The digital culture is like Middle Ages Mysticism pre scientific enlightenment where
emperical evidence means nothing.

That relaxes the problem a little, but it doesn’t solve it.

> I don’t know, because I never had to resample nor dither at all :-)

If you’re using plug-ins, there’ll be a ton of dithering and often resampling (oversampling and decimation) going on behind the scenes in your DAW. Whenever a calculation yields a larger wordlength than your signal flow can handle (and a simple multiplication can do that), the respective processor should dither the result. That also applies to the DAW’s output stage.

last comment here now not to abuse the board :) I actually already had that problem when I bought my current DAW stuff (around 3 years ago) – my RME Multiface already has 96 kHz, 24 bit (IIRC) converters. The first thing I looked for back when I bought it was the 44.1 kHz button ;-)
Fortunately, such a setting is still offered. If it weren’t, I would be forced to buy far more capable hardware (in terms of CPU, bus speed and diskspace) in order to even use the converter.

Well, the “you won’t get an entirely perfect LP filter for 44.1 kHz converters” point has been addressed like a decade ago – with 48 kHz converters :-) I should really try, go downstairs and check if I can here any difference between 48 kHz and 96 kHz, like, when playing a plugin…

Anyway. I still do most production for CD, and I guess that if I did work with 48 or 96 kHz, resampling that to 44.1 kHz for CD would probably give more artifacts than losing the absolute top-end when recording with 44.1 kHz right from the beginning. I don’t know, because I never had to resample nor dither at all :-)

OK, that’s it. :)

My point is: There are two ways a technology can enter the main stream on a large scale. Either there’s a genuine need for it (=quick adoption), or the manufacturers just take the old stuff out of the shelves, thus leaving new customers no choice (=slow adoption). In both cases, there’s little room for resource savings without sacrificing useful development for them (which would indeed take the discussion to a philosophical level we probably should avoid ;)

You make a few good points.

The funny thing is that I work in the audio field as well, and there, I have exactly the same opinion. People start buying 96kHz (or even 192 kHz!) A/D D/A converters, if possible with 32 bit resolution, because they think that there is an audible difference or because they fear that the industry might push standards that support such sampling rates (blueray etc. for sure do?) .

Again here, the nyquist frequency for a CD recording is 22.05 kHz, and the human ear of a very YOUNG person can hear up to 20 kHz. This is – again – the end of the story :) Add the necessary and not infinitely steep lowpass filter to the 22.05 kHz, and you end up somewhere around 20. Oh, and with people today constantly going to parties where the music is far too loud, even a 17 year old can barely hear 16 kHz anymore.

Of course, you make a good point saying that the world isn’t full of mindless zombies. Well, I don’t agree entirely, because as much as I regret it, the world *is* full of mindless zombies (no offense to the zombies – they’re made that by economy). BUT they are STILL not zombified enough to buy stuff that makes no sense, sometimes. I mean, people still buy CDs, and if not, they download 192 kbps MP3s, both of which are far lower quality (even though indistinguishable to the ear anyway) than the 96/192 kHz 32bit craze.

Maybe I applied my “capitalism is wasting resources for its own desperate survival” argument at the wrong place. As far as the “nothing apart from sleeping, eating and procreation is needed” argument goes: It’s not an easy black and white case. I also have stuff that isn’t absolutely necessary (though not a lot of it). Sure, I have a guitar because I like playing guitar, and I wouldn’t die if I didn’t. However, it’s a question of balance. A guitar is something someone could build hundreds of years ago in his backyard, and probably has the potential to give more real sense to someone’s life than a 4k screen whose development, production and shipping used as many resources as 1000 guitars.

Anyway. This is turning far too general and philosophical, and I should get on with my CMS (or with the – indeed necessary – sleep :)

(to second alexander et al a little bit)
the human eye has an area where you see sharp. (yellow spot) And the eye has an area where you are completely blind (where the nerves from the retina leave the eyeball, the so-called red spot)
Do you recocgnize your environment with black spots caused by the blind spot in your eyes?
NO because brain calculates off the blind areas. HOW? Because your eyes move always.
And that’s the point. 4K Images are great. You can let your eyes wander around the image from quite a distance and recognize every single detail.
But imagine a fast-paced action movie with e.g. a car-chase. Where do you look at? The car, the shootout whatever. The rest of the screen is filled with motion-blurred surrounding.

so….. well…

that could be a brilliant idea for a movie-codec…..
you definitely don’t need hi-res on fast, blurred parts of the image, so few dpi would do well.
If the camera moves slowly and you want to analyse everything in the scene, you have to keep the detail
(where 4K absolutely makes sense).
so let’s create a codec called ActionX: the more action (=blur) the smaller the movie ;)

this world IS full of idiots (me included) because we don’t want the earth to heat up, but now we buy mini microwave ovens to heat up our local/personal atmosphere: at the back of a microwave oven the label clearly states 2,45 GHz, same as wifi, most specifically heating up water(vapour) because it resonates with the wavelenth of water.
all wifi broadcast energy slightly heats up our atmosphere.

that being said,
the great thing about Elephants Dream @ 4k is it demonstrates blender/opensource-movies to be re-renderable to fit the screen of your desire.

with all these diffrent formats available, it’s hard to get fullscreen AND the right eh.. ‘x/y-relation’(my disturbed mind won’t give me the right word)

I truely doubt the mediacompanies will will ever allow consumers to recompile fromsource, and if they ever come up with movies in diffrent resolutions, yule just have to pay for every diffrent format you want it in.

it not like you can get a 80% discount on DVDs if you can show the receipts of your VHS-collection, which is mostly licence-fee, and

No, seriously, I think Jan has nailed it down pretty well…… If people WANT to spend their resources on (what you perceive as) seemingly useless technologies, nothing’s really going to stop them…..

I’d say the decision whether an up-and-coming technology is superfluous or not is best left to its recipients, no? It’s not as if the world is full of mindless zombies who buy everything that’s crammed down their throats by evil industry overlords. Technology that doesn’t make any sense within people’s living rooms usually won’t end up in people’s living rooms on a large scale, simple as that. Last time I checked, the much-anticipated consumer craze over HDTV stuff was rapidly dwindling into a mere “when I get me a new TV, I might aswell take one of those HD doohickeys” kind of thing. Surround rigs for home use have been around for how long, 20 years? Why is their market share still negligible? Because (as much as I lament that fact on a personal level) Jane Sixpack couldn’t care less if her noise is coming from two direction or six. Besides, the people behind this experiment would probably burst into laughter at the implication of their 4k stuff ending up in people’s living rooms. It’s simply happening in a whole different league.

In all seriousness, I’m with you that natural resources are being wasted on an alarmingly large scale all over the world; but I can see far more efficient ways to keep this within limits than artificially slowing down R&D in media technology. The argument that “it’s not really needed” doesn’t exactly resonate with me aswell, since when you get literal, that applies to everything except sleeping, eating, and procreation.

As for you having to close down your 3D business in fear of clients suddenly demanding 4k resolution: then don’t try to acquire your clients in the segment of large-scale digital cinema facilities, d’oh! :) The whole mobile phone craze has probably spawned 100 times more demand for low-end material in all areas of media production than this stuff will ever create in the high-end range.