What's going on with the BDA and 4K? (1 Viewer)

[FoxyMulder]

I am not disagreeing with that point. What I am saying is that they don't want to do that as it will require EVERYONE to purchase a new player, even if they don't have a UHD TV. If they are smart they will want discs to be able to play both HD and 4K content, thus allowing the consumer to purchase one BD disc and be able to play on both regular and new BD players. Of course, only the new BD players would be able to play 4K. It's the same concept that they did with 3D Blu-ray. If they have three layer BD discs, it most likely will be impossible for existing BD players to play the HD version of the content from the disc.

They will provide two discs at a premium as they currently do with some 3D releases, one disc will be the 4K version and the other a regular 1080p edition, that way we can start to build a collection of 4K discs while awaiting a reduction in 4K TV and projector prices, i actually think an affordable 4K projector is only three years away, hopefully the same for television and with luck OLED will take off as i can't stand big screen LCD. (LED backlit )

 

[Dave Upton]

I am personally a lot less worried about UHD than I am about REC2020. While UHD/4K will be a "nice to have", and will promote better DI's and studio masters in general, I feel the biggest flaw in displays' today is color space.
OLED will solve the contrast issue definitively, IMO - especially once they get rollable OLED screens in sizes up to 150" and projectors cease to exist (I can hope). Give me a display with proper, real-world like color gamut, and I'll spend every penny I have to own it.

 

[Reed Grele]

My biggest gripe with all HD 1080p disc and streaming content that we currently have is banding.

HDTV (cable and dish) suffer from too much data compression which introduces macro blocking when watching scenes with anything moving faster than a brisk walk.

If 4k can eliminate these issues, then I'll be joining the party (as soon as it becomes affordable.)

 

[zoetmb]

Timeline is more based on all the parties coming together and agreeing on the specifications. This seems more complicated, particularly since UHD TV's are already shipping than what occurred with HD DVD and Blu-Ray. I spent three years working on the HD DVD specification and know first hand how hard it is to get consensus across all the parties. Given that Sony (a BDA member) has already started delivering 4K content with everything being the same except it being in 4K is somewhat concerning. If they change to what is being proposed, then that would mean that their early adopters would have an inferior product.

So, I didn't get any real clue on when this would become viable. But I believe that the BDA realizes that the window of opportunity will shrink the longer they wait on doing this.

I don't think Sony's work so far is that big a deal because their 4K media player is completely proprietary anyway - it will only work with Sony 4K TVs. And…there's no 4K physical media yet, which is actually a good thing because it means not standardizing prematurely on a sub-standard new format.

As long as any new format is backwards compatible with everything, there should be no problems. Most BD players still have even composite video output, right? Early adopters who rushed into "HDTV" would up with 720p, remember? Most early adopters are rich enough to buy again when the time comes. And hardware manufacturers like the sound of "buying again" anyway.

The bigger issue is whether they can standardize and release a new format before 4K streaming takes over the market. Even if only 1080p streaming comes to dominate before the new format is released, that's still a problem because once consumers give up on physical media, they're not likely to go back, even for better color, sound and resolution. So IMO, the standards have to come quickly, but I've worked on standardization committees myself and it usually takes years.

Even though you can plug key drives into BD players today, downloading a stream to a hard disk might raise the hackles of the DCMA folks.

I like SMPTE, but it was SMPTE who stuck us with 16:9 HDTV when the Director's Guild wanted it to be an AR of 2:1. Making the AR of HDTV any less than 1.85:1 was a huge mistake, IMO.

 

[schan1269]

From ^^^

"Most BD players still have even composite video output, right?"

Apparently you've not heard of Analog Sunset. Google it.

 

[Kevin Collins]

I am personally a lot less worried about UHD than I am about REC2020. While UHD/4K will be a "nice to have", and will promote better DI's and studio masters in general, I feel the biggest flaw in displays' today is color space.
OLED will solve the contrast issue definitively, IMO - especially once they get rollable OLED screens in sizes up to 150" and projectors cease to exist (I can hope). Give me a display with proper, real-world like color gamut, and I'll spend every penny I have to own it.

Amen!

 

[Kevin Collins]

My biggest gripe with all HD 1080p disc and streaming content that we currently have is banding.

HDTV (cable and dish) suffer from too much data compression which introduces macro blocking when watching scenes with anything moving faster than a brisk walk.

If 4k can eliminate these issues, then I'll be joining the party (as soon as it becomes affordable.)

4K, the way it is defined today will NOT resolve those issues. If UHD TV's and content providers snap to REC2020, THEN you won't have those problems. If REC709 had the bit-per color to 12 bits and the 4:4:4 chroma sub-sampling then you wouldn't have banding either.

 

[Joe Wong]

I'm interested in the advanced audio tech they're considering. Heard a new (to me) Dolby Atmos trailer yesterday and it was amazing. An at-home implementation would be fantastic.

Joe

 

[jcroy]

From ^^^

"Most BD players still have even composite video output, right?"

Apparently you've not heard of Analog Sunset. Google it.

My first bluray player from 2 years ago, didn't have any analog component or composite output jacks.

It only had hdmi and ethernet jacks. (It also had a semi-useless usb jack on the back, which I haven't figured out what its function is. It doesn't play any video or audio files on a flash drive plugged into the usb jack).

 

[jcroy]

I hope the BDA get off their asses and approve a 4K disc standard soon.

 

[GregoryP]

Thanks for the update! I'm definitely interested in 2160p but think it's crazy to have displays on the market before they've figured out how to get content on them.

 

[revgen]

Blu-Ray is already a niche market as it is.

If you're trying to convince people to adopt a new technology that supercedes blu-ray, you'll need to pull out all of the stops to make it happen. You should definitely go with a more superior color gamut to get rid of color banding. Adopt superior sound standards.

As far as a downloadable HDD's go, forget about it. 4k, like blu-ray, is a niche product. Niche consumers want products they can hold in their hand and store on their shelf. They like showcasing their collection. And they want the product to last. Flash drives are small enough to replace physical discs, but they are notoriously unreliable for data storage. It's either traditional physical ROM media or magnetic tape media. ROM is still the more convenient option for shipping and for consumer use.

Save the HDD's for Roku, Netflix, and Apple TV subscribers.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

I am personally a lot less worried about UHD than I am about REC2020. While UHD/4K will be a "nice to have", and will promote better DI's and studio masters in general, I feel the biggest flaw in displays' today is color space.
OLED will solve the contrast issue definitively, IMO - especially once they get rollable OLED screens in sizes up to 150" and projectors cease to exist (I can hope). Give me a display with proper, real-world like color gamut, and I'll spend every penny I have to own it.

Absolutely and totally agree. If you had two displays showing the same movie, one 4K display with current blu-ray color specs (Rec709, 8-bit, 4:2:0) and next to it a 2K display with Rec2020 (or better) 12-bits and 4:4:4 and then asked everyone who views the two which had more resolution, everyone would pick the 2K display. Many might even say the 2K display had infinite resolution. Increasing color space and color resolution far more important than increasing spatial resolution to perceived resolution given current color spaces and resolutions available at home.

I also agree with others that having 4K discs be compatible with existing blu-ray players is pointless and a waste of resources. There will be a premium on 4K discs so only a tiny percentage of the people without 4K devices would by the 4K version over the standard blu for the future. Just look at 3D. It was actually easy to make 3D discs fully compatible with existing players but only a handful are and even fewer were released as 2D/3D single disc only (no separate 2D release). The cost of the second disc in a package is literally pennies and the multi-disc model is already being used for 3D so there is nothing practical to be gained by backwards compatibility except for the studios to keep consumers from selling off their 2D disc separately. But consumers can do that for 3D releases and the studios haven't tried to stop that by releasing only 3D/2D single discs.

 

[FoxyMulder]

I'd settle for 10 bit 4:2:2 but i agree that 4K on it's own seems a waste, i hope expanded colour gamut is part of the plan for these new 4K releases, i also hope they do not try and fit all this onto a BD-50 disc.

 

[Bobby Henderson]

Although I like the idea of movie distributers shifting from REC709 & 4:2:0 to REC2020 & 4:4:4 for 4K video, expanding that color depth will come at a cost of 33% more data capacity needed per pixel and more severe levels of lossy video compression. I guess I'll have to see it to believe it with H.265 HEVC boasting much greater encoding efficiency over H.264 AVC.

The Blu-ray format is now several years old. In its early days a good bit was being said about "deep color" and what Blu-ray would be doing in the future. We've seen a couple revisions made to HDMI and various generations of HDTV sets come and go, but I'll be darned if I've ever seen a movie on Blu-ray encoded with "deep color."

4K is better than 2K, but 4K has some hurdles to jump.

Hollywood movie studios are still producing too many movies in 2K resolution. The Arri Alexa is one of the most popular feature production video camera systems available, but it doesn't shoot footage in 4K (native resolution is 2880 X 1620). Most digital intermediates are still renedered at 2K. Some movies are being produced in 3D 2K rather than 4K. Advances in computing technology make it easier than ever to produce a movie in 4K, but I think studios are using those same leaps in computing power to do 2K even that much faster & cheaper.

Too many movie theaters are equipped with 2K projection rather than 4K -and this includes all of those IMAX Digital theaters (a.k.a. Lie-MAX). I think 4K needs to make some big strides in commercial cinema to build public awareness about the difference. Right now most customers aren't aware of any differences. Many don't even understand the difference between SD and HD -which is why so many new TV sets are fed SD signals and put into stretch-o-vision.

Residential Internet connections should be a whole lot faster than they are today. Unfortunately telecom giants have been pouring a huge fortune into improving mobile phone infrastructure while doing as little as possible with residential lines. In order to stream YouTube quality H.264 1080p HD material in real time with no hicccups one needs a connection that sustains 8 megabits per second or more. Not many people have that. 4K H.265 streaming in 4:4:4 would, no doubt, require a significantly faster connection.

I think physical media (like optical discs) will be needed to deliver 4K movies to the public anytime in the reasonably near future. I don't know if that can be accomplished with the Blu-ray platform. But I hope it can.

If 4K UHDTV movies have to be delivered on an entirely new video format odds are high we'll see all kinds of legal delays coming from movie studios, lawyers, etc. regarding licensing fees, copy protection, etc. Some of those hassles might be avoided if the Blu-ray format can continue to be used.