1080P is eliminated: How long will it take for 4K to become fully popular?

In recent years, the electronic display market is in an important node period of technological renewal and replacement. The 4K ultra-clear technology, which was still unfamiliar three years ago, has also been generally recognized by the public in recent years and was even pushed to the hot spot of science and technology.

What we can foresee at this stage is that 4K will inevitably replace 1080P and become the norm for display device clarity in the future. So how long will it take for 4K clarity to truly enter our lives?

The backbone of today's society has changed from those born in the 1960s to those born in the 1970s and 1980s. These people who are more receptive to new things and more fashionable have become the mainstream of society. At the same time, with the improvement of the national economic capacity, people now pay more and more attention to family entertainment. After a whole day of high-intensity work, people are now more willing to spend money on electronic entertainment devices to reward themselves for their hard work. Consumers are also pursuing better display devices more and more.

If you don't have any source, it's far from enough to feed your 4K device.

With the development of current display technology, 4K display devices seem to have become a trend. Today’s fashionable young people are proud of owning a 4K display device. It seems that in this era, if you don’t have a 4K TV or monitor, you are already OUT. 4K display devices are becoming popular so quickly, but it seems that now, whether it is the source of films on the Internet or the source of films being broadcast, the clarity is far from enough to “feed” our 4K display devices. The author can’t help but wonder, since the current 4K sources are far from being popular, is the popularization of 4K display devices a “pre-arrival of food and fodder” or a pre-sold conceptual product that is completely meaningless at this stage?

The huge amount of 4K video program data requires H.265 support

The 4K resolution we are talking about generally refers to the 3840*2160 resolution for home use, which is slightly different from the 4096*2160 resolution for cinemas. Even so, its data files are extremely large. When the resolution reaches the 4K ultra-clear standard, its theoretical clarity is 4 times that of 1080P full HD, and the network broadband data throughput required is huge. At present, the mainstream broadband network bandwidth of Chinese households is still around 10M, which is not enough to support the playback of 4K ultra-clear program resources. Therefore, the support of H.265 technology is needed.

H.265 encoding technology can transmit higher quality network videos under limited bandwidth, and only half of the original bandwidth is needed to play videos of the same quality. This is the advantage of H.265 encoding technology.

Although there is still a long way to go before 4K video sources can be popularized, fortunately, most TV products can support the decoding of H.265 video resources, and domestic Internet video companies have also begun to use H.265 encoding technology for video processing, striving to provide users with a smooth and high-quality video experience. The popularization of 4K video sources can be said to be inseparable from the support of HEVC (H.265) encoding technology, and in the long run, the same is true for 8K.

With the joint support of encoding technology and 4K Blu-ray movies, let’s look at the popularity of 4K display devices. Before the popularization of 4K ultra-clear film sources, “the army has not arrived yet, but the food has come first”. In the long run, the same is true for 8K.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.