[douche]

For a lot of things, that extra resolution is not really any benefit. Particularly for content that wasn't ever recorded at that level of fidelity anyway - I don't need 4k versions of Seinfeld re-runs, or SpongeBob SquarePants for the kiddos. Most of that stuff doesn't even need to be 720p.

Besides, pirated video content was really the only thing that most normal people could fill up their hard drives with (okay, maybe GoPro people or people with huge Steam libraries, too), but the Netflix and YouTube and Amazon Prime have taken a huge chunk out of that.

[roywiggins]

Also people who shoot raw photos. They're like 35MB each, an order of magnitude bigger than jpegs. They can eat up gigabytes (though to be fair, not terabytes) pretty fast. I have about 525GB of photos and videos that I've taken over years. Something like 300GB is jpegs. If I'd exclusively shot raw files I would need 3-4TB to store everything.

[masterj]

And 4TB these days only costs ~$120 http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-SATA-3-5-Inch-Desktop-ST4000DM... though it's still a chore to manage and backup so many photos

[Razengan]

> it's still a chore to manage and backup so many photos

I can't wait for a photo manager with some kind of AI that goes through the pictures I've taken myself and offers them based on "feel good vibes", "eerie", "cozy" and so on, and learning what I like as it goes.

Apple please?

[roywiggins]

Google Photos has some AI tied into it- it tries to autotag photos into categories like "selfies" and "concerts" and "Christmas" (to name a few at random) and it isn't completely perfect, but not horrible.

Not so useful for me, since I don't care to upload my entire photo collection to Google. Something like this that either works offline or can progressively tag photos and insert those tags in a format Lightroom could read would be awfully useful.

[cweiss]

And yet, have you seen the 4k content out there? Breaking Bad was awesome, but is that really better in 4k than, say BSG or Planet Earth? I bought a 4k TV to use as a monitor several months back and started researching content - Most of it is eyebrow-raising, to say the least. I remember when 720/1080 were first introduced, there was an expected dearth of content, but at least what was out there was worth high-def (flyovers of tourist destinations, PBS nature documentaries, etc). For example - Here's some of Netflix's offerings in 4k:

  Series:
  House of Cards
  Marco Polo
  Breaking Bad
  The Blacklist

  Movies and Documentaries
  Smurfs 2
  Philadelphia
  Jerry Macguire
  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  Oceans (documentary)
  Forests (documentary)
  Flowers (documentary)

Edit:formatting

[guidedlight]

Right. Did you know that DVD's still outsell BluRay's?

[Razengan]

Maybe consumers only see the hard resolution as a differentiator and they're both 1080? Maybe BluRay has some uncomfortable restriction.

Either way it's the content producers and publishers' job to create more higher-quality and make consumers aware of it and make it easier for them consume it.

In this Age of YouTube, some of us can play our part by recording (as some recent phones/tablets can) and uploading in 4K. Design wallpapers in 4K. Even just seeing the higher resolution in the list of available options will increase awareness and pique more people to try a 4K display out.

While we're at it, let's make 10-bit/channel content more common too, now that the latest Macs and iPads have 10-bit displays. Anime fansubbers have already been producing 10-bit videos for a while.

[Houshalter]

Yes that's an important point. There are diminishing returns with better resolutions. Twice the resolution doesn't mean it appears twice as good, and at higher resolutions it can even be hard to tell. At some point you exceed the resolution of the human eye and ear.

But I think storage space still matters on mobile. I haven't come close to filling up my laptop after 4 years of use, but I have to be careful about putting stuff on my iPod. Still it can store dozens of hours of audio, so it's not the biggest issue.