HighDefinition vs. StandardDefinition

What is HD and how it differs from ”regular” TV (SD)?

HD is a format whose roots come from Japan. In 1980 technical assumptions were already created to display 1125 lines of picture/image. However, only in 1987 in the USA did they start to elaborate on the HD standard. This process was finished in 1996, creating international standards of HD 1080p and 720p (with its several variations). How ever the first program in HD was emitted on October 28, 1998. The differences between these formats are significant. Simply saying, HD has a much higher quality image because it uses up to 2.073.600 pixels in order to show one frame. HD has 5 times higher resolution than SD (standard definition), which uses only 414.720 pixels per frame.

4K (QuadHD)

Cinema 4K (colloquially called QuadHD) is the current standard for making high budget film productions. This resolution is 21,3 times higher than standard television resolution. Unfortunately, there are not standard players that would be able to display a fluid image in this incredibly high resolution (4096 x 2160 pixels) and all images produced in this resolution are converted to FullHD (or presented in sparse cinemas with very complicated projectors).

Addendum: company named RED Digital Cinema announced for early 2009 delivering for market device named 4K Red Ray™. This device will be capable to fluently play video content up to 4K resolution.

5K

At this years NAB show (2008) RED Digital Cinema announced delivering for market professional 5K camcorder. It will be named RED Epic. We believe that it will follow it’s predecessor RED One (4K camcorder) and RED Epic will (most probably) flip the professional market upside down.