InterBEE 2014 Slideshow

InterBEE 2014 took place in the massive Makuhari Messe on November 19, 201, 21. The convention center with the German name (Photokina is held in the Koelnmesse) is about an hour’s train ride north of central Tokyo, past the giant ferris wheel and Tokyo Disney World.

A record number of visitors attended: 37,959.

977 companies exhibited in 1,773 booths, including 543 exhibitors from 33 countries.

FDTimes launched its first Japanese language edition. It’s online for free. Apologies for the un-democratic method of editorial selection: it was first come with a translation, first served. So many companies clamored for inclusion next year that we’ll be back with much more comprehensive coverage.

The theme of this show was 8K. Everywhere you looked, signs proclaimed 4K/8K. And there were some pleasant surprises. A big surprise for me was the latest ARRI ALEXA 65 demo video in the NAC booth,. “You shouldn’t shoot unadorned faces in 4K, let alone 6K,” we thought. And yet here were absolutely amazing 6K portraits of people, little or no makeup, no softening. Done right, higher resolution is not the anti-film; we are approaching natural human vision.

And just when we thought it was safe to settle down with 4K, it seems that 8K looms on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic horizon. This is, of course, as inevitable and unstoppable as next year’s new model car or new iPhone arriving as predictably as New Year’s fireworks. The Japanese electronic associations are investing in and supporting this. This isn’t anything new. Haven’t we seen more than 50 consumer video and audio recorders appear in the past 25 years, conspicuously consuming us with their irresistible roadmaps of planned obsolescence?

And yet–there was an amazingly immersive 260 inch 4K display, with 1.5mm pixel pitch. This wouldn’t fit into my Manhattan apartment, but the 96-inch 4K displays from Panasonic and others would nicely cover an entire wall.

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