[talk] mid-town connectivity

[Pete Wright]

On 03/18/14 16:51, Mark Saad wrote:

> * slight rant but keep this in mind . 4k tv / video is the new big deal . Popular is Asia and Europe the requirements to deliver 4k content is almost unbelievable .  Scott long made reference to this at the con; i can't remember if he said it was an order of magnitude greater the 1080p or not but it was huge none the less . In any case Scott stated , most people in North America can't see netflix's 4k content , not due to lacy of tech but due to network providers infighting on costs of delivery ; and the subtext is also do to the lack of customer complaints .  So while we complain that we can't get fast network service in NYC the reality is our market doesn't need or want it yet . No provider really wants to take on Verizon's fios or comcast / Time Warner , not until enough customers complain that they can't get 4k tv at home . Then they will upgrade their networks .
> 
> 
>  Also do you really need to see that much detail , with 1080p I can tell the fox 5 news guy has nasty razor bumps ,so at 4k can I see into his soul ? 
> 
>

(putting on my postproduction/vfx hat for a sec)

just to put this in context - here are the data stream sizes for various
film formats

"HD" film works out like so:
Aspect Ratio: 1920 x 1080
Frame Rate :  24fps (common for film)
Uncompressed Frame filesize: ~3MB
Uncompressed bitrate: ~150MB/s
MPEG2 bitrate: ~10MB/s

interestingly enough if you get your HD TV feed over the air via "rabbit
ears" more likely than not you are actually receiving an uncompressed
stream, I am not sure what codec Netflix uses - but let's assume it is
close to MPEG2 (actually it's probably MPEG4 but close enough for our
example ;)

Now lets look at 4k:
Aspect Ratio: 4096 x 2160 (hence "4k")
Frame Rate:   24fps (again common for film)
Uncompressed Frame filesize: ~13MB
Uncompressed bitrate: ~637MB
MGPEG2 bitrate: ~38MB/s


At least in the film world that is quite a big jump is bit rates from
"HD" to 4k.  Also remember, this is streaming data so an ISP needs to be
able to sustain ~40mb/s to deliver 4k video to an end user.

I think this is what scares most consumer ISP's in the states - they
have invested in IP over cable which has issues with shared bandwidth
among users in a neighborhood.  regardless if netflix cache's data at
comcast's POP (to save on transit) - they now need to stop horribly
oversubscribing their end users to be able to deliver this bitrates.

anywho thanks for the VFX memories, glad i don't live in that world
anymore :)

-pete


-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
twitter => @nomadlogicLA