Is Sony Jealous?

[Hodges Usry]

Hey guys.
I want to preface this by saying that i am an avid supporter of RED.

I attended SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles last week and stopped by the Sony booth. They were showcasing a 4k projector so I brought up the Red One in conversation with the Sony Representative. His first comment was "Dont get caught up in all that Red Hype."

Then he went on to say that Red is not "true 4k."

What did he mean by this? ... Maybe just jealous!?

just thought it was interesting.

thanks.

[Michael Thornton]

You need to ask him which 4k format he is talking about.

I can say Sony 4k projector is not 4k either.

Unless something change in recently.

It's four 2k chips put together right?

LOL

FYI, One of Sony commercial was shot on RED.

HUmmmm....

Shirrrr......

Tek

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Hey guys.
I want to preface this by saying that i am an avid supporter of RED.

I attended SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles last week and stopped by the Sony booth. They were showcasing a 4k projector so I brought up the Red One in conversation with the Sony Representative. His first comment was "Dont get caught up in all that Red Hype."

Then he went on to say that Red is not "true 4k."

What did he mean by this? ... Maybe just jealous!?

just thought it was interesting.

thanks.

Did he offer you a F35 for 17,500 dollars?

[Jason Ing]

Not jealous...

... scared.

[mkt7@mac.com]

Even if he did offer you an F35 at $17500 it's still a quarter of the resolution!

[Jeff Coatney]

It's okay to get caught up in the Red hype. Sony is taking what amounts to a semantic argument and inflating its significance. It's a Karl Rove tactic: take your enemy's strength and turn it into his biggest weakness. I think it is safe to assume that Sony has a 4K acquisition plan. Historically, Sony product development has followed a "next-step" trajectory. Which is the innovation system that most large organizations follow. Look for a video camera form-factor: first EFP/ENG for $250,000+, then a Prosumer model for $8,000. The bottleneck is slogging through all that 4K data. Sony has to multiply their bandwidth times four. They do 1920 x 1080 very well, very efficiently. Now they have to multiply their current architecture to handle 4K. Wonder how that's going? You've seen the flack Jim gets from the "industry" over his camera, imagine the sand-bagging the Sony 4K team gets from the army of Video engineers and software developers that built the company and are now being swept aside in favor of the 4K upstarts. Inter-Personal dynamics and office politics will kill innovation every time, or at least slow it down.

[jimhare]

He probably meant that if you factor out the RED 4k sensor it equates closer to 3.1k or something. Poor baby, still twice the resolution of their biggest cam!

Hype has turned to fact. We're out there using it and the images speak for themselves.

Hype Shmipe.

[GlennChan]

It's four 2k chips put together right?
I believe Sony's "4k" projector is simply 4XHD... i.e. 3940x2160 instead of 4096x2160. So you will either have to monitor a cropped image, or resample the image (which will introduce scaling artifacts).

Hopefully the industry will just standardize on 4 X HD... the choice of the extra pixels has little technical merit.

2- I suspect the employee's comment is simply his own opinion, not an official company line. But who knows what Sony Broadcast's official 'opinion' on the Red is. Well, unless you look at some of their marketing materials... perhaps in which you could infer some subtle Red potshots. But that's somewhat speculative.


Then he went on to say that Red is not "true 4k."
Perhaps he is saying that 4k bayer cameras don't deliver "true" 4k resolution. Which is a matter of perspective and your taste in whether you hate blurriness/aliasing/ringing the most + amount of sharpening used.

In any case, as far as non-film cameras goes, Red is at the top of the heap in terms of resolution. And Epic will be higher resolution.

[gbalaji]

Friends,

Why should Red users need to compare with Sony. Sony do there way which is for their market.Even jarred dont like bashing any people by comparing the product.

We may probably be using Sony 4k projector until Red comes with 4K projector. Let them create their own product and if its worth buying need to look for.

Sony sustained the market for more than 50 years and we respect them for what they done so far.

[Grayton hevern]

If read many places that the red one resolves images in 4k mode at around 3.1 or something like that, or maybe the sony dude was referring to the sub sampling that red does to produce its color, which if you not up on how a bayer pattern sensor works can be scary. When you are able to buy a red without a mountain of a wait then all this anti red talk will mean little, as far as I am concern the only thing from stopping this camera from going absolutely crazy is that if I want one I cant have one now. In my opinion Sony make nice cameras, and there reliable and if they aren't working on a 4k camera as we speak then I would be very surprised. I think people get carried away with the price point, for a big production this is not an issue, red has opened up filmmaking to a certain degree and once they are freely available the massive prices on other HD cameras will have to come down. Is there any word on red increasing production?, a couple months ago they were like a 30 man company, surely thats growing.
cheers

[Priyesh P.]

Maybe he was just referring to the fanboyism. I don`t see anything positive in hypes, they seem to cover up flaws all too easy. The Red One (as a neutral observer) is still work in process as there are a couple of areas to fix.

[Mike Harrington]

I think there a little sick of hearing about it.

I mean when is the last time a sony F23 or F35 was in popular science magazine.

The hype is less about technical merit....more about price....

is 1080p hype over 720p in terms of television?
not a huge difference....
now what if 1080p tv's cost 80% less then 720p tv's....that would be worthy of hype. I'm sure the makers of 720p t.v.'s would be saying...."oh those extra pixels are hype....and on certain levels we actually outperform them"
but that would not explain the price

the market has now changed....the crazy's have moved next door and there selling there house for half what it's worth

I think sony really means "don't get caught up in the new pricing structure of competitive camera's.....focus on the Sony name brand, that Red is for the middle class people."

[Mike Harrington]

Maybe he was just referring to the fanboyism. I don`t see anything positive in hypes, they seem to cover up flaws all too easy. The Red One (as a neutral observer) is still work in process as there are a couple of areas to fix.

totally agree....still some areas to fix

like buying a house for 1/4 market value and putting some doors and windows on it.

The fanboyism can be annoying, but when the general public can actually afford a camera of this caliber....then they tend to dream a little.

[Petr Dvorak]

Then he went on to say that Red is not "true 4k."



Well, so from this point of view cameras (with bayer) which state that are HD 1080 has in fact resolution only around 800 pixels, 720 has like 540, SD has 430 (PAL) or 350 (NTSC) etc. etc.?
So who is lying more. :whistling:

I think that in this case is more important how many lines from test pattern can camera reproduce than declared resolution of chip.

[Graeme Nattress]

Of course, Sony makes DSLRs that use Bayer pattern sensors, an their engineers know that that's the best way to go. And of course, Sony's 1080p video cameras don't measure a full 1080p resolution either, or, if in the cases where they do, they allow through too much aliasing.

And this is from the people that thought 1080i60 was better than 720p60 - I know which I prefer to see, and it hasn't got any interlace in it....

But this is all a non-issue because the RED makes a superb image, that projects incredibly well and looks really detailed. I remember seeing our footage at IBC, on their very big screen. After we had set up our footage right, the next people came in. It was HD, some sports game, and it was such a night and day difference in terms of tone, obviously, and resolution that the RED experience made a mockery of HD in that environment.

Graeme

[Steven Caesare]

You need to ask him which 4k format he is talking about.

I can say Sony 4k projector is not 4k either.

Unless something change in recently.

It's four 2k chips put together right?

LOL

FYI, One of Sony commercial was shot on RED.

HUmmmm....

Shirrrr......

Tek

While it's very likely that there was an ulterior motive in the Sony rep attampting to dismiss the Red as "less than", their 4k projecotr being cobbled from four 2K display devices is not one of them.

The Sony 4K projectors use a single 4K SXRD display panel to project the image.

I bleieve that people hve been confused by the fact that due to the realtively few ways to get a 4K signal into such a machine, the projectors will support 4 input cards (HD SDI, etc...), and that one of the modes of the projector is to display four 2K HD sources simultaneously on the screen at the same time.

Examples (from Cine4Home):
http://www.cine4home.com/reviews/projectors/SonyCineAlta4K/Bild14.jpg

http://www.cine4home.com/reviews/projectors/SonyCineAlta4K/Bild15.jpg

http://www.cine4home.com/reviews/projectors/SonyCineAlta4K/Bild25.jpg

But it is a true 4K display.

-Steve

[Chosei Funahara]

Sony's Atugi factory has 300 engineers who developed Hdcam and producing Ex series to Hdcam.
Think about it:
300 engineers salary
countless marketing people’s salaries
PR and Ad costs

They are busy producing 1080P’s.
It’s like a war, between Panasonic, Sony and Ikegami.
TV’s 1080P is the biggest markets right now and prepping for smpte424M will come to Japan 2010.
They don’t make any profit producing F35, that’s show piece and 4k SRX-R220’s (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display_SXRDTM) projecter are getting standard for theater projection.
That’ll make profit.

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, it's a true 3.75k display :-) The 4 panes you sometimes see are due to the 4 HD-SDI inputs. Although I have seen calibration issues across the panes of the display.

Graeme

[Steven Caesare]

Yes, it's a true 3.75k display :-) The 4 panes you sometimes see are due to the 4 HD-SDI inputs. Although I have seen calibration issues across the panes of the display.

Graeme

Hehe touché... well it it is a 4096 pixel wide projector after all... it can't help it that it's still having to play pipsqueak to the 4.5K RED One. ;-)

[vsv]

info from filmtech forum:

"For the last NAB Convention in Vegas Sony had produced a very costly 4K 3-D demo film to run on their new VW Bus sized 4K 3-D projector. Sony couldn't get it to run so it was run on the Christie 2K 3-D stacked system that was sitting right next to Sony's equipment. No one at NAB except the Christie folks and Sony knew it ran in 2K on Christie's gear and no one at NAB that waas expecting to see a 4K presentation complained! A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to run D-Cinema on an 82X60 foot screen from 4K 15/70 scans. Not only was the image from the single CP-2000S twice as bright than the existing (and aging Iwerks) 15/70 system the digital image was also prefered by the people whom were also very familiar with the 15/70 film that attended the demo. Needless to say the film system is going bye-bye!"

4K RED content from Christie DLP projector :tongue:

[Michael Thornton]

Yes, it's a true 3.75k display :-) The 4 panes you sometimes see are due to the 4 HD-SDI inputs. Although I have seen calibration issues across the panes of the display.

This mean it's really 3840x2160 right?

That is not 4096 right?

Tek

[Graeme Nattress]

Nah, I got it wrong, it's 4096 x 2160, but that's still short of the 4098x2304 for 4k 16:9. That means you've got to go down to 3.8k to squeeze in the full height of 16:9 or crop though. I dunno why they missed those extra pixels off...

Graeme

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

My understanding is that Sony's 4k projector is 1:85:1

[Michael Ragen]

I just shot something for Sony on Red. It felt good. My only real bitterness for Sony involves their minidisc recorders and some overly protective measures they took to prevent you from copying stuff off of the discs though.

[conrad gaunt]

Nah, I got it wrong, it's 4096 x 2160, but that's still short of the 4098x2304 for 4k 16:9. That means you've got to go down to 3.8k to squeeze in the full height of 16:9 or crop though. I dunno why they missed those extra pixels off...

Graeme

I think you mean 4096x2304, unless Red have missed 2 pixels off the width also :)

[Casey Green]

It doesn't matter who is exactly right with the technical details... it matters who provides a great image and offers a digital workflow equivalent to 4K that will be established as the leader of new digital cinema.

[Nova Invicta]

The Sony rep was likely a typical Sony Rep a little bit stupid in what he said when put on the spot. Equally Graeme its a little bit stupid nit picking the Sony 4K projector at least they are trying to develop one. Sony produce a diverse range of products at multi price levels and all those that deride them here likely have a Sony product in their homes!
Will they make a 4K camera or 5K absolutely they have been around a long time and are not about to leave the stage.