'T EDITED YOU FUCKTARD 

[SteelCrysis]

fadsf as g argadfsafasdf

Yes, even that close to posting, the forum software will publicly show whether the post has been edited if you use full edit.

[SickBeast]

fadsf as g argadfsafasdf

Yes, even that close to posting, the forum software will publicly show whether the post has been edited if you use full edit.

Maybe he used quick edit.

[BoFox]

Oh yes, that's right - shaders!

On a 980 574ms for the merge stage alone depending on the scene. Tri SLI with perfect scaling would get you just under *six* frames per second. Keep acting like you got a clue kid.

GPUs can do amazing things with optimizations in architecture. Threaded parallelism and compression, rather than snail-paced serialization here... and you got it flying like in some cases where a GTX 280 crawls around at 8fps compared to a GTX 480 zipping at 100+fps - it's not hard to find a game with certain settings where that is the case.

Looks great, except for the artifacts as explained in Figure 10.  I wish the article would have made it more clear how often those artifacts would appear in games.

Simply a factor of granularity used in stage one and not truncating too much in the merge stage. In other words, you have a dial you can use- reducing artifacts close to zero would probably be several orders of magnitude more intensive then having a small margin of error- edge cases, as always, will be your undoing here.

The question is - by how much?
The paper tries to paint a positive picture here:
"Due to the fragment synchronization issues noted above, overdraw in areas of high depth complexity introduces serialization that has a large performance impact. We minimize this with a z-prepass to cull triangles. Our prototype uses an 8xMSAA pass to find the maximum z per pixel, and we discard more distant fragments during our merge. Because of the difference in sampling rates, this is not fully conservative and can cause the background to leak along geometric cracks (see Figure 10(d)). A more conservative z-prepass would solve this issue; either higher hardware MSAA, analytically computing the maximal depth per-pixel, or matched sample rates would work."

Blurred texture, incorrectly merged, incorrectly discarded, and z-prepass artifacts probably won't be a common enough thing but I expect Nvidia to spend a lot of time making sure it's not an issue in the games we play (the z-prepass artifacts the most of all, especially).

This isn't from nVidia, they are hosting a doc that was written by what appears to be some University students. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it isn't something nV's developers are likely to be actively working on. RAM is cheap, TFLOPS of spare processing power, not so much.

Hmm, NV hosting it on their site probably means that NV is indeed interested and looking into it right now. Of course, they'd love to develop a new AA method that keeps the spotlight away from AMD.

Nevertheless, I think both NV and AMD will be seriously focusing on bigger resolutions this generation.  5K is insanely demanding though (unlike how 5K sounds compared to 4K - a kinda lame naming scheme) but AMD and NV will have to try their best to stay ahead in case 5K monitors take the spotlight with review sites.

5K will likely pick up about as much traction as 2K- in other words, very little. The reason 4K is such an easy swap is it is a clean pixel perfect downsizing for 1080p content. 5K won't fail, but 4K will be *the* standard until 8K picks up.

Good point, agreed. Well, 5K will likely be as "important" as 4K is right now, at least, lol (as 4K is still a "niche"). Review sites love to bench at the bleeding edge, and fanboys love to use the bleeding edge as an indicator of the potential.

[BoFox]

I play Skyrim at 4K (DSR) and I use 4x MSAA + 2x SGSSAA on top of DSR.  The resulting images are gorgeous and the game runs very fluidly.  I have the gaussian blur factor for DSR set to 5% only, certainly not the default 15%.

Wow, that's a lot of enhancements, in addition to 4K DSR @ 1080p!  Almost overkill for 1080p, eh?     The only thing left would be 3D!

[BoFox]

Not overkill at all, you get 1080p looking the very best it can be (which is very good indeed).  You can keep your 3D and the goggles needed to view it!

Do you wear glasses?  If you do, then GTFO!  LOL just kidding.

If you care that much about it looking the very best it can be, definitely try it on a 4K monitor (preferably a quality VA panel, though).  IPS might have more accurate colors, but the black level plain sucks (the dreaded "IPS glow" seems to be more of an issue with the recent panels - perhaps they're being made cheaper, see this one: http://www.overclock.net/t/1462025/asus-...ight-bleed ).  Or just wait for OLED to become affordable..

BTW, there's a 35" ultra-wide curved gsync monitor with VA panel, that can do 200Hz!!! 
Acer Z35

I just found out about this...    still only 1080 pixels vertical, UGH!!! 
I thought that all VA panels were incapable of much more than 100Hz, along with less than 15-20ms response time?!??  This one claims 4ms g2g response time.

This review https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/acer-z35/ claims:

Using this method, we calculated 4.90ms (under 3/4s of a frame at 144Hz) of input lag.

Amazing how far VA technology has come!!!  It used to be so laggy and ghosty in motion!  Just WOW...

Edit - the review says that there's still the same black crushing problem (like my old Dell 2405FPW from 2005, got rid of it)...  I had to turn up the brightness to at least 50% to fix the black crushing problem.

[SickBeast]

Right now in Canada you can get a 65" 4k TV for $999CAD. Granted, it's an off-brand, but it comes with an excellent Samsung panel and HDMI 2.0. I've been tempted to buy it but I'm waiting at least another year like you, gstanford. $999CAD should equate to about $999AUD as well. They're getting much cheaper.

[RolloTheGreat]

Right now in Canada you can get a 65" 4k TV for $999CAD.  Granted, it's an off-brand, but it comes with an excellent Samsung panel and HDMI 2.0.  I've been tempted to buy it but I'm waiting at least another year like you, gstanford.  $999CAD should equate to about $999AUD as well.  They're getting much cheaper.

They pretty much have to.

Marginal image quality differences plus scarce and expensive content plus saturation of working big 1080p tvs = slow times in the tv business.

It's a chicken vs egg situation- content won't be widespread until installed user base is, here compounded by bandwidth issues with the distribution network.

I would frankly be surprised if in 2 years 4k is like "cable HD" now for these reasons.

It's going to be the realm of videophiles for a while, and people that just needed to replace their tv for some reason.

[SickBeast]

Right now in Canada you can get a 65" 4k TV for $999CAD.  Granted, it's an off-brand, but it comes with an excellent Samsung panel and HDMI 2.0.  I've been tempted to buy it but I'm waiting at least another year like you, gstanford.  $999CAD should equate to about $999AUD as well.  They're getting much cheaper.

They pretty much have to.

Marginal image quality differences plus scarce and expensive content plus saturation of working big 1080p tvs = slow times in the tv business.

It's a chicken vs egg situation- content won't be widespread until installed user base is, here compounded by bandwidth issues with the distribution network.

I would frankly be surprised if in 2 years 4k is like "cable HD" now for these reasons.

It's going to be the realm of videophiles for a while, and people that just needed to replace their tv for some reason.

It's going to be a big deal once there is more content. I'm a big sports fans and I'm very interested in watching sports in 4k on a big screen. It will be that much closer to watching it live. I saw a 4k TV in Costco this week and I was impressed by it, even standing 10' away from a 55" screen. It was a much sharper image, you could definitely notice the difference. On a 65"+ TV from 8' away I'm sure the difference will be striking.

The big problem is that 4k content uses a ton of bandwidth and I think the cable providers are going to be very slow to convert everything over to 4k. Here in Canada only Rogers is offering 4k TV and they only have one channel and they charge $150/month for the service. They are broadcasting the home games of the Blue Jays and the Maple Leafs. The problem is, for $150/month you could almost buy seasons tickets to the Blue Jays.

[RolloTheGreat]

In other words, you agree with my assessment.

[SickBeast]

In other words, you agree with my assessment.  

Not entirely. You seem to think that 4k is completely pointless for most people depending on their viewing distance and TV size because you have been reading those charts. What I am saying is that there is still a difference. Mind you, I probably have better than 20/20 vision with my glasses so YMMV depending on your vision. However I am definitely interested in a large 4k TV if the price is right. I want at least a 65" TV though.

[RolloTheGreat]

In other words, you agree with my assessment.  

Not entirely.  You seem to think that 4k is completely pointless for most people depending on their viewing distance and TV size because you have been reading those charts.  What I am saying is that there is still a difference.  Mind you, I probably have better than 20/20 vision with my glasses so YMMV depending on your vision.  However I am definitely interested in a large 4k TV if the price is right.  I want at least a 65" TV though.

Not completely pointless, just not as big an upgrade as jumping to 4K on your computer monitor is. (because of the viewing distance)

Whatever you get will get will seem normal to you in a few months, we thought the 60s seemed big when we jumped from 50s, but now they just seem normal tv size. (as does my best bud's 65")

The only tv that seems large to me now is the 80" in one of our conference rooms at work, even the 70s seem pretty "normal". (although a 70" would be too big for my living room, 65" is the limit of the spot the tv is in)

[SteelCrysis]

TCL's and Insignia's 4K TVs with built-in Roku have finally arrived: http://4k.com/news/meet-tcls-new-roku-4k...-os-13243/

[SickBeast]

That's a good sign but it's not cheap enough IMO. I can already buy an off brand 65" 4k TV for $999CAD which is only $752USD.

[RolloTheGreat]

That's a good sign but it's not cheap enough IMO.  I can already buy an off brand 65" 4k TV for $999CAD which is only $752USD.

I guess we all have our budgets, but this line of reasoning is how you end up with the brown hockey ice.

Personally I'd rather have a mid range 60" tv than a cheap 65". (or a mid range 70" 1080P instead of a cheap 65" 4K)

[SickBeast]

That's a good sign but it's not cheap enough IMO.  I can already buy an off brand 65" 4k TV for $999CAD which is only $752USD.

I guess we all have our budgets, but this line of reasoning is how you end up with the brown hockey ice.

Personally I'd rather have a mid range 60" tv than a cheap 65". (or a mid range 70" 1080P instead of a cheap 65" 4K)

Perhaps you have misunderstood me. I can currently get a name brand 65" 4k TV for $1900CAD ($1430USD). I can get either a Panasonic or an LG for that price. So for me, the $400USD extra compared to these new $1000USD TCL TVs is worth it.

And yes, you are correct. I do regret my Hisense to an extent. It's worth it for a better brand so long as the price difference isn't too much. The thing is, when I paid $550CAD for my Hisense TV the Samsungs were going for about $800CAD. I wasn't willing to pay close to double for the brand name. Overall I'm happy with the TV and it was within my budget at the time. But for my next TV I'm hoping to get a nice name brand 4k set with full HDMI 2.0 and good input lag.

[RolloTheGreat]

That's a good sign but it's not cheap enough IMO.  I can already buy an off brand 65" 4k TV for $999CAD which is only $752USD.

I guess we all have our budgets, but this line of reasoning is how you end up with the brown hockey ice.

Personally I'd rather have a mid range 60" tv than a cheap 65". (or a mid range 70" 1080P instead of a cheap 65" 4K)

Perhaps you have misunderstood me.  I can currently get a name brand 65" 4k TV for $1900CAD ($1430USD).  I can get either a Panasonic or an LG for that price.  So for me, the $400USD extra compared to these new $1000USD TCL TVs is worth it.

And yes, you are correct.  I do regret my Hisense to an extent.  It's worth it for a better brand so long as the price difference isn't too much.  The thing is, when I paid $550CAD for my Hisense TV the Samsungs were going for about $800CAD.  I wasn't willing to pay close to double for the brand name.  Overall I'm happy with the TV and it was within my budget at the time.  But for my next TV I'm hoping to get a nice name brand 4k set with full HDMI 2.0 and good input lag.

The only lesson I can take from all this is:

Never listen to GStan.

[RolloTheGreat]

Well I certainly don't regret my Hisense and will get another or perhaps a TCL when I do replace it.

Unlike sickbeast I have had no dead pixels on my TV (but then again I've had no miso soup on my motherboard, crushed tablets, cheap motherboards trying to run i5's either).  I suspect any problems his Hisense has suffered are strictly due to PEBKAC (1D10T error).

No, you just tricked him into buying a hillbilly poor dick broke tv, and he called you on it.

You probably get a free cheap tv for pimping them too.

[SickBeast]

Greg is right. I think my daughter whacked the TV with a broom. She loves sweeping and the handle is at the same height where I have the hot pixel issue.

That being said, I'm not happy with my TV's uniformity. I'm not sure if other brands are better. But I do know that my next TV will be direct lit.

[RolloTheGreat]

I did no such thing.  I simply mentioned that I had bought a Hisense TV and liked it for PC and console use.  He went out and bought it all by himself.  After I had mentioned it.

And for the record I still like my Hisense for the above reasons.  Nothing has changed there (or will short of it blowing up on me before the warranty is out).

This is perfectly understandable. A tv just needs a reasonably quick response time to be ok for gaming, good contrast and color aren't the main issue displaying cartoon images like Street Fighter.

[RolloTheGreat]

My TV has excellent color and contrast thank you very much.  Shames the monitors I have owned over the years in that department without even trying.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

For a Canadian, brown hockey ice might be a deal breaker. (it's supposed to be white) For an Australian it might not be a big deal, you guys aren't big on hockey from what I know.

I'm sure you're both right for your needs GStan.

[RolloTheGreat]

Don't confuse Sickbeast's experiences with mine.  His is a different model to mine anyhow.  I suffer from no brown ice or anything else (except for the standard very faint light glow in the corners from the LED's if the TV isn't displaying a signal and has a black screen.  it doesn't happen on games or movies with dark screens and it is a limitation all edge lit LED LCD's have to varying degrees).

I'm sure your tv is very nice GStan.

Do you guys watch mainly US and English tv, or is there a lot of Australian content?

[RolloTheGreat]

I wouldn't know, I watch the news of a night (on a portable LCD in the kitchen/dining areea)and that is about it.  The TV wasn't purchased for watching TV's and movies - it was purchased as a PC and console display device.

I used to have a portable lcd tv that I used for watching Green Bay Packer games in my ice fishing shanty. I think that is a fine tv for you GStan.

See? It's all just a big misunderstanding. The Hisense that makes for great "Day of the Tentacle" gaming for you might not be ideal for SBs ice hockey.

[SickBeast]

It has nothing to do with the brand. I have learned that you need a direct lit LED TV for hockey. Uniformity is a very common problem with edge lit TVs.

[SteelCrysis]

4K channels set to greatly increase: http://4k.com/news/4k-ultra-hd-satellite...ine-13324/
DirectTV warns that 4K movies could take up to 4 hours to download: http://4k.com/news/4k-movie-downloads-ca...ctv-13330/

[SteelCrysis]

Samsung 4K HDR TVs announced, 49" model will be USD 1499: http://4k.com/news/samsungs-2016-4k-tvs-...echnology/

[RolloTheGreat]

Samsung 4K HDR TVs announced, 49" model will be USD 1499: http://4k.com/news/samsungs-2016-4k-tvs-...echnology/

Next year the ULTIMATE:

4K HDR 3D!

Heh, when there is content delivered by my cable company, I'll notice this more.

[SteelCrysis]

4K HDR content starting to arrive on Netflix: http://4k.com/news/netflix-has-quietly-r...n-1-13823/

[RolloTheGreat]

4K HDR content starting to arrive on Netflix: http://4k.com/news/netflix-has-quietly-r...n-1-13823/

Son of a bitch! Marco Polo in HDR!

"Mrs Rollo, sell some stock! We're goin' HDR!"

Yeah, I'll wait until there's significant market penetration on cable, and the standards settle.

[SteelCrysis]

Universal will be releasing 4k Blu-ray releases this summer: http://hdguru.com/universal-reveals-4k-u...ase-plans/

[SteelCrysis]

AT&T and DirectTV having trouble with 4K MLB broadcasts: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-D...ork-136774

[RolloTheGreat]

AT&T and DirectTV having trouble with 4K MLB broadcasts: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-D...ork-136774

Ouch, 4K Genie customer kicked in balls.....

[SteelCrysis]

Netflix says 100 hours of new 4K HDR content is on the way: http://4k.com/netflix-is-dramatically-ex...6-14173-2/

[SteelCrysis]

Apparently, not all is well in HDR land: http://www.redsharknews.com/production/i...f-nab-2016

[BoFox]

Netflix says 100 hours of new 4K HDR content is on the way: http://4k.com/netflix-is-dramatically-ex...6-14173-2/

Let's see Amazon Prime try to catch up to Netflix in terms of content and quality ( so many TV shows and movies actually have the ".1" LFE channel for the subwoofer via Netflix on the PS3/PS4 )....   Even the most recent season of Game of Thrones show on HBO Go is barely HD (looks like 720p to me, finally but still nothing like Netflix's 1080p) still does not come with the LFE channel for a true 5.1 output.  The same goes for Hulu's crap. 
However, by judging from this image (from the link in above quote):

Well, well, ......  if I can see the difference on my NON-HDR monitor right now (which is actually a crappy TN color panel that does Gsync), shouldn't filmmakers just compensate for this by using HDR when creating the picture? 
I agree with the post above that it's the OLED display that would make more sense, where blacks aren't "grey".

[BoFox]

BTW, on the left side of the image above, are the trees in the front of the ice cave actually neon blue?  Frosty blue?