Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 805

The just announced Snapdragon 805 is definitely a significant step forward for Ultra-HD video on mobile platforms. I am surprised at how fast Qualcomm moves to support Ultra HD (4K) since adoption of Ultra HD is still very limited even on large screens.

The new Adreno 420 GPU is impressive and provides spport to render as well as capture 4K video. Coupled with 4 Krait CPUs running at 2.5 GHz per core, the Snapdragon 805 will support HQV video post processing and hardware HEVC H.265 decode. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is an UltraHD home theater in your pocket, but it certainly would help push the creation of handheld 4K content for early adopters of Ultra HD video. I look forward to see new handsets with this capability.

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Ultra HD Heads to the Living Room with Broadcom’s Video Technology | Broadcom Connected

Ultra HD Heads to the Living Room with Broadcom’s Video Technology | Broadcom Connected.

Now that consumers are well aware of High Definition TVs and getting used to the excellent picture quality of 1080p video, the TV industry is introducing yet another enhancement to picture quality. This time, it is called Ultra HD TV.

There are 2 different version of Ultra HD, one previously known as 4K and the other previously known as 8K. The native resolution of 4K is 3840 x 2160p, (8.3 megapixels) and 4 times the resolution of the current 1080p HD standard 1920x1080p (2.1 megapixels). The native resolution of 8K is a whopping 7680 x 4320 (33.2 megapixels) or 16 times the current 1080p HDTV video.

I am sure it will take time for film makers to shoot UltraHD 4K or 8K content. The infrastructure as well as consumer adoption will take years to mature. Certainly, lot of existing HD content will likely be remastered in Ultra HD first followed by really big budget native UltraHD movies.

I guess consumers didn’t accept 3D-TV, so they are trying to win them with UltraHD. There will always be something new to look forward to. What would that be in the future? Only time will tell.

 

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• Hands on with Sony’s 84-inch Ultra HD TV (news.consumerreports.org)
• Are Ultra HD TVs worth the money? Consumer Reports says not yet (abclocal.go.com)
• Sony’s 4K UltraHD TVs plummet in price, but content still scarce (arstechnica.com)