, but all what many of us were trying to achieve while talking to FCC
(et al) was to point out, that in order to really make it bulletproof
and usable for not only near future, but for today, a reasonable
Quality of Experience requirement is necessary to be added to the
definition of broadband. Here is the link to the FCC NOI and related
discussion:
https://circleid.com/posts/20231211-its-the-latency-fcc
Hopefully, we have managed to get that message over to the other side.
At least 2 of 5 FCC Commissioners seems to be getting it - Nathan
Simington and Brendan Carr - and Nathan event arranged for his
staffers to talk with Dave and others. Hope that this line of of
cooperation will continue and we will manage to help the rest of the
FCC to understand the issues at hand correctly.
All the best,
Frank
Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik
Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: +421919416714
iMessage, mobile: +420775230885
Skype: casioa5302ca
frantisek.bor...@gmail.com
On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 4:47 PM Colin_Higbie via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
Alex, fortunately, we are not bound to use personal experiences
and observations on this. We have real market data that can
provide an objective, data-supported conclusion. No need for a
chocolate-or-vanilla-ice-cream-tastes-better discussion on this.
Yes, cameras can film at 8K (and higher in some cases). However,
at those resolutions (with exceptions for ultra-high end cameras,
such as those used by multi-million dollar telescopes), except
under very specific conditions, the actual picture quality doesn't
vary past about 5.5K. The loss of detail simply moves from a
consequence of too few pixels to optical and focus limits of the
lenses. Neighboring pixels simply hold a blurry image, meaning
they don't actually carry any usable information. A still shot
with 1/8 of a second exposure can easily benefit from an 8K or
higher sensor. Video sometimes can under bright lights with a
relatively still or slow moving scene. Neither of these
requirements lends itself to typical home video at 30 (or 24)
frames per second – that's 0.03s of time per frame. We can imagine
AI getting to the point where it can compensate for lack of
clarity, and this is already being used for game rendering (e.g.,
Nvidia's DLSS and Intel's XESS), but that requires training per
scene in those games and there hasn't been much development work
done on this for filming, at least not yet.
Will sensors (or AI) improve to capture images faster per amount
of incoming photons so that effective digital shutter speeds can
get faster at lower light levels? No doubt. Will it materially
change video quality so that 8K is a similar step up from 4K as 4K
is from HD (or as HD was from SD)? No, at least not in the next
several years. Read on for why.
So far that was all on the production side. But what about the
consumer side? Mass market TV sizes max out below about 100" (83"
seems to be a fairly common large size, but some stores carry
larger models). Even those large sizes that do reach mass-market
locations and are available on Amazon, still comprise a very small
% of total TV sales. The vast, vast majority of TV sales are of
sub 70" models. This is not just because of pricing, that's a
factor. It's also because home architecture had not considered
screens this big. At these sizes, it's not just a matter of
upgrading the entertainment console furniture, it's a matter of
building a different room with a dedicated entertainment wall.
There is a lot of inertia in the architecture and building that
prevents this from being a sudden change, not to mention the
hundreds of millions of existing homes that are already sized for
TV's below 100".
And important to this discussion, at several feet from even a 70"
- 90" screen, most people can't see the difference between 4K and
8K anyway. The pixels are too small at that distance to make a
difference in the User Experience. This is a contrast with 4K from
HD, which many people (not all) can see, or from SD to HD, an
improvement virtually everyone can see (to the point that news
broadcasts now blur the faces of their anchors to remove wrinkles
that weren't visible back in the SD days).
For another real-world example of this curtailing resolution
growth: smartphones raced to higher and higher resolutions, until
they reached about 4K, then started pulling back. Some are
slightly higher, but as often as not, even at the flagship level,
many smartphones fall slightly below 4K, with the recognition that
customers got wise to screens all being effectively perfect and
higher resolutions no longer mattered.
Currently, the leading contender for anything appearing at 8K are
games, not streaming video. That's because games don't require
camera lenses and light sensors that don't yet exist. They can
render dimly lit, fast moving scenes in 8K just as easily as
brightly lit scenes. BUT (huge but here), GPUs aren't powerful
enough to do that yet either at good framerates, and for most
gamers (not all, but a significant majority), framerate is more
important resolution. Top of the line graphics cards (the ones
that run about $1,000, so not mainstream yet) of the current
generation are just hitting 120fps at 4K in top modern games. From
a pixel moving perspective, that would translate to 30fps at 8K
(4x the # of pixels, 120/4 = 30). 30fps is good enough for
streaming video, but not good enough for a gamer over 4K at
120fps. Still, I anticipate (this part is just my opinion, not a
fact) that graphics cards on high-end gaming PCs will be the first
to drive 8K experiences for gamers before 8K streaming becomes an
in-demand feature. Games have HUDs and are often played on
monitors just a couple of feet from the gamer where ultra-fine
details would be visible and relevant.
Having said all of that, does this mean that I don't think 8K and
higher will eventually replace 4K for mass market consumer
streaming? No, I suspect that in the long-run you're right that
they will. That's a reasonable conclusion based on history of
screen and TV programming resolutions, but that timeframe is
likely more than 10 years off and planning bandwidth requirements
for the needs 10-years from now does not require any assumptions
relating to standard video resolutions people will be watching
then: we can all assume with reasonable confidence based on
history of Internet bandwidth usage that bandwidth needs and
desires will continue to increase over time.
The point for this group is that you lose credibility to the
audience if you base your reasoning on future video resolutions
that the market is currently rejecting without at least
acknowledging that those are projected future needs, rather than
present day needs.
At the same time, 4K is indeed a market standard TODAY. That's not
an opinion, it's a data point and a fact. As I've said multiple
times in this discussion, what makes this a fact and not an
opinion are that millions of people choose to pay for access to 4K
content and the television programs and movies that are stored and
distributed in 4K. All the popular TV devices and gaming consoles
support 4K HDR content in at least some versions of the product
(they may also offer discounted versions that don't do HDR or only
go to 1080p or 1440). The market has spoken and delivered us that
data. 4K HDR is the standard for videophiles and popular enough
that the top video streaming services all offer it. It is also not
in a chaotic state, with suppliers providing different
technologies until the market sorts out a winner (like the old
Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fight 15 years ago, or VHS vs. Beta before
that). Yes, there are some variants on HDR (Dolby Vision vs.
HDR-10), but as TV's are manufactured today, Dolby Vision is
effectively just a superset of HDR-10, like G-Sync is a superset
of Adaptive Sync for variable refresh rate displays needed for
gaming. So, yes, 4K HDR is a standard, whether you buy a Blu-ray
UHD movie at Walmart or Best Buy or stream your programming from
Netflix, Disney+, Max, or Amazon Prime.
So again, this is why the minimum rational top bandwidth any new
ISP should be developing (at least in developed countries – I
think it's fair to say that if people have no Internet access
within hundreds of miles, even slow Internet for connectivity to a
local library in travel distance from home is far better than
nothing) is 25Mbps as the established bandwidth required by the 4K
providers to stream 4K HDR content. This does not mean more would
not be better or that more won't be needed in the future. But if
you are endorsing ISP buildout focused around low-latency under
load at anything LESS THAN 25Mbps, you have simply shifted the
problem for customers and users of the new service from poor
latency (this group's focus) to poor bandwidth incapable of
providing modern services.
To be taken seriously and maximize your chances at success at
influencing policy, I urge this group's members to use that 25Mbps
top bandwidth as a floor. And to clarify my meaning, I don't mean
ISPs shouldn't also offer less expensive tiers of service with
bandwidth at only, say, 3 or 10Mbps. Those are fine and will be
plenty for many users, and a lower cost option with less
capability is a good thing. What I mean is that if they are
building out new service, the infrastructure needs to support and
they need to OFFER a level of at least 25Mbps. Higher is fine too
(better even), but where cost collides with technical capability,
25Mbps is the market requirement, below that and the service
offering is failing to provide a fully functional Internet connection.
Sorry for the long message, but I keep seeing a lot of these same
subjective responses to objective data, which concern me. I hope
this long version finally addresses all of those and I can now
return to just reading the brilliant posts of the latency and
TCP/IP experts who normally drive these discussions. You are all
far more knowledgeable than I in those areas. My expertise is in
what the market needs from its Internet connectivity and why.
Cheers,
Colin
-----Original Message-----
From: Starlink <starlink-boun...@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf
Of starlink-requ...@lists.bufferbloat.net
Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2024 5:22 AM
To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
Subject: Starlink Digest, Vol 38, Issue 13
Today's Topics:
1. Re: It’s the Latency, FCC (Alexandre Petrescu)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 11:21:44 +0200
From: Alexandre Petrescu <alexandre.petre...@gmail.com>
To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
Subject: Re: [Starlink] It’s the Latency, FCC
Message-ID: <94ba2b39-1fc8-46e2-9f77-3b04a6309...@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Le 30/04/2024 à 22:05, Sebastian Moeller via Starlink a écrit :
> Hi Colin,
> [...]
>
>> A lot of responses like "but 8K is coming" (it's not, only
>> experimental YouTube videos showcase these resolutions to the
general
>> public, no studio is making 8K content and no streaming service
>> offers anything in 8K or higher)
> [SM] Not my claim.
Right, it is my claim. '8K is coming' comes from an observation
that it is now present in consumer cameras with ability to film
8K, since a few years now.
The SD-HD-4K-8K-16K consumer market tendency can be evaluated. One
could parallel it with the megapixel number (photo camera)
evolution, or with the micro-processor feature size. There might
be levelling, but I am not sure it is at 4K.
What I would be interested to look at is the next acronym that
requires high bw low latency and that is not in the series
SD-HD-4K-8K-16K. This series did not exist in the times of analog
TV ('SD' appeared when digital TV 'HD' appeared), so probably a
new series will appear that describes TV features.
Alex
>
>> and "I don't need to watch 4K, 1080p is sufficient for me,
> [SM] That however is my claim ;)
>
>> so it should be for everyone else too"
_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
