Why 4K/UltraHD/2160p television will never become the common standard of American television

You may have heard about 4K, Ultra HD, or 2160p television (they’re all the same thing, and I’ll refer to it as 4K in the rest of the blog post for simplicity). Next month, television viewers with a 4K television set, DirecTV satellite television service, and the right DirecTV programming package and equipment will be able to watch a special feed of The Masters golf tournament that will provide coverage of holes 11, 12, and 13 of the Augusta National Golf Club’s main golf course in 4K. The Masters is an interesting choice for the first live 4K television broadcast in U.S. history that I’m aware of, since The Masters has historically been behind the times when it has come to golf broadcasting technology and practices.

There are several reasons why I believe that 4K will not become the standard format of American television broadcasting, or, for that matter, video broadcasting and streaming in general:

• Most 4K televisions are very large – I live in a house that is approximately 1,000 square feet in size, and it would be difficult to fit a 4K television in any of the three rooms we currently have 720p/1080i-capable HDTVs. Very few 4K-capable television sets are smaller than 40 inches, and many of them are much larger than that.
• Making 4K-compatible computer monitors (especially the case for laptops), tablets, and smartphones is very difficult, if not impossible – These devices have screens that are much smaller than the screen of a typical 4K television set. Try fitting 8,294,400 pixels on a smartphone screen, and you’ll get a general idea of what I’m talking about.
• Our television infrastructure was built for 720p, 1080i, and 1080p, not 4K – Transmitting a 4K television signal takes up a lot more of the available bit rate than 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. If it’s even possible to transmit 4K over-the-air, transmitting an over-the-air 4K signal would take up most, if not all, of a 6 MHz over-the-air digital television transmission channel’s bit rate, leaving no room for over-the-air subchannels in any format. Cable and satellite television providers use most or all of their available bitrate to provide hundreds of 720p, 1080i, and 1080p channels and other viewing options, so it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to provide more than a few 4K options to their viewers.
• It would require faster internet connections to stream 4K video over an internet connection – I have an internet connection that provides roughly 18 megabytes per second of combined upload/download speed, and I have little trouble streaming 720p, 1080i, or 1080p video. However, streaming 4K video would require a considerably faster internet connection.

While 4K will probably become commonly used in some practices, such as movie theaters and video games, to expect 4K to become the television industry standard for broadcasting television is laughably absurd.

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Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton indicted on securities fraud charges

Everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes white-collar crime.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been indicted by a grand jury on three criminal counts by a grand jury in Collin County, Texas (northern Dallas suburbs, including McKinney, Plano, and Frisco). Two of the charges are for securities fraud, the other is for failing to register with the Texas securities board:

The grand jury in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney handed up a three-count indictment against Mr. Paxton several days ago, officials said. The indictment is to be unsealed on Monday, when Mr. Paxton is expected to turn himself in to the authorities at the Collin County Jail. The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives but before he was elected attorney general in November 2014.

In the most serious charges — first-degree securities fraud — Mr. Paxton is accused of misleading investors in a technology company, Servergy Inc., which is based in his hometown, McKinney. He is accused of encouraging the investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 in Servergy while failing to tell them he was making a commission on their investment and misrepresenting himself as an investor in the company, said Kent A. Schaffer, one of the two special prosecutors handling the case. The group of investors had been Mr. Paxton’s friends and included a colleague in the Texas House, State Representative Byron Cook.

[…]

The grand jury in Collin County, which began hearing evidence in early July, determined that Mr. Paxton’s failure to register with the state for his work for Mowery Capital Management amounted to a crime, and charged him with the one felony count of failure to register. Mr. Paxton had also failed to register with the securities board during his work in 2011 for Servergy, but Mr. Schaffer said they decided not to seek a failure-to-register felony charge from the grand jury in that instance because the statute of limitations had run out.

To put that into perspective, the top law enforcement official in the State of Texas is now under indictment for:

• Encouraging his buddies, which include Texas State Representative Byron Cook (R-Corsicana), to invest in a technology company without telling them he was making money off of their investment
• Misrepresenting himself while encouraging his buddies to invest in the technology company
• Working for an investment advisory firm without registering with the Texas State Securities Board

Ken Paxton should resign the office of Attorney General of Texas immediately, as he is an absolute disgrace to Texas. Sadly, this kind of criminal activity by right-wing politicians in Texas is far too commonplace. There are good people in Texas, but it seems to me that they’re in the minority, especially when one considers how ridiculously easy it is for Republican crooks to get elected statewide there.

As I said above, everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes white-collar crime.

My computer’s hard drive may be failing

As I turned my laptop computer on a little while ago, I received an error message saying that my computer detected that a failure of the computer’s hard drive may be imminent. I use an HP Pavilion g6 laptop, and the HP model number for the hard drive is A6Y43UA#ABA. If one can find out whether or not a replacement hard drive from HP with that model number is available, please leave a comment on this blog post.

If my hard drive does fail, that will mean that I will be unable to use my computer to write this blog, use social media, and other tasks, my upcoming book will have to be postponed for an indefinite period of time, and my parents are probably not going to be able to afford a new computer or hard drive. If I’m forced to be offline for a while and this blog and my social media pages are not updated for weeks or even months, you’ll know why.