Article: 4K Blu-ray Discs Arriving in 2015 (1 Viewer)

[Dr Griffin]

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LOL:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/9/7522147/ces-2015-4k-tv-report-card

Not surprised where Comcast stands on this. They have been the bane of my existence for years, but the lesser of two evils. I think anyone that has Comcast will tell you what they are all about . I got out of Netflix streaming a few years ago, waiting for improvement, and It looks like the improvement is here.

 

[Ejanss]

This week Fox announced that it would be bringing 4K content to Samsung televisions in an exclusive deal.

but services like Netflix have told us they’d be reluctant to add movies and shows that can only be played on a subset of 4K televisions.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Fox, Samsung, and brand-exclusive content.

A hit proven recipe for new-format hardware success every time.


(If part of the "exclusive" UHD content turns out to be Avatar, Titanic or SW:E1, the irony is going to drip so thick we'll need wader boots. )

 

[bruceames]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Fox, Samsung, and brand-exclusive content.

A hit proven recipe for new-format hardware success every time.


(If part of the "exclusive" UHD content turns out to be Avatar, Titanic or SW:E1, the irony is going to drip so thick we'll need wader boots. )

Haha I was thinking the same thing too. 3D part two.


Damn you Fox, don't be that way. Even Sony is allowing it's 4K media player to be playable on all 4K TVs. Pisses me off that Samsung would allow this to happen and exclude Sony customers, while Sony has let Samsung customers in on their content (which is much, much greater).

 

[OliverK]

Haha I was thinking the same thing too. 3D part two.


Damn you Fox, don't be that way. Even Sony is allowing it's 4K media player to be playable on all 4K TVs. Pisses me off that Samsung would allow this to happen and exclude Sony customers, while Sony has let Samsung customers in on their content (which is much, much greater).

I wonder what they are thinking. Maybe something like this: "It didn't work for 3D so why not sink another format with silly brand exclusive deals"

 

[Ejanss]

I wonder what they are thinking. Maybe something like this: "It didn't work for 3D so why not sink another format with silly brand exclusive deals"

So....we're assuming they're actually thinking it didn't work for 3D? Like, the dawn actually broke?


(Well, okay, they did release Avatar, but every time you say "exclusive deal" to a studio or hardware company, little bells and birdies go off in their heads, they start dreaming of a corner-the-market type exclusive, and they get that look in their eyes like when Fred Flintstone hears the word "Bet".)

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Problem is with moving grain, which takes on an appearance similar to that found on the Blu-ray of It's a Wonderful Life.


The top machine (I'm told) allows you to shut down noise reduction, but the price is high, and it's not a home theater unit.

VPL-VW1100ES?

 

[Dave Moritz]

I can not wait to see UHD Bluray in the stores and see how good the picture looks like! I also wonder who will have players on the market in the first volley of player releases beyond Panasonic, Sony and Samsung? What movies will be included in the first group of releases? And what will be the price point of the players and UHD movies?


For myself the first thing I want to do is see the uhd players in action at a local retailer so I can see how good it looks and how the player performs! Second will be looking at what titles are available and saving up for a player and also before purchase knowing if I will need to upgrade the one connect on my UHD tv. It sounds like the specs will be agreed on and locked in very soon and that will lead to companies building there product and hopefully we will start to maybe see commercials for uhd movies and players around the end of summer if we are lucky.

 

[Ejanss]

I can not wait to see UHD Bluray in the stores and see how good the picture looks like!


For myself the first thing I want to do is see the uhd players in action at a local retailer so I can see how good it looks and how the player performs!

And if the salesman stands next to it, they'll look like twins!

 

[Dave Moritz]

I know of at least two classics that had full 4K restorations done to them and it would be interesting to see if 20th Century Fox kept the full 4K file for both A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and The Innocence and not down rezed them to 2K! And I want to see if 20th Century Fox releases these two and others on UHD Bluray.

 

[OliverK]

I know of at least two classics that had full 4K restorations done to them and it would be interesting to see if 20th Century Fox kept the full 4K file for both A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and The Innocence and not down rezed them to 2K! And I want to see if 20th Century Fox releases these two and others on UHD Bluray.

I think that the Todd-AO productions from Fox have the biggest potential for a 4k release.


To my knowledge Patton, Oklahoma!, Hello Dolly!, Can-Can, Cleopatra and The Sound of Music are candidates for a 4k release as all of them have been scanned at 4k or above. After seeing the Blu-ray of Cleopatra I would however say that it is not quite up to current standards and redoing it would probably yield better results this time around.


They also have a bunch of 35mm titles that could be released apart from the titles you mentioned so let's hope for a substantial frequency of classic releases out of the gate.

 

[JediFonger]

the issue isnt just scan at resolution it will be the entire production chain. if you downrez to 2k there is no way to re-populate the lost resolution. most prod chain arent 4k yet

 

[Mike Boone]

I'm a big supporter of Blu-ray, having bought more than 130 movies on blu in the past year alone. But I think that 4k or UHD Blu-ray is going to fail in spectacular fashion. I was just looking at the June 2014 Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide, which was a publication that CR put out that was separate from its regular magazine. On page 24 of this publication, CR discusses the findings that its testing staff reached in comparing 4k movies off a Sony hard drive, played on a Sony XBR-65X900A, with 1080p versions of the same movies played on a 1080p TV. Here is a direct quote from that CR guide: " When our testers moved back about 7 feet from the screen, the picture didn't look better than a 1080p version of the same movie played on a top-rated HDTV."


That result is what CR's technical staff found with movies that were shot on film. The publication did note that 4k video clips shot with digital cameras display a more significant improvement over 1080p than film based material does. To me, this explains why 4k or UHD TVs in places like Best Buy, are always demonstrated with those specially made digitally shot 4k clips. Sony, for example, owns the rights to familiar blockbuster epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai. Since so many film fans are acquainted with how excellent those films look in HD, if their 4k counterparts actually look significantly better, I have to believe that Sony would want to demonstrate its 4k TVs with familiar old favorites like those, so that people could see that having a 4k TV could even be a worthwhile improvement for folks who watch a lot of classic films.


This whole thing reminds me of a post I read on the AVS site, not long after UHD TVs became available. An AVS member had bought a 65 inch Sony UHD TV. He also had the Sony hard drive that was loaded with some UHD 4k movies. The man invited some of his friends, who he said were home theater enthusiasts, over to see his new set. He happened to already have the Blu-ray versions of 4 of the 4k movies. The guy had things set up so that the 4k hard drive fed into one input on the TV, and Blu-rays fed into another input. Being able to switch back and forth to instantly compare 4k and 1080p versions of the same flicks, caused the man to perform a little experiment with his buddies. He asked them to try to come to a consensus on which version was which, for each of the 4 films. In 3 out of 4 cases, the man's friends incorrectly picked blu-rays as being the 4k versions of the films. Guess this another example that helps to explain why Sony doesn't use films like LOA to show off its 4k TVs.


I now have about 95 to 98% of my favorite movies in my collection of 545 blu-rays. Considering the foregoing, above, I'm sure not interested in buying movies like LOA, Apocalypse Now, or Bridge on the River Kwai for a 4th time on another format. Those films already display amazing picture quality on our 80 inch screen, and sure don't seem to be crying out for more detail, or richer color, than what blu-ray provides.


I read somewhere that 3%, or less, of Americans are interested in buying TVs in 65 inch or larger sizes. I agree with CNET that for the size TVs most people will buy, and with the distance that those sets will be from the furniture in typical living rooms, 4k resolution will offer little to no improvement for the vast majority of people.


When 4k blu-ray discs become available, they will be very expensive. When Joe Six Pack buys his first 4k Blu-ray disc of a favorite movie, and sees how little advantage it offers on his new UHD TV, compared with upconverted BDs, it may well be the last time he's willing to pay 4k Blu-ray's high price.


We all remember that HD-DVD was on the market for just 22 months before Toshiba pulled the plug. I don't think that the companies behind 4k Blu-ray are going to support the format for much longer than that. Streaming, which I despise, just offers too low a cost, and too much convenience, for most people to ignore. Sadly, I think it's already showing strong signs of even being 1080p blu-ray's Waterloo. One realizes that fact when noticing on Amazon that customers who offer their opinions about recent movie releases, are much more likely to have viewed those movies via Amazon Instant Video, than on blu-ray. Of course, most HTF members probably have about as much use for instant video, as I do for instant coffee, which is to say, none at all.

 

[bruceames]

The current Sony 4K movies don't use the wider color gamut (10 bit vs. 8 bit used today) nor the high dynamic range (HDR), each of which will give a more noticeable improvement then the resolution bump from 1080p to 2160p. Furthermore, the benefit of an increase in resolution is highly dependent on how close you sit and how big your display is, while 10 bit color and HDR improvements will be evident on any size display.


I do notice the improvement in resolution on the Sony movies vs. the BLu-ray (I have Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Fury to compare with), but one has to sit within about 1.25x the display size to really notice them, and even then it's only noticeable on the scenes with a lot of small detail (like city skylines, crowds of people, birds eye views, etc.).

 

[AndyMcKinney]

When Joe Six Pack buys his first 4k Blu-ray disc of a favorite movie, and sees how little advantage it offers on his new UHD TV, compared with upconverted BDs, it may well be the last time he's willing to pay 4k Blu-ray's high price.

I'll take it one further. I bet Joe Sixpack gave up on regular blu-rays a long time ago, after picking up a couple cheap ones (with the player) one Black Friday and, when he got it all home, decided they didn't look any better than DVDs. I bet he'll still be upconverting (and buying) only DVDs when 4k players/discs come out.


Someone way earlier in the thread mentioned market penetration of blu-ray players now over 60 percent or something as though it was proof of the format gaining momentum, but that doesn't take into account all the people who probably have never played a single blu-ray disc on those same players. I'm sure many Walmart shoppers out there either bought a new player for wireless/streaming built-in apps, or to go with a new TV, or to replace an aging/dead DVD player, since the bargain-basement Blu-ray players are about as cheap as a DVD player (when you can even find a DVD-only player).

 

[Worth]

Aside from children's titles, I don't think the average person buys discs, period. The U.S. still has some disc rental options in Netflix and Redbox, but in Canada, Netflix is streaming only and Redbox has just shut down, so disc rental is effectively dead. I don't imagine the U.S. will be too far behind.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Aside from children's titles, I don't think the average person buys discs, period. The U.S. still has some disc rental options in Netflix and Redbox, but in Canada, Netflix is streaming only and Redbox has just shut down, so disc rental is effectively dead. I don't imagine the U.S. will be too far behind.

As the population ages (and older consumers are replaced with much younger ones), I, unfortunately, have to agree. There are certain people in my own family who think Redbox is too "new fangled" for them to try to learn how to use, though, so I imagine they'll be even less receptive to streaming (of course, I'm talking of people who don't seem to know how to turn commentary tracks on/off and think their DVD player should work exactly like a VCR.


When physical media eventually dies its death, besides us collectors, it's going to hit senior citizens hard, too.

 

[davidmatychuk]

To quote the eminent philosopher Bruce Springsteen, "everything dies, baby that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back". What kind of home theatre did anyone who wasn't some sort of mogul have forty years ago? In less than two-thirds of my lifetime, I've seen home theatre emerge full-blown from NOTHING. The kind of passion I've seen expressed many times, many ways in Home Theatre Forum will continue to have a positive effect on whatever happens with home video from here on out, you can be sure of that.

 

[Mike Boone]

Aside from children's titles, I don't think the average person buys discs, period. The U.S. still has some disc rental options in Netflix and Redbox, but in Canada, Netflix is streaming only and Redbox has just shut down, so disc rental is effectively dead. I don't imagine the U.S. will be too far behind.

Worth, your comment about movie consumption by average folks seems right on the mark. And since 4k blu-rays are likely to cost even more than today's 3d blu-rays, one has to wonder if the attractiveness of low cost streaming just might strangle the 4k blu-ray business model in its cradle. The situation could easily end up being a vicious cycle where high prices have to be charged to make up for low volume, with that volume never achieving adequate enough growth to allow prices to become reasonable. If I'm not mistaken, laserdisc prices always remained relatively high. I realize that the laserdisc format hung in there for something like 13 years, but the situation now is much different with the coming introduction of UHD Blu-ray facing the rapidly growing popularity of streaming. If companies are to make any profit from UHD Blu-ray they will probably have to concentrate on the most high volume titles such as The Avengers and other Marvel comic book movies. Plus, with most of those kinds of movies being shot digitally, that's another reason to give their 4k Blu-ray release priority, since, as Consumer Reports pointed out, 4k material shot digitally seems to make the 4k resolution advantage more apparent on UHD 4k TVs, than the improvement (or lack thereof) noticed with 4k transfers of film based movies. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if movie company executives are planning on excluding from UHD Blu-ray release, 90% of the catalog titles that are available on 1080p Blu-ray.


In his post, bruceames notes that current Sony 4k movies don't take advantage of the potential for wider color gamut and higher dynamic range. But providing such attributes requires more processing, and obviously, a remastering for those 4k titles. With so few TVs in the field that can fully exploit those improvements, you have to wonder if Sony, and the other studios, would feel that the additional costs involved to provide expanded color gamut and dynamic range, would actually be justified by the tiny number of customers that could appreciate such improvements.


Also, bruceames mentions that to really notice the resolution improvement of 4k movies over today's blu-rays, a person has to sit within about 1.25 times the screen size. For a 65 inch screen that's an 81.25 inch or 6.77 foot distance, to be exact. But in even fairly good sized living rooms a 65" TV looks pretty huge to an awful lot of people. When guests are over on Saturday night to watch a movie on that 65" TV, in the vast majority of situations, I'd bet that most folks will be seated 9 or 10 feet, or farther, from the UHD 4k flat panel. Maybe just one or two people might sit 8 feet or closer to the TV. Obviously, as a practical matter, the extra resolution of an UHD TV will usually be going to waste for most folks. So unless qualities like wider color gamut or extended dynamic range actually manage to migrate to UHD Blu-ray titles, then the appeal of such 4k blu-ray discs may be limited mostly to those who have a projector and screen set-up. In fact, the editor of CNET has called 4k TVs stupid, while stating that such resolution is only likely to show a clear cut advantage when people do utilize these huge projection screens. But in discussing this, a few minutes ago, my wife, a friend of the family, and yours truly, all realized that none of us knows a single person who has a projector and screen set-up. Wonder if fellow HTF members would agree with my guess that perhaps 1 in a 100 Americans actually has a projector/screen home theater. Hi Def Digest lists the a/v equipment of its 16 reviewers who write blu-ray reviews. Being movie enthusiasts I would have expected that half , if not more, of these people would have projector/screen set-ups. But only 3 list such equipment, and one of them may not even use the projector, as it's mentioned in the last 2 words of the list, with no screen named, while the man's flat panel TV is the 1st thing detailed, right at the top of the list. Anyway, with projectors not even appearing to be popular among blu-ray reviewers, have a feeling that a one percent ownership rate of such devices among the general public, is probably pretty close to whatever the reality is.

And that's another thing that doesn't exactly bode well for the future of the UHD Blu-ray business, whenever that future might finally begin.

 

[bruceames]

In his post, bruceames notes that current Sony 4k movies don't take advantage of the potential for wider color gamut and higher dynamic range. But providing such attributes requires more processing, and obviously, a remastering for those 4k titles.

Just wanted to point out that the Sony 4K masters should already contain the information needed to encode in the wider color gamut and higher dynamic range. They just need to do another encode that takes advantage of it.

 

[Mike Boone]

Just wanted to point out that the Sony 4K masters should already contain the information needed to encode in the wider color gamut and higher dynamic range. They just need to do another encode that takes advantage of it.

Good point, but you've provoked another question in my mind. If UHD 4k blu-ray discs are released with extended dynamic range, but played on one of today's UHD TVs that lacks high dynamic range capability, could the resulting picture actually look worse than the same movie on a blu-ray disc that was not encoded with high dynamic range, when it's played on a UHD TV that was not designed for high dynamic range capability?