Introduction to 4K video availability in Kota Kinabalu
Kota Kinabalu should be the place with the latest equipment but SenQ has branches all over Sabah so theoretically whatever is available in Kota Kinabalu should also be available in the other towns in Sabah
I started searching for 4K equipment when PS4 dropped in price during the year end sales and managed to buy one with its camera for RM1675.00. It was a mistake. PS4 cannot play 4K video. Youtube in PS4 only plays in 720p. Luckily, by October 2014, PS4 can play 3D bluray, because Xbox one started supporting 3D bluray. PS3 has a much better support for media than PS4. Even worse, PS4 is incapable of playing 4K at 60 frames per second. It can only play at 30 frames per second.
Shortly after I bought the PS4, the price of the LG 55 inch 3D 4K has dropped in price to RM5300, even better, if you buy through Senq, my CIMB credit card allows me to pay by installment of RM144 for 3 years, which is interest free except for an additional RM88 for the processing fee.
The TV set is the 55UB850 which is a 55 inch 3D 4K 60p capable. It has one input for HDMI version 2.0 which is required for the 4K 60p. It comes with a free HDMI 2.0 cable which is capable of the 10-bit colour called truecolour. We need to disable it because I don't have any device that can produce such video quality. Not even the latest PC graphic card is capable of supporting the capabilities of the HDMI 2.0. I used the HDMI 2.0 cable for the PS4 despite warnings about incompatibility, without any problem at all. This cable is thick and not easy for me to find. It is better to connect to the TV rather than storing them somewhere, which may be difficult to find later on.
Fnding the 4K video sources prove to be difficult as well. No video or PC suppliers can offer DVDs filled with 4K video. The possible sources are:
1. Youtube. Need to use Mozilla Firefox because Chrome and IE are not friendly towards downloading files from Youtube. Even in Firefox, only one addon can download 4K video, it is the Flash Video Downloader. Even this one cannot download video and sound together. It recommends ffmpeg to combine the two files together. It worked. It took more than 3 hours for the GoPro Tokyo in 4K video.
The command is:
ffmpeg -i "<file names, even with spaces>" -i <sound file.mp3> -s 3840x2160 <outfile.mp4>
The -s option is not necessary but is better because some files cannot be played by the LG 55UB850 because its video size is not compatible. I am now busy converting many video files to the video sizes that the 55UB850 can play.
2. Bittorrent. You can still use bittorrent to download lots of demo 4K videos but some cannot be played. Many are actually available in Youtube as well but at least the sound is already combined. Unfortunately some of them are not compatible with 55UB850. The most common 4K video sources are Time Lapse video. The largest Time Lapse video is 330Gbyte in size. Not sure if it can be played by 55UB850. Maybe I need to convert it to the correct format using the FFmpeg software.
No movie in 4K is available anywhere. However there is supposed to be a short movie. I cannot download it because its size is about 12Gbytes, larger than 4Gbyte limit for Fat32 file system.
3. Smartphones and GoPro. Some cameras also can shoot 4K but they are very expensive for point and shoot cameras. Xperia Z2 and Samsung Galaxy 5 can shoot 4K but only in short segments of a few minutes each time before they become too hot. I have not bought any of them yet but will be in the future when their prices had dropped considerably.
4. Time lapse photography. Can use our cameras to produce 4K videos. Quicktime Pro and Virtualdub are recommended. I tried the Quicktime Pro but my copy does not have many choices for video codecs.
Other issues with 4K video handling:
I had formatted my external hard disks with this format becasue my Panasonic TV cannot read NTFS. Now, I need to convert all of them to NTFS in order to handle file sizes greater than 4Gbyte. Need to get a 2T USB3 external hard disks.
55UB850 has one USB 3 terminal. Important for high speed decoding of video at higher than 50Mbit/s rate. 2xUSB 2 for slower videos. 3xHDMI 1.4 for normal video such as Astro Beyond and 1x HDMI 2.0 for the future. A good selection of terminals.
Since 55UB850 is my only media player that can play 4K sources, I need good sound. There is an optical output but not sure if it can output DTS. At the moment, I only use the TV speakers, which are not bad because it is a large TV.
I started searching for 4K equipment when PS4 dropped in price during the year end sales and managed to buy one with its camera for RM1675.00. It was a mistake. PS4 cannot play 4K video. Youtube in PS4 only plays in 720p. Luckily, by October 2014, PS4 can play 3D bluray, because Xbox one started supporting 3D bluray. PS3 has a much better support for media than PS4. Even worse, PS4 is incapable of playing 4K at 60 frames per second. It can only play at 30 frames per second.
Shortly after I bought the PS4, the price of the LG 55 inch 3D 4K has dropped in price to RM5300, even better, if you buy through Senq, my CIMB credit card allows me to pay by installment of RM144 for 3 years, which is interest free except for an additional RM88 for the processing fee.
The TV set is the 55UB850 which is a 55 inch 3D 4K 60p capable. It has one input for HDMI version 2.0 which is required for the 4K 60p. It comes with a free HDMI 2.0 cable which is capable of the 10-bit colour called truecolour. We need to disable it because I don't have any device that can produce such video quality. Not even the latest PC graphic card is capable of supporting the capabilities of the HDMI 2.0. I used the HDMI 2.0 cable for the PS4 despite warnings about incompatibility, without any problem at all. This cable is thick and not easy for me to find. It is better to connect to the TV rather than storing them somewhere, which may be difficult to find later on.
Fnding the 4K video sources prove to be difficult as well. No video or PC suppliers can offer DVDs filled with 4K video. The possible sources are:
1. Youtube. Need to use Mozilla Firefox because Chrome and IE are not friendly towards downloading files from Youtube. Even in Firefox, only one addon can download 4K video, it is the Flash Video Downloader. Even this one cannot download video and sound together. It recommends ffmpeg to combine the two files together. It worked. It took more than 3 hours for the GoPro Tokyo in 4K video.
The command is:
ffmpeg -i "<file names, even with spaces>" -i <sound file.mp3> -s 3840x2160 <outfile.mp4>
The -s option is not necessary but is better because some files cannot be played by the LG 55UB850 because its video size is not compatible. I am now busy converting many video files to the video sizes that the 55UB850 can play.
2. Bittorrent. You can still use bittorrent to download lots of demo 4K videos but some cannot be played. Many are actually available in Youtube as well but at least the sound is already combined. Unfortunately some of them are not compatible with 55UB850. The most common 4K video sources are Time Lapse video. The largest Time Lapse video is 330Gbyte in size. Not sure if it can be played by 55UB850. Maybe I need to convert it to the correct format using the FFmpeg software.
No movie in 4K is available anywhere. However there is supposed to be a short movie. I cannot download it because its size is about 12Gbytes, larger than 4Gbyte limit for Fat32 file system.
3. Smartphones and GoPro. Some cameras also can shoot 4K but they are very expensive for point and shoot cameras. Xperia Z2 and Samsung Galaxy 5 can shoot 4K but only in short segments of a few minutes each time before they become too hot. I have not bought any of them yet but will be in the future when their prices had dropped considerably.
4. Time lapse photography. Can use our cameras to produce 4K videos. Quicktime Pro and Virtualdub are recommended. I tried the Quicktime Pro but my copy does not have many choices for video codecs.
Other issues with 4K video handling:
I had formatted my external hard disks with this format becasue my Panasonic TV cannot read NTFS. Now, I need to convert all of them to NTFS in order to handle file sizes greater than 4Gbyte. Need to get a 2T USB3 external hard disks.
55UB850 has one USB 3 terminal. Important for high speed decoding of video at higher than 50Mbit/s rate. 2xUSB 2 for slower videos. 3xHDMI 1.4 for normal video such as Astro Beyond and 1x HDMI 2.0 for the future. A good selection of terminals.
Since 55UB850 is my only media player that can play 4K sources, I need good sound. There is an optical output but not sure if it can output DTS. At the moment, I only use the TV speakers, which are not bad because it is a large TV.
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