Wow. Great article and real eye opener from all sorts of aspects.
This was a very misleading article in a few respects, but the standout was the nonsense about extra resolution not being visible to an audience at a normal viewing distance. You have to understand that the author's company is promoting a 1080p camera system in this article, so understandably all other competing systems are a complete waste of time.
I've seen a number of 2K vs. 4K demonstrations at trade shows and the extra resolution can be quite dramatically visible. Much in the way that a good 70mm print used to completely supersede comparable 35mm prints. I remember going to see '2001: A Space Odyssey' some years back at the Castro in San Francisco. This is a film I've seen countless times on video and in theaters. I grew up going to see it at midnight movies. So I'm familiar with it visually, but I was seeing things in the 70mm print that I'd never seen before. It was quite an experience for me.
The same thing can happen in a 4K projection. The theaters are starting to pop up all over the place. Probably the most common ones are AMC's 'Enhanced Theatre Experience' ('ETX') theaters. Obviously the source material plays a part, but seeing a really good 4K projection in one of them is a very revealing experience.
By the same token, sitting very close to the screen in a 2K theater will allow you to see the individual pixels in certain types of theaters. That egg-crate overlay is extremely distracting.
I too am looking forward to Canon's 4K DSLR. Canon filed a patent on January 26th for a RAW codec that seems quite powerful and allows 12-bit RAW capture at 2K and 4K. It also apparently allows the two formats to be captured simultaneously in a single file if the need is present, which was a new twist for in-camera processing.
It could be a very interesting year for Canon.
-Rob
