I. Want. Pixels. (Entering the Age of 4k)

Video has accounted for a large portion of the Internet network traffic in the past and is widely believed to continue to dominate in the foreseeable future. The Cisco Visual Networking Index by Cisco, Inc., for example, predicts that by 2017 more than two thirds of all consumer Internet traffic (including mobile) will be video. This astonishing amount of traffic is driven by the demand for more and more high-resolution media, on one hand, and the continuous improvements of network delivery capabilities allowing for streaming (e.g., a high-resolution video to a smartphone over cellular connections or an ultra-high-resolution video to increasingly affordable connected "smart" televisions). In addition to the capacity increases on the network side, several video coder/ decoders (codecs) have been developed that allow for the efficient compression of video for network delivery or storage on high-capacity optical media. In recent years, we have witnessed a continuous increase in the resolutions that are supported by video codecs and requested by users. Figure 1 illustrates the size differences that are common today, from high-definition (HD) to the cinematic 4k resolutions of video.