Why is 2160p video called 4K?
In: 4205
the question has been answered, but part of this is also the mess of compromises that were made to standardize what the new HD “wide screen” tv would be. For… reasons… 1.85:1, already a standard in cinema, was rejected in favor of 1.78:1 (aka 16×9). IIRC this partly had to do with some japanese vendors getting ahead of the game in the early 90s before north america and europe were thinking about HD.
Interestingly, this also means some intermediate aspect ratios were introduced that would be a compromise between them. 14/9 was a thing. I even have a ground glass for an older film camera with these markings. it was a sort of safety format that could be cropped on 4:3 tvs without too much issue, and shown in 16/9 with minimal side bars. Interestingly, the star trek TNG reruns on BBCA crop the 4:3 masters down to this 14/9 aspect ratio to give a little more wide screen to the broadcast while minimally chopping off the tops and bottoms (that are somewhat into the safe zones anyway).
But yeah, TV 4k being 3.8k is basically a direct result of doing 1920×1080 instead of 2048×1080, its quadrupling the pixels. This is just one of many things in the business we’re beholden to because of poor planning or making a weird compromise. Hell it still hurts my head that the DCI cinemascope standard is 2.39:1 instead of just 2.40. Or, ya know, support 2.40 AND 2.35 given that it also supports 1.85…
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