PATREONItems tagged with Ultra HD
If you purchased a new television recently, there's a better-than-good chance that it is a 4K Ultra HD set, as those have become the norm, and not the exception. One way to take advantage of the added resolution (over Full HD) is through select content on Netflix. Depending on the luck of the draw, however, you might be charged an added fee to have access to 4K streams. But wait, isn't that already the case? It sure is, but Netflix is reportedly testing a new tier that is pricier than the current Premium tier. Here is how things currently stand: Click to Enlarge Netflix currently offers three tiers—Basic ($7.99/month), Standard ($10.99/month), and Premium ($13.99/month). The Basic plan...
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Sony is currently leering at DIYer’s with “Na, na, na, na, na, you can’t catch me.” The company recently unveiled its first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player. The device, however, will need to be custom installed by automation system vendors such as Control4, Crestron, and Savant. Yukio Ishikawa, Director of Home Entertainment Systems for Sony, remarked, “The new UBP-X1000ES player has been long awaited by custom installers who desire a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player that provides a ‘one-stop’ solution for their clients’ premium entertainment needs.” The X1000ES is compatible with Ultra HD Blu-ray discs as well as 4K resolutions and HDR. The device reportedly provides up to twice the color range...
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If you live in Canada, go ahead and stop reading now to avoid any feelings of jealously and resentment. That's because Samsung is offering one heck of a bundle offer to U.S. residents -- purchase a select 4K SUHD television and receive a 32GB Galaxy S6 smartphone for free, zip, zilch, nada! That's a tantalizing offer that could be of interest to anyone shopping a TV or phone.It's an especially good deal if you're looking to upgrade your aging television to a 4K Ultra HD model. The only caveat is that you have to stick with a handful of specific models, those being the Samsung JS9500 (65-inch), JS9100 (78-inch), JS9000 (65-inch), JS8500 (55-inch), JS850D (65-inch), or JS8600 (78-inch).These are...
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It's official -- there's a new Blu-ray specification called Ultra HD Blu-ray, and just as the name implies, the new spec represents a bump in resolution to 3840x2160, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) announced this week. To go along with the new spec, BDA came up with a new logo to delineate Ultra HD Blu-ray products. Ultra HD Blu-ray is more than just an increase in resolution, though that alone should be a selling point for anyone that's ponied up for a 4K television or monitor. In addition to matching 4K streams in resolution, the Ultra HD Blu-ray format enables delivery of a significantly expanded color range, high dynamic range (HDR), and a high frame rate content. Object based sound formats...
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There's nothing wrong with being an early adopter of new technologies and products, you just have to understand that inevitably something better, faster, and/or less expensive will follow whatever it is you just recently paid a premium for. Case in point is Panasonic's 20-inch Toughpad 4K tablet -- the revamped standard edition model now sports a 5th Generation Intel Core i5 vPro processor and costs half as much as first generation Performance SKU when it debuted earlier this year.Less than a year ago, the Toughpad 4K was wielding an Intel Core i7 3687U vPro processor, a dual-core part clocked at 2.1GHz to 3.3GHz with Hyper Threading support and 4MB of cache. But now that Broadwell-U is here,...
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With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas kicking off today, you can expect a bevy of product and service announcements, one of them being Roku's plans to support 4K Ultra HD streaming for future Roku TV models. The company said it's prepared a Roku TV reference design for 4K smart TVs and will license the blueprint to OEM partners. That's great for the hardware side of things, but what about software? On that front, Roku is working its connections to bring more 4K content into homes. That includes greasing the wheels at Netflix, which Roku says will provide 4K content for streaming on the Roku platform in 2015. "As one of the first streaming services to offer 4K Ultra HD content to our customers, it’s important for...
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Though the holiday sales are tempting, you may want to hold off on purchasing a new 4K Ultra HD TV for a month or so. For one, the Super Bowl is fast approaching (go Patriots!), and there are always sales on large screen TVs leading up to the big game. And secondly, there are some interesting technologies that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month, including "quantum dot" technology. What is quantum dot technology? It allows you to travel back in time as you possess different people in an attempt to put them on the right path. Actually, scratch that -- we may have gotten confused with Quantum Leap (remember that show?). Quantum dot is a technology that...
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In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner was told "If you build it, they will come." The whisperings were referring to a baseball field, though they might as well have been talking about the 4K Ultra HD revolution. Hardware makers have largely gone on faith up to this point that if they build 4K displays, the content will follow, and sure enough we're starting to see more 4K video options emerge. The latest to jump on the bandwagon is Amazon, which today announced that it's serving up movies, TV shows, and Original Series in 4K Ultra HD. "We want to deliver the best entertainment experience, and offering Ultra HD movies and TV shows raises the bar on quality and innovation that customers have...
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It’s hard to say that a nearly $1,000 display is affordable, but Acer’s newly-launched 32-inch B326HK is one of the less-expensive monitors in the 4K market. With a resolution of 3840x2160 (four times the available pixels of a 1920x1080 display) and IPS technology for wide-angle viewing, the display is bound to get the attention of everyone from artists to gamers.The B326HK isn’t a flashy display, but it’s designed to be easy to adjust, whether you want to raise, lower, or tilt it. The monitor also comes with a full complement of ports, including HDMI with MHL (for mobile devices), DisplayPort, DVI, Mini DP, and USB 3.0. Other specs are solid, but unsurprising: the B326HK has a 6ms response time...
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So, have you been shopping a 4K monitor for yourself and haven't liked what you've seen so far? We don't blame you -- though there are a select few models worthy of early adoption, for the most part, the 4K monitor movement still has some growing pains to overcome. One of the more promising entries we've seen in some time is Dell's new 27-inch P2715Q. The P2715Q rocks an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel rather than an inferior TN display. It also boasts support for a 60Hz refresh rate when running at 3840x2160, which is not something that can be said about the company's 28-inch P2815Q (it's limited to just 30Hz, hence why you're seeing it marked down all over the web recently).Other goodies include...
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LG didn't just come out with another run-of-the-mill 4K monitor. Instead, the South Korean electronics maker dropped the gauntlet by introducing its 31-inch 31MU97 with an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel and Digital Cinema 4K resolution, which trumps all those Ultra HD monitors out there by more than half-a-million pixels. The 31MU97 boasts a 4096x2160 resolution across a 31-inch display, compared to most Ultra HD monitors running at 3840x2160. And of course it blows away Full HD 1080p panels that run at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200. Combined with an IPS panel that supports over 99.5 percent of the Adobe RGB color space and a 10-bit color depth supporting over 1 billion colors, picture quality should...
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Are you finding that your dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan graphics cards don't come close to breaking a sweat in the games and benchmarks you've thrown at it? Well, if you want to give your burlier configuration a beastly workout, look no further than Futuremark's newly minted 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, purportedly the world's first 4K Ultra HD benchmark. Those of you running the Basic version of 3DMark are out of luck -- the new Fire Strike Ultra test is only available in the Advanced Edition and Professional Edition, so you'll need to pony up for a paid package rather than freeload off of the pro bono version. Source: Futuremark One neat thing about the Fire Strike Ultra test is that you don't...
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The transition from Full HD 1080 to 4K Ultra HD is taking place faster than anyone could have anticipated, though it comes at a cost. In addition to purchasing new hardware capable of displaying 4K visuals, on the content side, Netflix decided now was a good time to get customers used to idea of paying extra for Ultra HD streaming. New Netflix subscribers living in the U.S. must sign up for the "Family" plan at $11.99 per month in order to access the service's limited number of Ultra HD streams. Previously it was included in the regular $8.99 plan, which itself was $7.99 earlier this year. Netflix says it costs more to acquire and produce 4K content, hence why it's now included only as part of...
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GoPro has earned a reputation as the go-to brand when you need a camera for recording action on the go, but if you thought the company planned to rest on its past success, think again. Today sees the unveiling of GoPro's HERO4, the title given to the company's highest performance line of capture devices it has ever made. The HERO4 comes in two editions -- HERO4 Black for $499 and HERO4 Silver for $399 (both are MSRPs). Starting with the more expensive device, the HERO4 Black edition delivers twice the performance of its best-selling predecessor and has been upgraded to capture 4K Ultra HD video at 30 frames per second, 2.7K video at 50fps, and Full HD 1080p video at 120fps -- fast enough to allow...
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Content creators are quickly running out of excuses for not taking advantage of 4K Ultra HD resolutions. That's because the transition from Full HD 1080p to 4K Ultra HD is taking place faster than anyone expected, and it's due to hardware makers taking the initiative rather than waiting on content creators to force their hands. Not only are we seeing more and more 4K TVs, we're starting to see affordable models, like Vizio's new P Series starting at $999. Sure, dropping a grand on a television isn't chump change, but comparatively speaking, that's not bad for a big screen TV, especially one that supports a 4K resolution. In this case, that buys you Vizio's 50-inch P-Series TV with a 4K panel,...
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Two of the hottest technologies in the display category right now are 4K Ultra HD and NVIDIA G-SYNC. What happens when you combine the two? You end up with Acer's XB270H, a 28-inch 4K Ultra HD (3840x2160) display with a 60Hz refresh rate, blazing fast 1ms response time, and G-SYNC to keep things honest. The XB280HK is one of two new XBO Series of gaming displays by Acer, the other being a 27-inch Full HD 1080p monitor (XB270H) with a 144Hz refresh rate. Like its bigger brother, it too sports a 1ms response time and is infused with NVIDIA G-SYNC. "We’re excited to bring these first-rate gaming displays to gamers in the United States and Canada," said Ronald Lau, Acer America business manager....
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We've seen display makers focus on lower cost 4K Ultra HD monitors in recent months, and while we applaud the effort, what about the graphics professional who is willing to spend more on a panel with better color accuracy? It looks like Samsung is ready to answer the call. In addition to a handful of mobile devices unveiled today, Samsung announced the availability of its new UD970, a 32-inch class 4K monitor for the professional crowd. By that we mean it's intended for users who require not only a high resolution, but also accurate color reproduction for video and photo editing, graphic design, mapping and simulation, architecture, engineering, and the list goes on. And hey, enthusiasts who...
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It's too late to lay claim to the first 4K television, however LG Electronics just announced the world's first OLED TV with a 4K Ultra HD resolution (3840x2160). That OLED qualifier makes all the difference in the world, and according to LG, the use of OLED in today's Ultra HD displays will prove a "game changer" in the industry. There are two models available, both of which sport curved displays. They include the 77-inch 77EG9700 and 65-inch 65EC9700. Both feature LG's proprietary "Four-Color Pixel WRGB" technology. Armed with 33 million sub-pixels, LG says its OLED displays produce richer, brighter, and more natural hues, along with self-lighting pixels that yield deeper blacks and a fast response...
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Imagine watching Monday Night Football on a 105-inch television. Not into football? Then go ahead and substitute your favorite sport, TV show, or movie. Now wipe the drool from your chin before it drips onto your keyboard -- it's unsightly and a bit unsanitary. It's also still a pipe dream for all the but wealthiest, though if you've positioned yourself to afford a $120,000 television, then behold Samsung's 105-inch Curved UHD TV (model UN105S9W). That's about $50,000 more than what we heard LG will charge for its own version. With a monstrous sized curved 105-inch display that replicates a movie theater experience at home, this is the type of TV we dream about putting in our man- or woman-cave...
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The 4K Ultra HD revolution is in its infancy, but if you want to be an early adopter of the technology, there are several resources available. One of those is Sony's 4K Ultra HD Media Player (FMP-X10), which is now available to pre-order from Sony's online store. The cost is $500, and while that sounds steep (because it is), it's actually $200 less than the MSRP. Yes, Sony will try to command $700 for the FMP-X10 when it ships to consumers later this year, but if you get in on the ground floor and place your pre-order by July 15, 2014, you'll received the hearty $200 discount. Before you do that, check compatibility with your current TV set. Sony says its 4K streamer is compatible with Sony 4K...
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Samsung is joining the push to empower desktop PC users with 4K ultra high definition (UHD) displays by announcing its new UD590 monitor. Like other 4K panels, the UD590 offers four times the resolution and pixels of a Full HD 1080p display at 3840x2160 versus 1920x1080. This allows for significantly more on-screen real-estate to play with and is especially useful when working with large, detailed photos and graphics. The UD590 is built around an LED-backlit Twisted Nematic (TN) panel. These are lower quality panels compared to In-Plane Switching (IPS) and the such, though the upshot for consumers and gamers is that they're typically less expensive to own and capable of handling fast moving visuals...
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It won't be long before we're all living in a 4K world, but for now, it's up to manufacturers to mature the technology and roll out support for the ultra high-definition resolution. Apple is apparently on board with the idea, as the first beta for the upcoming release of Mac OS X Mavericks version 10.9.3 includes some enhancements for users running a 4K monitor. The biggest change is that users can natively run OS X in a pixel-doubling 4K mode, which Apple is tagging with its familiar "Retina" designation. Twitter user Khaos Tian was one of the first to notice the new options in the Displays menu of OS X System Preferences, which took a little digging (and stumbling) since the new features weren't...
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