Help support our coverage using BLUBRRY. The community that gives creators the ability to make money, get detailed audience measurements and hosts their audio and video. Get 30 days to try out the service using promo code BLUBRRY004. That's B L U B R R Y 004.

Okay. So we've got Chris Chinnock. Is that the correct way to pronounce your-?

Chinnock. Yes.

All right.

And you're with the 8K Association.

I am.

So it wasn't too many years ago, where it was just everything was 4k, but now everything is 8K. That's the-

That's so last century, right?

Yeah.

You know, what's funny is we live stream, and I was laughing at one of the guys earlier today, because I normally streaming 720. He was streaming in 1080. And just because the internet, 8K or 4K, depends on bandwidth limitations, you know, it doesn't work out so well. But on TV, it's a whole different game. It's a whole different. It's a whole different. It's a whole different play.

Yeah.

So what is? What's happening with the 8K Association?

Well, it's certainly early in the 8K transition. But we've seen a number of transitions in the TV market and displays in general. You know, we've gone from standard definition to high definition to full hd to 4k. We've added HDR as part of that transition. So 8K is just kind of the next natural step, right?

Yeah. And I've heard some actors are already scared of 8K, because they can really see the lines on their faces and stuff.

If you know. When 4k first came out, I remember just as a video engineer, everybody asking for 4k at their wedding and things like that. Now, I would have to kindly explain, like, we have to hope that you don't have any loose threads. We need to make sure you have an actual makeup person before take.

Yeah.

So you don't have a hard line down your chin on all your wedding video.

Exactly.

All the sets had to be redesigned.

Totally redone.

Yeah. So is that the same thing people are facing with 8K just because we're really doubling again, right?

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, there, there are some accommodations that you're going to have to make. But it's certainly the content creators understand the benefits. If you capture higher and higher resolution, there's just more you can do with that image. You can always create something softer.

That's right.

You can always do something lower resolution. If you start with a higher resolution master, it's going to be a better product no matter what resolution.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I think that's what we've always said even like here. It's like an audio, we can always fix low audio, but we can't fix over Dremen audio. So it's the same thing with, it was like the 8K analogy. You get a better initial product. You can always downsize if you need to. But that initial product is your master. You know you can master from that.

But there is a flip side to that. Because you can, a lot of the 8K TVs now are do very sophisticated upscaling. You can take 4K content, you can take full HD content, and you create those pixels.

Yep.

And the algorithms that they use now are actually quite a bit different than we had in previous generations, right? That was more kind of scaling and numerous kinds of things. Now they're all AI based. So we're looking at textures. They're doing machine learning on databases, and identifying objects and adding textures and details that, you know, is just not algorithmically based. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And there's. I know Blackmagic and Asha, both have a unit out. I think Blackmagic has a Teranex that will do SD to 4K, pixel for pixel, line for line in real time.

It is good for 8K now too.

Exactly. That was the recent update that I just saw come through on my blog posts.

Yep.

From their RSS feed was that they updated to 8K and it's really interesting to see this move in my industry because I work in the live events industry and to see everything moving toward the direction of 4K, even in projection down. All of that has been amazing. And the things that can be done with those resolutions. As far as video blending pixel for pixel video blending.

Yep.

Are really remarkable.

And the higher resolution also makes visual effects work much easier to write cleaner edges, better plates.

Yeah.

More pixels for the definition. Yeah.

It's amazing. It really really is. Now, you know, I'm going to ask a hypothetical question. Is 8K the limit?

We're certainly getting toward diminishing returns at this point. Yeah. I would not be surprised to see 16K come, but you may see maybe a de emphasis on resolution kind of going forward. And the reason I say that is because there are other technologies that are coming down the pike. For example, think of light field displays. You know what light field displays right?

Yup.

So you need tons and tons of pixels for that. I mean, orders of magnitude more. So we're gonna, you know, 8K and 16K is almost, you know, a starting point for those kinds of displays. Right.

Yeah. Precisely when you're starting to get into live XR, that kind of resolution and those kinds of things. You got to start up at that.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we're seeing, you know, the early beginnings of those kinds of displays. And then we're seeing some add on on the show floor here, right. There are 8K based 3D displays that are looking pretty good. Yeah. And as you add more pixels, you'll be able to add more views, more directionality, more fidelity. And you know, 3D has come and gone several times. We know this.

Yeah.

As the 4-Chip. 4-Chip came out. It was very excited to hear about the 4-Chip revolution. And let's get a yellow color chip in there and add a whole another 2 million colors to our palette. Yes. But once again, like Todd asked, at what point do you go, "Okay, we're getting a little bit wild here."?

Yeah,

"We're getting a little bit crazy."

Yeah. Well, it's I think, really, it's kind of driven on two sides of the of the of the picture here, right. It's the device makers who are always looking to add new technology, they have to push the new frontier, they got to have something new to add to sell something new. Right. Yeah. And that, and then, you know, it's just not TV makers. It's electronics and processing and all that stuff. And then it's the creatives, you start to give them new tools, new color palettes, new, higher dynamic range, new frame rates that they can do at variable framerate.

Right.

And these become new tools. And they say, Well, I want to create content in different ways, VR, I mean, right. So these are, creatives will drive it on one end and then the device makers will drive it on the other end. The challenge is in the middle.

Yeah.

How do you move from one to the other?

Well. How do you make it consumable?

Yeah.

It's great if you've got it in this limited market, and it's going from the people making the movies to a movie screen. What about everybody at home? What about the post market?

Right, exactly. Exactly.

And with that in mind, I guess one of the questions I'd ask is for all those folks out there that are still living in a 1080p world. Perfectly fine. Your eyes process just fine. How can they fix the issue of 4K and 8K brightness? Because a lot of people that I know are like, Oh my God, everything's just so bright now. And I'm like, Well, the issue is, the studio at the new station is shooting on 4K cameras, and pushing it out that way. And you're watching it on a lower resolution that doesn't get rid of the gamut of that extra bandwidth of colors that comes through from 4K.

Right

Or 8K, right. So, how long will it be before they're going to be able to fix that?

Well, I mean, the TVs are getting pretty smart about how they identify the signals, right? It can be a Standard Dynamic Range signal. Can be an HDR, a High Dynamic Range signal. So people who are still on 1080 displays are almost always looking at standard dynamic range content so they don't really have to deal with the HDR problems. It's when you get I think HDR content on an HDR display the people go, "Whoa. This is brighter. I can see all those great details in the shadows and stuff". But some people love it. I think most people love it.

Quite a few do. We have the issue though, where there's some 1080p video mixers where that color white just maxes out the chip. And eventually you deal with the black frame.

Yeah.

And it comes back until that buffer is rebuilt. And if somebody's sitting on a white slide with a whole bunch of tiny black prints, that could be flashing like every 15 seconds while they're on stage. It's just because things have progressed that fast in the industry.

Yeah.

Yeah, not everybody's out there using a 4k projector.

True.

Or a 4k mixer but the computer that's projecting even if we dump it down to 1080 is still pushing all the colors of 4k

Yeah.

Even out of a 1080 output.

Yeah,

So interesting things like that are starting to occur now in the live field because of that.

And you know in a situation too and I come from a different perspective. Where I live now is literally rural America internet hell. I mean there is not good bandwidth and I'm waiting for Elon to get me a satellite above my head so I can, you know, get Starlink. But the challenge I have is I got this beautiful 4k Sony TV. Spent a lot of money for it. And unless I'm plugging some sort of external media into it, I'm not getting the 4K, even any of the 4k just because I don't have the bandwidth resolution to pull it in. And I don't. I'm not subscribed any longer to a satellite or cable TV. So for-

And for fixed media, I mean, that's dying, right?

Yeah.

Right. So for me, and for a subset of people that live in the United States where they don't have a good internet connection. There can be all kinds of great 4k content out there and just not capable.

Yeah.

They dump it down. They take it to 1080 or they or if it's even starting to buffering do not even go lower with the delivery rate, like Netflix and so forth. And not everything and Netflix, obviously 4k. But yeah, so we gotta get the broadband issue fixed for some of us to be able to support the higher transfer rates that are needed for those higher resolutions.

Build back better supposed to put some money.

Yeah. Knock on wood. We'll see.

Yeah. Granted, there are a few aftermarket solutions for that. The Decimator that I showed you the other day.

But the John Jhansi consumers not gonna buy a Decimator

No, no, no. They don't even know what a Decimator is.

What is a Decimator?

A decimator is an upscale downscale or HDMI to SDI conversion.

Okay.

Right now I have a lower quality 1080p screen that only does 20997. My output is doing 50994. And the Decimator is kicking out what the monitor needs to see and kicking it out what the record needs to see.

But you're the Pro, you're the Pro AV guy.

Of course for a few hundred dollars you can get it up to 1080p to 4k.

I know that for Jake consumers, though.

Yes. That's tough.

You know, if they're on a good bandwidth connections

It's the cost of a television.

Yeah. Or if they have a cable connection, they're starting to get access to some of this higher resolution content.

Yeah.

And I think it's just a matter of time. And it's just like, now, how many 8K sets are out? You know, that's another thing too, right?

It's still early days.

It's still early days. But you know, within 5, 6, 7 years, I'm sure we're all going to have an 8K in our home.

Well, I mean, it happened with 1080P.

Same thing.

And then 4K right.

It took over rapidly.

Same thing.

Did you know there's actually a pretty clear cycle between standard depth and 720, and then 720 to 1080 and 1080 to 4k? Seven years.

Seven years.

From introduction to 50% of sales.

Yeah.

See, I said five to six years and he just confirmed this, seven years.

Yep. Close to it.

Now it's gonna stretch out with 8K. Because we kind of head up. We're, for two things. We kind of have in the-. When 4K started, you might think well, that starts the seven year cycle, right? Well, it did sort of but kind of halfway or part way through that. We had the introduction of 4K HDR, which was a much more significant introduction. So that almost restarted the cycle, I think, when we started there, and then the pandemic.

And then also to is you've had production houses invest millions of dollars in 4K cameras.

Yes.

So now you're asking them for a relatively short period of time, let's go bump to 8K. So you know, you're looking at a complete recapitalization of gear. So what they're gonna do is they're still running 1080 and 4K recording gear. And if that stuff starts to retire.

They're already stopped talking about 12K.

Yeah.

Blackmagic has 12K capability already. Yep. Yeah,

I remember the first Red.

Yeah. And that was not that long ago. When you think about it.

No no.

AV equipment was. That was like a decade ago.

Yeah.

That was, that was baby steps.

You know when I saw that Red 4k camera. 4k? Oh,

Exactly.

So-

What will it take for this adoption to come about? Because of course, like you were saying.

I think the time is right.

But well, it's time for sure. But you know, and that's part of the mission of the 8K Association is, trying to figure out how we can kind of move this timeframe a little bit faster, right?

Well in. Yes. The example I always give people when it comes to products, especially in the AV market is my beloved mini disc. I love mini discs. It was a great format for creators. You could record you could mix things around. I could put five or six different mix downs of a song and I like that one, but I want it to be track three, and I could do it in my car. It was wicked cool. The problem was not everybody even had a CD player yet. Yeah, we hadn't even made CDs mandatory on computers yet. And Sony was already trying to say, here's the best new format. And it crashed the entire minidisc market, which was really looking to be something very revolutionary, of course.

Sounds like you're living in the VHS days.

Hey men. I just got to rack down all of that for track to bring all my stuff down here. Alright. But the thing is, once again, like I said, Yes, you want to push that timeline forward, but are you afraid of scaring the consumer, like, the same way where it's like, Hey, I don't even made a 4K TV shop yet.

Yeah.

You're talking about 8K.

Well, maybe I don't know about scaring the consumer, I think it's just going to be, you know, the way the 4K TVs got up there, right. You just, they started, they were expensive. They were high big screen sizes, they moved down in screen size. And

Yes, same thing.

It's just gonna happen again. And, you know, five years, you're gonna go to the store and you know, you'll get a 4K but it's, you know, it'd be 34 inches.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. And it'll just by default, you go in the store, and there's gonna be a whole wall of 8Ks.

Right.

Just by default. Now there's one or two, but later on, there's going to be 30 of them that you're going to be able to pick from.

Exactly, yeah, exactly.

So it's pretty amazing. And I'm thinking about all the cameras I have. I haven't made the jump even to 4K because they don't need it. Because you do online stuff. I don't need to do it. But so you know, at some point, I'll have to make the gulp and say okay, you got to go ahead again recapitalize and go to 4K. I've got a 2-5 set. Yeah.

Yeah. Now what kind of technologies are going to be necessary to leverage this in consumer products like televisions, stuff like that? Because of course, OLED, Plasma. That kind of stuff is what made 4K possible.

Yeah. But all those technologies support 8K as well.

Oh, wow.

Just higher densities. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just a higher pixel density.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, if you look at some of the-, I remember being here at CES, maybe, I don't know how many years it goes, when we saw the first LED displays. And when I saw those displays, and it was, it was shocking to me how brilliant and how much, almost more real than life those images look. And to think where we were, maybe maybe that was 10 years ago, I don't even remember the timeline. But to see now, like when I walked through a couple of the major manufacturer booths with some 8K TVs, I'm like, I had the same reaction. So stunning. Once people see now that's obviously in a demo reel. It's perfect conditions, lighting. But once people see that, they're going to go Oh, and then the consumer is going to make the jump. Yeah, they're the consumers once they see it, you know, and they're like, Oh, my God, I have to have that. I need 70 inch of my living room. Or 80.

Yeah.

You know.

And there's a new display technology that just debuted at CES this week. It's called QD display. I was one of only five media who saw it at the show.

Really, So what was your reaction?

I loved it. I loved it.

So they had it hid. They didn't have it out for companies.

No. It's in a private suit.

Explain it a little bit if you can.

Sure, sure, sure. So an OLED TV has organic layers, right? They then, and what LG does is they create basically a white OLED emitter. So it's white light, and then they put red, green and blue color filters and actually a clear, so it's a white sub pixel as well on top of that. So it has great, great contrast, great colors, etc. You've seen what OLEDs look like.

Yeah.

The challenge, or perhaps the minor deficiency of that is it can't get super bright in those colors. If you want a very bright red, green or blue image or yellow media, it just can't do it.

Because it's layered.

Because it's layered, and it just can't push the materials that high that hard, right? So that's why they have that white subpixel. So you add a little bit of white and it makes it brighter, sure, but you desaturate the color by doing that.

Yeah.

So that's the way of measuring that's called Color volume. Okay, how bright can colors get over a luminance range? Okay. So what the QD display does is it starts with an OLED blue only layer. It has a kind of a clear sub pixel again, so that's the same blue it's coming through in a traditional old layer. But now for red and green. They use quantum dots. So the blue converts those quantum dot materials to red and green with very narrow bandwidth. So it's direct emitting, blue OLED and red and green quantum dots.

It's amazing how you can trick the eyeball isn't it.

Yeah.

So the advantage, now it has all the advantages of a wide color gamut, but now it's bigger color volume. Yeah, you can get brighter, brighter whites, brighter reds, brighter greens.

Deeper contrast.

Deeper contrast.

Did you have AAHH moment?

Maybe I'm old to Jada. I do this all day. Oh, yeah.

You know, I think we all know when we see it, when we go. Wow. I think we all know it. Yeah. So I think that's what it's gonna ultimately I think increase on the 8K side for the consumer when they see it. And they say, Wow, that's really the changing point. Yeah. And again, smaller. less cost. Get it down. There were 4Ks now.

Sure.

And then this.

Which took a hot minute to do.

Right.

You know, but now you can go out and buy 4K monitors. Some things like that, better. Less than a half inch thick for a couple $100.

Yeah. I know. So it's crazy. Well, sir, we've kept you long. We thank you for coming out.

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.

Is 8kassociation.com

Yeah .com Yeah, we're trying to educate the whole ecosystem from content creation distribution, consumers. So yeah, we got a whole bunch of stuff there to help people understand what's going on and how they can get engaged.

Incredible.

And tell the actors out there. Make sure you keep your plastic surgery current because you're going to need it when 8K comes.

You'll gonna need your own special make up.

There you go. Thanks guys.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Take care. Enjoy the rest of the CES.

TPN CES 2022 coverage is executive produced by Michele Mendez. Technical Directors are Kurt Corless and Adam Barker. Associate producers are Nancy Ertz and Maurice McCoy. Interviews are edited by Jo Mini. Hosts are Marlo Anderson, Todd Cochrane, Scott Ertz, Christopher Jordan, Daniele Mendez, and Allante Sparks. Las Vegas studio provided by HC Productions. Remote studio provided by PLUGHITZ Productions. This has been Tech Podcasts Network Production, copyright 2022.