Samsung Australia VP says true 4k Blu-ray to arrive in stores by Christmas 2014! (1 Viewer)

[lukejosephchung]

Samsung Australia VP Philip Newton has revealed in an interview to the Australian that technology for 4-layer 100+GB blu-ray discs capable of TRUE 4k HD video is already in the pre-production pipeline at Samsung. This, combined with the news out of CES that the Blu-ray Disc Association is nearing completion of finalizing industry format standards means we'll be seeing hardware and software product in store shelves THIS calendar year...

 

[schan1269]

But, will enough wallets give a crap?

 

[lukejosephchung]

Sam, my opinion is that it will be a niche product for the foreseeable future...1080p blu-ray is barely entering into mainstream territory as a commercial format as it is...however, AFFORDABLE name brand screens will be available this year...Vizio, for example, has announced a 50" screen with MSRP of $999.95 to be available this spring...

 

[schan1269]

Since when is Vizio "name brand"?

I used to have a pet name for Vizio like I do for Samstung.

 

[Persianimmortal]

This article summarizes the latest Digital Entertainment Group data for 2013, which says that:

Digital movie sales increased to nearly $1.2 billion during 2013 – a 47% increase from digital sales in 2012. Subscription streaming service revenue also grew over 30% to hit $3.1 billion, while video-on-demand sales increased slightly to just over $2.1 billion.

At the same time, sales of DVDs and Blu-rays are dropping quickly. DVD and Blu-ray sales slipped 8% in 2013, though the category remains large with $7.78 billion in revenue last year. Disc subscription rental revenue dropped nearly 20% last year to only $1.02 billion and store DVD/Blu-ray rental revenue dropped 14% to just $1.04 billion.

This article provides the graphs to show the trend more clearly:

The relatively good news for blu-ray, as spelled out in this article is that although overall physical disc sales are declining, it's mainly in DVD, as Blu-ray sales actually gained 5% in 2013. However, previous data has shown that DVD was around 75% of physical disc sales back in 2012, so I imagine that although BD is growing over DVD, it still forms a relatively small share of physical media.

Put this data together, and it forms a pretty clear picture that physical media is well and truly on the way out. We can argue all day about the quality, reliability, durability, pride of ownership etc. inherent in physical media, but it is apparently not what the studios, or the vast majority of average consumers want. People almost always value convenience over quality.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I now think 4K Blu-ray disc will be pretty much DOA when it hits the shelves. The move to 4K is inevitable, as consumer electronics manufacturers like Samsung scramble to generate new revenue in a competitive market. But I really don't see consumers switching to 4K in droves for quite a while yet, and those that do, will likely use highly compressed 4K digital downloads (4K H.265 digital media, and at a guess, most of it will be pirated to begin with). So 4K Blu-ray makes no sense.

This is just a stop-gap measure by the CE manufacturers to get native 4K material out ASAP so they can start selling their 4K displays and players. I honestly can't see people building up a library of 4K BDs, simply because I can't see any studio bothering to release back catalog stuff on the format. Some of the latest films, and a handful of catalog titles, will probably be it.

I suppose that's good news for those of who have built up a library on current Blu-ray discs, but in the medium to long term, it's bye-bye physical media.

 

[Dave H]

This will help sell more UHD displays as not everyone is going to bother with streaming and downloading, or at least some people will want maximum quality. I think it can survive for a while too even as niche. If laser disc did, I think Blu-ray 4K too.

 

[Patrick Donahue]

"Put this data together, and it forms a pretty clear picture that physical media is well and truly on the way out. We can argue all day about the quality, reliability, durability, pride of ownership etc. inherent in physical media, but it is apparently not what the studios, or the vast majority of average consumers want. People almost always value convenience over quality."

There's one basic flaw in this, and in any argument saying digital will replace physical, and that's the assumption that they can't co-exist.

Whenever a format has replaced another, it has usually been because of an obvious move forward in quality, which is a normal occurance when dealing with anything technological. That doesn't exist this time around. Both are 1080p or, eventually, 4k. One does not trump the other, as a matter of fact since Blu's and digital codes are currently packaged together they actually compliment eachother nicely.

Look at soda - plastic bottles did not make cans go away.

I have no doubt digital's sales numbers will continue to climb and physical's will continue to fall. But at some point those 2 will level off and you will see both making money for the studios as complimentary, not competing, products.

Hi, Korthof!

 

[Dave H]

Just to add,
I think a lot of people in the U.S. will be restricted to bandwidth limits as seemingly there are more restrictions and it won't take much for 4K to max that out. Would be very difficult for Netflix style streaming as well.

 

[McCrutchy]

This will help sell more UHD displays as not everyone is going to bother with streaming and downloading, or at least some people will want maximum quality. I think it can survive for a while too even as niche. If laser disc did, I think Blu-ray 4K too.

Exactly. I absolutely loathe straight digital formats, and I will never pay for them. If the "home video' industry went all digital and got rid of physical formats, I would simply stop buying movies and go theater-only.

People who spout this stuff about physical media "dying" need to realize that home video product, like any product, only requires a small amount of the population to make it worthwhile. So while physical media may become a niche format, I very much doubt it will die in my lifetime.

 

[Patrick Donahue]

Just to add,
I think a lot of people in the U.S. will be restricted to bandwidth limits as seemingly there are more restrictions and it won't take much for 4K to max that out. Would be very difficult for Netflix style streaming as well.

Although to be fair I see this as improving. Google has already come up with a codec that will allow 4k to be streamed at less bandwidth than 1080p is currently.

 

[Persianimmortal]

There's one basic flaw in this, and in any argument saying digital will replace physical, and that's the assumption that they can't co-exist.

Sure they can coexist, and will do so in the short term, but they won't in the medium to long term. Why? Because as I mentioned, studios won't put out much material on 4K Blu-ray. They have absolutely no incentive to do so, beyond the initial period in which CE manufacturers will essentially bribe them to put it out so 4K TVs have readily accessible demo material.

People need to stop thinking about digital media using current bandwidth limitations, current models of distribution, and current quality levels. I like physical media as much as the next person, but ultimately it's going to be replaced through attrition.

 

[schan1269]

If the industry wants a pure stream/ download marketplace, they need to get in touch with the internet providers to speed up satellite and cellular internet at a lower price.I can't have cable and could get DSL if I had a landline(which I haven't needed for a decade).I already pay $300 for 27g a month internet(I get more than that...but after web use and security, it is what I have left). 27 is enough for 15-18 hrs a month of 720P.

 

[Eastmancolor]

Does this mean I have to buy GOLDFINGER again??

 

[Persianimmortal]

If the industry wants a pure stream/ download marketplace, they need to get in touch with the internet providers to speed up satellite and cellular internet at a lower price.

I agree, however network infrastructure is constantly improving across the world as a natural byproduct of the growth in the number of Internet-based services being provided to consumers and businesses. Nobody said it's going to happen overnight, just as nobody expects 4K adoption to become widespread overnight. But it needs to happen, and not just for 4K video, but for a range of services that - like it or not - are moving "to the cloud".

4K is a premium product, so I assume the studios are aiming it at people who can afford to access fast Internet. If you don't have the bandwidth to stream or download 4K, then current DVD, Blu-ray and 720p or 1080p digital media should serve. This is again why I don't see any logic in 4K physical media in the long term. If 2K Blu-ray struggles to rise above being a niche, and studios are only grudgingly dishing out catalog titles on Blu, why on Earth would they bother with catalog releases on an even more niche product?

To help people conceptualize how 4K delivery might actually work, let's consider that:

Netflix is already moving to enable 4K streaming. The Netflix CEO says in this article that "As an overall system load, it will grow quite slowly and steadily, giving people lots of time to build the infrastructure."

YouTube has already moved to provide a (highly compressed) 2160p 4K option for its videos. This article has more details, including the fact that due to partnership deals (19 hardware partners including ARM, Intel, Broadcom, Marvell as well as Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba), TVs which support this high-compression VP9 codec will be released starting in 2015.

Sony has already released a 4K media player to which you directly download 4K movies. It can download movies fom the Video Unlimited 4K service, up to around 45 full length features can be stored on its 2TB internal drive, and you can add external storage to hold more movies.

The Playstation 4 can download 4K movies at 100GB a piece.

Amazon has just announced that it has entered into a 4K streaming deal with several partners - Samsung, Warners and Lionsgate.

I would be genuinely interested to hear from anyone how 4K Blu-ray could viably compete with these options, keeping in mind that studios are steadily abandoning 2K Blu-ray as it is, and leaving most catalog releases to boutique providers.

 

[Yorkshire]

I think download speeds will be very important here - that and time.

The death of physical CDs has been trumpeted for quite a while now. Anyone remember Radiohead releasing In Rainbows to download for free? The 'death of CD' was old news already then, and that was 7 years ago.

Do we still have CD now? We certainly do, and its still very healthy. It's extremely rare that anyone releases an album with no physical version.

Now over a decade ago you could download individual tracks far faster than you could listen to them - a few seconds each. But how many people have broadband speeds fast enough to download high def video in real time, let alone faster than real time?

So the standard of video downloading still appears to be over a decade behind music, and if physical media for video in a decade's time is the same as for music now, it'll still be going strong.

Steve W

 

[EddieLarkin]

4K is a premium product

Which to me means I want to see it in the best quality available. Which is going to be the physical disc. A 4K stream isn't going to come close, and I won't even entertain the idea of purchasing one. 4K TVs are for a very long time (first decade?) going to be solely aimed at the enthusiast market. This same enthusiast market is going to want their 4K content to look its best. Streaming isn't going to offer that.

And whilst direct downloads may be fine, where am I going to fit all these 100GB films (not to mention spending days downloading them, and then paying nearly $5 per GB to my ISP once I've surpassed 5 films a month)? The PS4 comes with a 500GB HDD! Even a 4TB expansion HDD is only going to fit 40 films. Am I going to have plonk down another $200 every time I surpass another 40 in my 4K collection?

 

[Keith Cobby]

4K is being developed in Asia where they have much faster internet/download speeds. It will take the US/UK a long time to catch up. Personally I won't stream/download and my hope is that in the next five years most of the titles I want will be released on blu-ray.

 

[Persianimmortal]

Which to me means I want to see it in the best quality available. Which is going to be the physical disc. A 4K stream isn't going to come close, and I won't even entertain the idea of purchasing one. 4K TVs are for a very long time (first decade?) going to be solely aimed at the enthusiast market. This same enthusiast market is going to want their 4K content to look its best. Streaming isn't going to offer that.

And whilst direct downloads may be fine, where am I going to fit all these 100GB films (not to mention spending days downloading them, and then paying nearly $5 per GB to my ISP once I've surpassed 5 films a month)? The PS4 comes with a 500GB HDD! Even a 4TB expansion HDD is only going to fit 40 films. Am I going to have plonk down another $200 every time I surpass another 40 in my 4K collection?

I think there's some confusion here. Please keep in mind that I'm not telling you what I want, I'm just telling what appears to be happening. I'm just as concerned with quality as most of you guys, and I also have no real interest in streaming, or downloading 4K movies at 100GB a pop right now. My average bandwidth on ADSL here in Australia is around 16Mbps (~2MB per second max), and my monthly quota is 200GB.

But the reality is that this is where it is all heading, and I provided facts with links to demonstrate this. There's no point playing ostrich and pretending as though we movie enthusiasts are somehow remotely representative of the market. It's painfully obvious that the vast majority of consumers are not overly concerned with quality, otherwise most people would be buying Blu-ray right now, instead of well over 80% of the market buying DVDs and digital. In such an environment, which studio is really going to bother starting to put out catalog releases on yet another new physical format (4K Blu-ray)? That's why I'm speculating that we'll get a handful of high-profile catalog titles that are already scanned in at 4K (e.g. Lawrence of Arabia), a fair few of the latest releases, and that's pretty much it for 4K Blu-ray. It'll be a short-term, stop-gap obsolete format upon arrival. That's what I see happening based on all that I'm reading, in terms of industry movement, both from the hardware side, and the content ownership side. Let's hope I'm wrong.

But I'm also guessing that a lot of people who are movie enthusiasts, like the people on this forum, are going to strongly resist the concept of rebuying movies they already own on 2K Blu-ray on the new 4K Blu-ray format anyway. The DVD to Blu-ray transition is just too fresh in the minds of a lot of us to then go and start the cycle all over again with 4K Blu-ray. I know I'm hesitant to rebuy movies on 4K when the 2K version serves me just fine right now.

So again, where does that leave 4K Blu-ray as a format? I'll wager it'll be virtually ignored by the average consumer, and shunned by many home theater enthusiasts. By the time 4K displays fall in price, and adoption becomes more widespread (say 5-8 years from now), the infrastructure will improve, technology will improve, services will improve to the point where 4K movie direct downloads and streaming is the best alternative for those adopting 4K. Stream or download directly to the TV from a media hub of some kind.

I don't buy the concept that just because you can't download a 4K movie right now, or just because streaming is currently bandwidth-starved and hence quality deficient, that it's going to stay that way over the next decade. Drive prices are dropping, storage is constantly expanding, so storing movies locally will also not be an issue. As we speak, HTF's Kevin Collins is already moving to store over 2,300 movies on hard drives in this thread. That $350 enterprise class 4TB hard drive today will be a 40TB enterprise class solid state drive in a few years' time, at half the cost to boot.

The only chance I see for 4K Blu-ray is if somehow, through some miracle, all of the people who held off on switching to Blu-ray, and are current on DVD, suddenly get the urge to upgrade directly to 4K. In other words they leapfrog 2K Blu-ray and adopt 4K Blu-ray in droves. I don't see that happening, but it's certainly possible.

 

[Everett S.]

Which to me means I want to see it in the best quality available. Which is going to be the physical disc. A 4K stream isn't going to come close, and I won't even entertain the idea of purchasing one. 4K TVs are for a very long time (first decade?) going to be solely aimed at the enthusiast market. This same enthusiast market is going to want their 4K content to look its best. Streaming isn't going to offer that.

And whilst direct downloads may be fine, where am I going to fit all these 100GB films (not to mention spending days downloading them, and then paying nearly $5 per GB to my ISP once I've surpassed 5 films a month)? The PS4 comes with a 500GB HDD! Even a 4TB expansion HDD is only going to fit 40 films. Am I going to have plonk down another $200 every time I surpass another 40 in my 4K collection?

Goggle is already testing 100gps for $30.00 per month for 1st year then free!!! I think it's Oklahoma were this is being done.

 

[Robin9]

Personally I won't stream/download and my hope is that in the next five years most of the titles I want will be released on blu-ray.

I'm as optimistic as you but not as ambitious. I just want all my favorite films on disc - DVD or BRD - before the much publicised, much predicted shut-down occurs. Then I'll be able to spend my waning years watching all my favorites as and when I want, completely unaffected by changes in the market.