Beyond human sight and hearing

There’s a big TV screen on display at one of the electronics stores in Amman that carries a JD19,999 price tag. It’s an 85-inch large LED panel and it provides the highest possible resolution available today on any screen, being the technology known as 4K, one that is superior to the already “old” HD (high definition). Of course brightness, contrast and colour accuracy are equally impressive and a good match for the super high definition TV set.

I watched the demo movie being shown on that stunning TV set. Of course, to make full use of the screen’s characteristics and to impress the viewer the movie is also originally shot at 4K, otherwise it would defeat the purpose. The close-up on the crocodile swimming in the river made the animal jump out of the screen — it’s absolutely remarkable. It makes you understand, or at least forgive the price tag.

Superb image display is approaching the limits beyond which the human eye cannot make any difference between the real thing and the image of it on a TV, computer, smartphone or tablet. Actually digital image technology will probably exceed these limits soon, just like digital sound has already exceeded the limits of the human ear’s perception ability.

Indeed, high-end digital audio equipment lets you record and reproduce sound with a sampling rate of 192KHz and 24-bit precision (called 192/24), whereas it is commonly admitted that the best, the sharpest human ear can hardly detect any difference above a 96/20 resolution (better than Audio-CD anyway). Maybe 192/24 is intended for animals whose hearing is clearly superior to ours?

So again, why then is the industry going to image and sound that surpass our senses? There are a few reasons for that, and most of them are good, valid reasons.

First there’s no way to stop a technology that keeps improving on what it is doing. It is a scientific momentum that will always make sense.

Then there’s competition. If, for example, Panasonic or Sony are able to design and make a better TV than say Samsung or LG, why shouldn’t they? Surely one can’t blame them for wanting to sell more and beat the others.

There are also more practical good reasons for having the best image that the industry can come up with. Zooming in or enlarging is one of them. By starting with an image of a given size that has a resolution that is much higher than our human sight, we can always enlarge it, or parts of it, and still maintain superior resolution. Whereas, enlarging an image that is already at the borders of our senses at the start, will result in one that isn’t perfect anymore.

This is particularly true in video surveillance, among other applications. Reviewing and editing a recording for investigating a crime or an offence often requires blowing up the image dramatically. It is only by having the highest possible resolution at the beginning that one can still get sharp, clear blown up images in the end. This can make the difference, for example, between recognising or not the face and therefore identifying the culprit caught on the video recording.

Some say that by exaggerating the importance of image or sound resolution the industry is trying to mask other shortcomings and to compensate for them. In other words it would be just a sales gimmick. This probably is not true. The demand for superior sound and image is real. Audiovisuals play an important role in our daily life and the improvement achieved by the digital industry since the early 1980s when it all started have changed our habits and our approach to audio, photo and video. The trend will continue and it’s a good thing.