ONE HORRIBLE DOWNSIDE…THE 162GB 5mn video finally uploaded, the total upload time was about 5 days/6nights. Weird. It was like I had a 56k modem, but I could still mess around on the internet and the power did not go out. But, my relentless optimism decided that was what it took to get these beasts on you tube. I can't even watch 2K fluidly with my 1080i HD screen and NViDIA CUDA 512mb video card out DVI to HDMI. It is choppy. But, my neverending belief that use must destroy (not really) all that you have to gain, worked beautifully.
Along with you tubes, support for my belief, I could not get the next 2K video to upload, it would fail after like 30 seconds. So, I'm thinking it is to big of an upload or something, So, I encode the 2K RAW video to a basempc AVC/AAC MP4 file, but I somehow force it to keep the 2048X1152p Pixel AR and not drop to 1080p. I was so over it at that point. From trying everything. I clicked save for a 2048X1152 23.976 Frame rate no interleaving progressive scan 1:1 pixel AR 16:9 Screen AR. The file rendered in 20 min. It size went from over a 100GB to 100MB and everything retained but the bit rate it was like 1748Kbps instead of 16Mbps. ANYWAY, THE VIDEO WAS 2K QUALITY AT 1/10TH THE SIZE. From 2K to MP4 and uploaded to youtube, about 1.5-2hrs not 5days. The “unlimited setting came up and it is golden.
SEE all this Codec technology paid off. Apparently compressing a digital RAW video 1/10th the size does not lose quality.
Those codecs should be great a shrinking files by now. It is the decompressing that they are horrible at. Thanks for listening and Say NO to 3D and Yes to 2K4K HD
Seriously, stick with what we know, that is giant HD Video displayed on a 2D screen with killer 3D surfaces, like most games. 3D was a fad when I say Nightmare on Elmstreet 5 3D and had the RGB plastic glasses. Now it is a total flop. They are using essentially the same 3D rendering but the RGB glasses are proprietary and digitized and the video quality is better but it is not even close to 4K HD video quality. Of course people don't want to use the glasses, they suck so what are the working on no glasses 3D…but..you have to sit in the same spot for the entire movie or the 3D effect won't work. Super week.
ONCE AGAIN QUALITY=FINISHED PRODUCT/COST. IF YOU DESIGN QUALITY INTO THE PRODUCT IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU GET BETTER QUALITY AND LOWER THE COST. BUT MOST BUSINESS ENTITIES SEE THE COST AS THE FIRST PRIORITY TO LOWER. Guess what? The cost goes down, the product is mediocre and the quality sucks.

Aloha and Mahalo!

–dntpay4sftware

No, 4K part wouldn't be done on the Mali.. The Mali 400 can handle only the graphics overlays and on-screen-displays (OSD) and similar stuff. The video encoder / decoder IP is different (similar to PowerVR VXD line — PowerVR SGX line is similar to Mali). I am not sure ARM even has anything to compete with the PowerVR VXD line.

I am also not sure about Sigma Designs and ARM. What I know definitely is that all the chips they released in last 2 – 3 years have been based on MIPS (and ARM never has been dominant in the STB market). Realtek also uses MIPS only. From the IP integrators list, I believe only Mediatek (and of late, Telechips) have been using ARM as the host processor vendor.

Sigma Designs never work on ARM platforms? I believe they may have been the first with 1080p DivX/H264 decoders for media streamers like the KiSS Technology ones as far back as 2004. How about the Realtek based media players which seem to currently dominate the 1080p media streamer market, could any of those IPs combine forces with ARM processors?

3D on Nintendo 3DS might be cool, but I think many people will want to disable 3D on the Nintendo portable after few minutes because it probably is hard on the eyes after a while. But it will be a cool thing to come back to regularly. While those polarized glasses on 3D HDTVs, for one it should not require more expensive TVs as it's only about using 120hz refresh rates, which have been available for a while already. Then, 3D content, even Avatar, I think are produced with the totally wrong ideas and concepts in mind. Movies and TV shows are not supposed to be like roller coaster rides.

4K would add a new sense of realism with the insane res!

BTW, I would wager that 3D is not a fad.

Thanks for the excellent analysis. I second your view that 3D is an unwanted distraction for TV manufacturers (if they are going to go that route, at least think of some technology which doesn't require special glasses). Higher resolution is where we want to go towards in order to make videos look more life-like.

That said, I am not in entire agreement with you about ARM doing something special about 4K videos. In fact, Cortex-A9 (or its NEON engine, for that matter) and its successors will not have power efficient architectures (both hardware / software wise) for 4K video processing. Consumers will have to rely on companies which use their IP (like TI or Broadcom or Sigma Designs — the last one is a MIPS house currently) to further the user experience.