If you are considering the purchase of a new LCD TV for projection use, it would be wise to take a look at what the commonly accepted industry standard for “Real-Time Digital Video” (RTC) format is. The term, “2K Resolution,” refers to the quality of display offered by today’s flat screen TVs and projectors. In recent years, flat screen HDTVs have been quickly becoming the norm when it comes to television viewing. HDTV provides pictures with much more depth and dimension than their previous predecessors, and is now the industry standard when it comes to high definition television viewing. So, what is “2K resolution?”
Basically, 2K resolution is just a generic term denoting display devices or content with a minimum horizontal resolution of around 2,000 pixels, which is often referred to as “widescreen.” In the movie industry, Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCA) is the current leading standard for 2K resolution and refers to 2K resolution as either 2048 × 15ining (Widescreen) or 15 1920 pixels per inch (PPI). It is also known as “3-chip” or” Quad-code” display technology. DCA-based flat screen HDTVs offer various picture effects, such as, sky lighting, panoramic panning, and panoramic rotation.
As mentioned above, the term 2K refers to the minimum horizontal resolution offered and the maximum vertical resolution offered. For example, an HDTV that offers a 1920 x 1080 aspect ratio is considered to be “2.5” mega pixels per inch. The actual number of pixels in a display device can vary greatly, depending on the manufacturer and the type of display used. Generally, HDTVs (aka “high-definition television”) offer about twenty-five to forty-six million pixels per frame.
Other terms relating to HDTVs include “wide screen”, “widescreen” and “high definition”. To simplify matters, when discussing the subject of HDTV resolutions, it’s important to use the term “resolution”. When talking about “full HD” broadcast standards, many people use the term “hd” to refer to high-definition broadcasts. In actuality, “hd” has nothing to do with HDTVs per se; it only refers to the quality of the image.
So, what exactly is “hd”? In comparison to standard definition (SD), high definition (HD) broadcasts are far superior when it comes to clarity. There are two types of HDTV: widescreen and quad-screen. A widescreen HDTV offers the same horizontally compressed video resolution as traditional televisions up to the horizontal refresh rate specified by the manufacturer. Quad-screen, on the other hand, gives the TV a wider “view angle” than normal HDTVs and offers a greater variety in picture mode selections.
The term “high definition” (aka “HD”) usually applies only to television broadcasts released in the exact dimensions of 16 pixels by 1920 pixels. For the vast majority of satellite and cable subscription users, the term “high definition” indicates a range of resolution beyond 720 pixels. In this case, the TV’s resolution is equal to the display resolution of the source video signal that has been multiplied by 8 pixels for clarity. Generally, the term “high definition” is used to describe a range of resolution greater than the “standard definition” or “standard wide”, which is the standard resolution that is achieved on broadcast television programs.
The “native resolution” referred to above refers to the aspect ratio of the TV set, measured in inches. This is an industry-standard method of measuring TV’s original resolution. The aspect ratio is typically expressed as: (width of picture screen – height of picture screen) x (vertical resolution of the source) x (horizontal resolution of the source).
The term “native” may also be used to describe a specific TV feature, such as the scan rate of a TV’s signal. If a signal has a faster scan rate than the native refresh rate of the TV, it is said to be “slow.” This feature is most often known in digital television sets, which operate at a much slower refresh rate than their DVDTV or cable TV counterparts. Another example of a slow signal is the standard definition broadcast TV signal, which is usually referred to as “standard” because it is most of the time deinterlaced.
