How expensive is it to watch 4K movies? Xiao Bian helps you calculate the accounts

The 1080P finally started to spread, and the 4K came again. Especially since this year, the outflow of downloading of 4K movies has made 4K's popularity seem to have seen a glimmer of hope. On the computer side, the monitor began to transition to 2K and 4K. The CPU cores and graphics cards began to be advertised in 4K. After all, computer entertainment is nothing more than gaming, light entertainment, and audio and video. However, how much does it cost to use a computer to watch 4K movies? Xiao Bian will give you a calculation today.

4K three elements

Decode, display, and output. Decoding refers to relying on hardware video decoding, relying on CPU software operations will greatly increase the system power consumption, CPU load increases; playback is an output device, including televisions, computer monitors, resolution must reach 4K standard (3840×2160/4096× 2160); The output is connected to the playback device and the display device connection, the current home appliance field is the most popular HDMI2.0 standard, the computer is using the DP1.4 standard interface, only these two interfaces can really meet the 4K@ 60Hz full 4K output capability.

Little knowledge: 4K Ultra HD refers to digital movies with a resolution of 4096×2160. For the mainstream equipment manufacturers, they are more inclined to make the Quad Full HD (3840×2160) standard product near 4K, because this resolution standard has a display ratio of 16:9 and is more cost-effective.

What is the decoding solution?

To achieve this complete goal, in addition to the display device, the computer must implement 4K decoding and output. Let's talk about decoding the first thing. The decoding standards used for 4K resolution movies are H.265/HEVC or VP9 encoding, 10-bit color depth, and HDR color (up to BT.2020 color gamut), respectively; in the 1080P era, the encoding is H.264/ VC-1 or VP8, other requirements can be almost ignored. To achieve more advanced coding and decoding work, the main work must be provided by the graphics card. Whether it is independent or nuclear, H.265 4 times the H.264 compression ratio must have a completely new design - obviously this means Only new products can support it.

CPU

Intel's GPU hard solution technology is Intel Quick Sync Video. It can start to solve 4K H.265/HEVC 10-bit decoding from the Kaby Lake (7th generation Core Duo) (the eighth generation Core supports VP9 decoding). Of course, whether it is the seventh generation or the eighth generation Core Duo mentioned here, it actually refers to its internal nuclear display. This function was realized on the nuclear display. As for the AMD processor, whether it is the current Ryzen or older processor, because there is no nuclear display and can not support, APU part of the cash can not be achieved.

Video card

NVIDIA's hard solution technology is PureVideo. To better decode 4K HEVC 10-bit video, PureVideo VP7 or above technology is required. So what NVIDIA graphics card support this specification? The latest Pascal generation, including the GP102, GP104, GP106, GP107, and GP108 cores, are all equipped with PureVideo VP8, hard to solve 4K HEVC 10-bit video without stress; but the previous generation was rather strange, only the GM206 (including the GTX 950 GTX 960) supports PureVideo VP7, others only support VP6. In short, only GTX 950, 960 supports 4K HEVC 10-bit hard solution in GTX 900 series, and GTX 1000 series all support it.

Let's talk about AMD's GPU. The hard solution technology of AMD GPU is UVD. Only UVD 6.3 or above can solve 4K HEVC 10-bit video. AMD's unique features currently only have the ability to hard-wire the RX 400 series, RX 500 series, and the latest VEGA RX series, and it is expected that the APU based on the Ryzen core will officially support it.

The external interface must not be less

External interface is also related to 4K? No way, it's definitely not enough to try and pay less. The first is the display output, HDMI 2.0 is essential, and the output and input (computer, monitor/TV) must be HDMI2.0 interface, or the interface are all DP 1.4 or above, otherwise it can not Support 4K@60Hz + HDR output capacity (bandwidth is not enough); second is the transmission interface, not like 4K movies with mobile hard disk copy, at least use USB3.0 interface to meet the 4K movie transmission requirements, USB 2.0 that 480Mbps transmission Speed ​​is not enough to see.

Therefore, it can be seen that to realize a full 4K function, it is less costly. For this video play that can be clearly counted, it is not a matter of spending so much money on early adopters. It depends on the needs of the small partners themselves.

Can low price 4K be realized?

The answer is yes, there are two programs, the first is a dedicated video player box, cottage product is about 300 yuan, the disadvantage is that the quality is unknown, and a single use; the second is the end of the Gemini Lake processor - That is, the new generation Atom processor is on the market, and the mini motherboard with such a processor can achieve a full 4K decoding and playback as well as a general computer. And both devices have a complete output interface, including video output HDMI 2.0, external storage device USB3.0/3.1 interface, which can greatly reduce the 4K threshold, of course, a 4K resolution display / TV can't be saved anyway.

In simple terms, the 4K technology is undoubtedly more detailed, and the effect is more amazing, but the cost to be paid is also increasing geometrically. Don't forget that 1080P HD movies have only been popular for about 10 years. If we want to wait for 4K popularization to follow up, Xiao Bian estimates that when 8K products are on the market, of course, the time will not be as long as the popularization of 1080P. Maybe 5 years later it will be realized... Well, that's it.