Sony have just revealed an update to last year’s best compact the HX5 – the HX9v (and put the same new tech inside a bridge camera, the HX100v, with a ridiculously long lens and some extra manual control including manual focus ring, horray).
The HX9v now does 1080/60p at 24Mbit and 42.9 Megapixel Sweep Panoramas, an awesome feature. I will be getting one, even though it is only a compact with a small sensor.
That sensor in question does 10 fps at 16.2M.
4K is approximately 8MP, so theoretically if the sensor was half the resolution at 8MP we’d be getting over 20fps from it, very close to the fabled 4K 24p point.
So this raises an obvious question, why are we still at 1080p on consumer hardware? Here’s what I think is going on.
Firstly, consumers get comfortable with that they know. The worldwide sport Formula One will go to HD (1080i) for the first time this year. F1 is a global sport with a yearly TV audience almost as large as the biggest – the Olympic games.
Yet until 2011 the sport was being broadcast in 480p and 576p. Customers just weren’t vocal enough and networks (especially in Europe) were not rolling out enough HD content to trigger that critical mass whereby it became mainstream instead of high-end, even though everyone and his cat was out buying HD ready TVs for a good 6 years already.
Secondly, we’re only just reaching the point where the computing power on consumer mobile devices is fast enough to process 4K video.
Thirdly, there is the question of the Japanese A/V giants who dominate the market only moving when someone sticks a Red hot poker up their arses. This is understandable because they want to make money first and foremost and 1080p is far from done-for in that regard. They’re not exactly feeling the heat from the Red hot poker.
There is a lack of wherewithal to give us 4K TVs and cameras when the HD stuff is selling so fiercely. They’d rather have something selling well with a nice margin, than something at a very high price that nobody can really make much use of. Let’s face it, 4K on a 32″ Plasma is always going to be overkill. But on a camera, it makes the footage and creative work we create now much more future proof.
The final reason is that 3D has distracted consumer attention away from 4K and manufacturers have concentrated R&D efforts on it at the expense of other technologies.
I believe we’re about to turn the corner though. If an affordable small chip compact camera can do 16.2MP at 10fps and 42MP panoramas in one fell swoop, surely the mobile computing power is up to scratch.
Civil technology moves at the fastest rate of all…faster than military development. State of the art military jets are 4 years behind on computing power by the time they’re finished.
Thanks to the break-neck pace of technology, of course a 4K video camera for under $1000 is already possible to mass produce.
It’s just that the market moves at a snails pace.
I’ll put an ETA on it… 2 years, max… and we’ll see the 4K TVs before the DSLRs that’s for sure.
