Beyond HDTV

From Slashdot:

"The Economist writes a thoughtful article about the next generation of HDTVs and how they will provide resolutions beyond 1080p. The drive for higher resolution is driven in part by the demands of 3D content. Also, some see streaming higher resolution content to the home as a way to make up for declining DVD sales. This would mean the studios would have to better embrace services such as Netflix or stream directly to the consumer. Mind you, picture quality is driven by more than the number of pixels."

From the Economist Article: 

1080p Today's "Full HD" format.
Today’s high-definition television (HDTV) sets display 1,920 vertical scan lines and 1,080 horizontal lines using so-called “progressive” scanning (ie, cycled continuously from top to bottom). The result is a grid of 2,073,600 pixels (ie, 2.1 megapixels).


2160p  Quad HD format
Doubling the number of vertical and horizontal scan lines across and down the screen to 3,840 by 2,160 results in a display containing 8,294,400 pixels (ie, 8.3 megapixels). In other words, going from “1080p” to “2160p” display technology yields a fourfold increase in the amount of information that can be displayed on the screen. 
This is almost identical to the “4K” digital cinema standard (3,996 by 2160 pixels) that the studios have started using to shoot digital movies. While conventional cinema screens have an aspect ratio of 1.85-to-one, the slightly wider 4K movie format can be shoe-horned into television’s 1.77-to-one picture frame without too much difficulty. 


4320p  Ultra HD or Super Hi-Vision
Super Hi-Vision version capable of displaying 7,680 by 4,320 pixels (ie, 33 megapixels). Recently, Sharp unveiled the first fruit of its collaboration with NHK—a 4320p prototype with a humongous 85-inch screen and a resolution of 103ppi. If all 33m pixels that the Super Hi-Vision format (known as Ultra HD elsewhere) offers were crammed onto a 22-inch screen, the picture resolution would be an astonishing 400ppi.