Saturday, July 19, 2014

The Future Of HDTVs

HDTV technology has so far enjoyed a period of constant development and enhancement. Part of what fueled this drive to move forward is the desire to win in the globe economic competition for consumer electronics. But a few bits of the developed technologies in HDTV were also inspired by a simple desire to make entertainment better for our modern society.
So what about the developments for HDTVs in the future then? We can't really see what HDTVs would look like in the far future, but developing technologies today may give us a glimpse of what near-future HDTVs might look like.
OLED HDTV
This has been thoroughly discussed before in an earlier article, but let me reiterate some of its important future points here. OLED HDTV may well be the best candidate screen technology that we have that can easily surpass the performance capability of any other screen technology that we have. The only thing that actually hinders it is the manufacturing process and its relatively shorter service lifetime.
Constant research today has called in for the improvement of blue OLEDs. So far, researchers were quite successful in progressively increasing its service lifetime using a wide variety of techniques and material alternatives. Cost is also predicted to go progressively lower in the future, as manufacturers find a way to mass produce the OLED substrate quickly in large amounts. We can predict that OLED HDTVs might be affordable enough for the average consumer in the next 5-10 years.
4K Resolution HDTV
The clearest screen resolution that we have now is 1080p. Even with displays as large as 60-inches, this kind of resolution still brings us very detailed images, enabling us to see images up to the last grain. It has been predicted that the trend for 1080p HDTVs would still continue for a few more years, until at least the emergence of low cost 4k resolution screens.
What is a 4k resolution screen? It is exactly as its name describes: a screen that is approximately 4000 pixels in horizontal resolution. There are many different configurations that would allow us to have 4000 horizontal pixels, but the most "natural" one would probably be the Quad Full High Definition (QFHD) resolution. It is a screen resolution easily defined by putting four 1080p screens in a square formation, thus having an actual resolution of about 3840×2160 pixels. You can just imagine the level of quality that these future home screens would give. The perception of detail and sophistications might even surpass the level that is normally seen and appreciated by the naked eye. And remember, the technology is already out there for a long time, we only need to see the 4K HDTV models to become affordable enough for everyone to enjoy.
Holographic 3D HDTV
The idea of 3D HDTVs might be very attractive, but so far none of the current 3D HDTV models could actually give us the real 3D experience. Also because of the steep prices associated with these kinds of HDTV models, people often opt to just stay away from this option and stick to standard 2D viewing.
But how about presenting the image completely in its 3D format, regardless of the viewing perspective? That's how future Holographic 3D HDTVs might work. Of course, the imaging is still just an illusion, but it would no longer try to create illusionary depth by manipulating our two eyes separately. UberCoolHome Company for instance, is now presenting their limited edition glass holographic screen, the Uber-Graph. The technique uses a clear glass screen, where a projected image will be beamed onto it, creating the 3D image that can be viewed from any angle.
Of course, there are many other methods that we can use to project a holographic image from an HDTV. Though very promising technologically, holographic 3D HDTVs are yet to pass industry and economic standards. For all we know, they might cost a few times more than the already expensive autostereoscopic 3D HDTVs.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)