3D TVs were hailed as the next big technology a few years ago but most recently, hardware makers have been pushing 4K tvs and monitors in an effort to get us to upgrade our 1080p hardware to something four times as detailed, despite the lack of available content for it just yet. As you might have expected, consumers really don't seem to care, as a new survey by the Diffusion Group suggests only six per cent of people are interested in buying into it.
This number was impacted even more when you consider that only 3.4 per cent of respondents would consider spending a thousand dollars on a 4K TV, while just 1.9 per cent would be interested in dropping upwards of $2k on one.
The worst part though? Most people don't even know the technology exists. While the jump from SD to HD was dramatic, the move from 1080p to 4K resolutions just isn't as obvious. Yes the pictures the new sets give are astoundingly pretty, but they don't resonate in the way that the earliest HD ready image comparisons did.
In-fact, so few people know it exists that in the survey as many as 83 per cent of those asked had no idea what Ultra HD was.
Part of the issue with uptake from those few that do know the technology exists however, is thought to be to do with the problems associated with the much larger file sizes of 4K content. With no physical medium providing access to it, we're restricted to streaming. However, you'll need at the very least, 20Mbit per seconds of bandwidth for that single stream alone, which is a large portion of most home packages, even basic fibre.
ISPs may not even be able to handle it in some instances, especially if your contention ratio is poor, or your provider has decided to throttle connections from companies like Netflix, which is one of the few that provides Ultra HD streams.
With gaming it's a little easier, since high end graphics set ups should be able to handle 3840 x 2160 rendering, but it's still very expensive even without factoring in the cost of the monitor itself.
What do you guys think of 4k technology? Is it something you see as catching on eventually, or is it a bit of a fad like 3D?
