As is true in most cases for the video market, advancements often come on the heels of major innovations at the consumer electronics level, such as bigger, faster PCs. The use of H.265 is a given, but the camera industry is probably a year or two away from full implementation.

4K Is A-OK With Consumers and Pros

Consumers and professionals alike have come to expect HD-quality images, not only on the family television bu
t also in their company’s video surveillance systems. According to ultrahdtv.com, approximately 75% of all U.S. households have at least one HDTV and 10 million in all are expected to embrace Ultra HD by 2016.

“Full HD [1080p] is widely adopted now in the consumer electronic world and end users find this the minimal spec. 4K is the next broadcast spec that is being driven into the consumer electronic world and it’s likely that at the end of 2015, 4K will be relatively common in people’s homes. Netflix and YouTube both have a growing selection of 4K movies and videos to watch,” says Johnston. “8K [Quad 4K] is the next step up.

It is quite common now in Japan where many are likely to skip 4K and go directly to 8K in the home.”

Although 4K, 8K and Ultra HD are commonly connected within the minds of those who use them, there are some fundamental differences.

RELATED: Seeing the Bigger Picture Before Deploying 4K Video

“Technically, 4K has a few more pixels in width, similar to how 2K was always slightly wider than full HD, but in common vernacular they are synonyms today. The resulting Ultra HD display is actually four times the resolution of 1080p HDTV or full HD at 1920 X 1080 pixels and has over 8.2 million pixels, or 8.2 megapixels,” says Surfaro.

Adopted by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in 2012, Ultra HD is an umbrella term under which two new video data resolutions reside: 4K and 8K Ultra. To give you an idea of full capability of the new Ultra HD standards, Ultra HD supports a minimum resolution of 3840 X 2160 (2160p), where full HD supports a resolution of 1280 X 720 (HD/720p, 1 megapixel) and 1920 X 1080 (HD/1080p, 2 megapixels).

Prior to CEA’s adoption of Ultra HD, this high-resolution format was commonly known as Super Hi-Vision, which was previously developed and used in Japan by the Japanese Public Broadcasting Network (NHK). Ultra HD continues to center on an aspect ratio of 16 X 9, just as full HD 1080p, thus complying with the ANSI broadcasting standard for the reproduction of color images – which includes resolution and frame rate.

The advantage of using 4K Ultra at the camera is it assures there’s a tremendous amount of detail (pixels) in each image. With all this detail, we’re able to obtain a wide-angle overview of the scene while more easily and quickly identifying individuals, license plates, and perform other detailed activities such as behavioral analysis. All this can be accomplished with the use of a single 4K Ultra image.

Using the right software, we also can divide/assign multiple portions of a single 4K Ultra video image into multiple video feeds (frame views) on a huge Ultra HD display or perhaps many individual monitors. In addition, any one of these views can be assigned any level of magnification using electronic zoom. Ultra HD assures that the finest of details are available at nearly any level so we can further drill down into an image.

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