4K Ultra HD Coming to Blu-ray

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ShadyHamster

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"The very high data-storage and transfer-rate requirements of 4K/UHD – four times the spatial resolution of 1080p HDTV – means that optical discs will once again be the most practical way to move all that data around in a very convenient way," he said.

Lol what?
 

guvnaguy

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Does this mean 4K Blu-rays will require multiple discs? Right now a feature-length 1080p movie takes up most of the available space.Otherwise, I assume a more lossy compression standard would have to be used which would diminish the improvement.
 


4K has a lot of repeated pixels. When even under a lossless compression 4K is not typically going to be much larger than 1080p from a resolution standpoint. Adding HDR and the rest may add a bit of size to the content though.

At any rate, BluRay discs are 25GB per disc, and in professional archival storage they have had 100GB 4 layer discs for several years now. I am guessing that they will just start making 3-4 layer movie discs for the masses to make up for the file size issues.
 

guvnaguy

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ZolaIII

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50 GB blue ray disc (vs 25GB traditional) +H265 10 bit dac & traditional add-on's, menus, multiple audios... should do the trick.The H265 is 2x H264 compression & 50 is 2x 25 & that's more than in of for UHD 4K that's 4x FullHD row pixels & data.
 

sirhawk

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There was an article I read about 6 months to a year ago that mentioned 300GB+ discs coming soon. I would guess something in that sort of format would be a likely canidate. Not to mention, every time they have come up with a new disc for movies, it meant a new higher capacity disc for data archiving. 50GB is just not enough disc space for archiving anymore...
 

Shin-san

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Not to mention hard drive prices are making so that an external hard drive is cheaper
 

sirhawk

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Yeah, but I just don't trust hard drives. You never know when one of those is gonna just die. If you have a disc and keep it clean, you are good to go.
 

vidfreek

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Umm, Bluray discs you can burn stuff to are usually 25GB per disc, but most retail Blurays you buy for movies are 50GB discs now and have been for some time. If 4K is 4 times the resolution of 1080p and it requires a 50GB disc for a 2 hour movie with high resolution sound and special features now a days, there is no way that this will work without making a disc with probably at least 100GB. But when they do make these discs, can your current Bluray player even read them? My guess is no and we will all have to buy new stuff again, when Bluray is actually still pretty new, people are still buying HDTVs and Bluray players for the first time. I still know people that dont have a Bluray player and dont care about getting one, so we are going to jump to 4K now this quickly?

And @ShadyHamster, quite a few people still use discs, if you want the best quality you can get you use discs. I have over 500 Blurays easy and I buy most of the films I love to watch, I dont settle for crap Netflix streaming with low quality sound and no features what so ever. And you mean to tell me that with 4K being 4 times the resolution of 1080p, that quality wont matter to people who want it? You realize the bandwidth needed, even with a new good codec, to "stream" that over Netflix or something to people? Not to mention in the US, data caps keep getting worse on ISPs and with the courts pretty much shutting down net neutrality at the moment, who knows what they will do to you, I already pay $75 a month (up from $40) to get a 400 gig limit with decent speeds, before I payed less than that for my ISPs top consumer speed with unlimited data, now I pay more for less speed and less data allowance, and I come pretty close to filling that up each month with Xbox, Playstation, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Steam, plus apps on my phone, games on my tablet and everything my wife also does. So yes, Discs will still be the best way for people who actually care about their movies
 

hannibal

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Yep. Net streaming is not an option. The guality is so bad! The solution is H256 + bigger disks, and yeas you need a new player, but so you need allso a new TV. So no problem in here. And those new Blue ray players can play old normal blue ray, DVD, CD etc... disks, so you only need one player for all of it. Those who can afford will buy these as soon as possible, other will wait until their old player and/or TV will broke down, and they will replase them with these. As someone above allready said, many people are just happy with theid DVD players, so many will use their existing hardware until they really need a new one. This is just an option that is expensive in the beginning and will get cheaper in few years. The faster we get these, the sooner we can really afford to get em!
 

Jess Castro

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"Umm, Bluray discs you can burn stuff to are usually 25GB per disc, but most retail Blurays you buy for movies are 50GB discs now and have been for some time. If 4K is 4 times the resolution of 1080p and it requires a 50GB disc for a 2 hour movie with high resolution sound and special features now a days, there is no way that this will work without making a disc with probably at least 100GB. But when they do make these discs, can your current Bluray player even read them? My guess is no and we will all have to buy new stuff again, when Bluray is actually still pretty new, people are still buying HDTVs and Bluray players for the first time. I still know people that dont have a Bluray player and dont care about getting one, so we are going to jump to 4K now this quickly?"

Um you really don't know much about the topic do you? Bluray discs are not 25gb per disc, they are 25gb per layer....and they have been capable of 100gb(4 layer) disc's since market availability back in 2006...they simply haven't needed that much space since:
A. Movies in general are only ~2hrs long
B.1080p doesn't take up too much space in h.264 along with audio(that usually wasn't lossless)...most movies haven't even filled up 25gb let alone 50.
C. The fabrication/defect rate was too high at the time to make them reliably/efficiently

Tech. your current player could read a 100gb disc.....but.....It wouldn't be able to decode what I am only guessing will be the new HVEC(High Efficiency Video Coding) H. 265 codec(http://www.extremetech.com/computing/162027-h-265-benchmarked-does-the-next-generation-video-codec-live-up-to-expectations) which will use nearly half as much space, and less bandwidth needed, as the same file in h.264. Even with a firmware update the newer codec requires more compute muscle so its likely the old players wont be able to do it...oh no a new player is needed for 4k to go with a new 4k tv/projector. Also it is highly likely that displayport or the new hdmi standard may become a connection reality for 4k. I really wish they would start putting displayport on tvs/monitors as it can handle a much higher bandwidth in general(capable of 60hz 4k transfer right now) vs wait on hdmi to maybe be able to do it at some pt in the who knows when future.

Replacing a player that has lasted 8yrs is not a "too soon" option when you consider that most tech doesn't last 5yrs let alone 10yrs anymore imo. The folks that don't have a hdtv now at this point in time are def not the target audience for this new tech, as they most likely drive nothing currently in any tech sector of the economy when it comes to home theater apparently. Now would be an even better time than ever for them to jump in if they were waiting for cost/performance to come down...4k players shouldn't cost much more than current ones(Im sure they will be higher but they don't have to be astronomically priced like adopting bluray when it first came out...same tech dif codec)

As for streaming services....yuck....Netflix can barely deliver 1080(i?), with incredibly compressed audio/video..and most people don't even have the isp bandwidth to handle that well...let alone 4k which could be ~2-4x as much data. I like streaming movies for stuff I would never buy as much as the next guy, but go watch the same movie on bluray...on a decent-moderate home theater system and tell me streaming is just as good...you would be blind and deaf to be able to make that claim honestly. Some places simply don't have high speed internet options at all believe it or not. Updating a codec and player hardware will lead to faster adoption of 4k vs waiting on the world to update isp bandwidth to everyone. my 2 cents
 

chibiwings

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Looks like companies who adopted Blue ray is preparing the 100GB or more storage disc for us consumers. I think i've read an article here at toms regarding a 400 GB Blue ray disc. Ü. it might be ready for consumer consumption in the next few years
 

sicofante

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DVDs are still ousetlling BluRays by a long shot. I bet most people will pass on the 4K fad. 1080p streaming is fine and as good as 99% of the public is able to tell. 4K is nice for production, but it's plain stupid for consumers. UHD should have a spec for 2K content with Rec.2020 color (banding is probably the only issue with some current HD content). Compress that with H.265 and we'd be good to go with even as low as 5Mbps streaming. Discs are a thing of the past. A whole industry can't live off the dreams of a few rich owners of 100"+ screens and so called "high end" players.
 

FireRisinWithin

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4k really isn't a noticeable improvement over 1080p when sitting in front of a tv. A monitor would be different because your sitting so close to it. The only reason i would buy 4k is if i get a projector in the future spitting out an image on a 120 inch screen or bigger (i am going to do that sometime in the future). I love blu rays but most of the market still buys dvds. Will 4k blu's really survive if only the niche home theatre enthusiasts buy them?
 

game junky

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quad layer to get to 100+ GB per disc is intriguing but unless existing bluray players can play them, you are going to see a lot of pissed off customers. It's really a moot point until 4k displays become something for more than just rich early adopters. When you see $2000 displays from quality vendors, this might be interesting. Visio advertised that they were shooting for just such a price point.
 

Grandmastersexsay

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Yuck, optical media.

4K is definitely not worth having to go back to that. Especially since you need an 80"+ screen to notice any difference at normal viewing distances from 1080p.

Even if you are some jabroni that needs 4K just because, you could download 100 GB in the time it takes to go to the store. It is not like Blue Ray is secure anyway.
 

soldier44

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Meh I'll have a 4K computer display long before I have one of the tvs, with no content to watch on it anyway for at least a couple of years. I don't have a cable box now anyway I download all my shows via torrents in 1080. And no to optical media. Havent even bought a blu ray in over 2 years, when I get them online with the same quality in digital format.
 


BluRay capps out at a theoretical 8 layers and 200GB. 300-2TB discs should be coming with hologram DVD, but the tech is still quite a ways off from production, though there have been working models for over 10 years now.

The coolest thing about hologram DVD? It is highly parallel information, which means that you can get rediculously fast transfer rates even at slow rotational speeds. Bad for random IO, but perfect for things like movies, music, running backups, and other highly sequential workloads.
 


It is not so much that BluRay or 4K is not better... it is just that it is often not worth the extra cost. Things like SitComs and cheap horror flix (which is sadly the vast bulk of the market) simply don't need HD in order to be properly appreciated. It is only the epics and shows that actuially have cinematography which gain from the higher resolution formats, so most people save a few bucks by buying DVDs for most things, and then splurge on the big epics on HD.

2K is 1080p, so there is no need to relable it as something else again. UHD covers 4K and 8K formats (and possibly a 6K, but the jury is still out on that). 4K is what will take over theaters and livingrooms, while 8K will be what is used in iMax theaters... and for ridiculous videophiles.

And discs are not a thing of the past. Oddly enough I am finding that I am moving further and further away from the streaming I have enjoyed the last 6 years back to discs because the quality is sooooo much better, and there is enough of a used bluray market to make it affordable.
 

alextheblue

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Does this mean 4K Blu-rays will require multiple discs? Right now a feature-length 1080p movie takes up most of the available space.Otherwise, I assume a more lossy compression standard would have to be used which would diminish the improvement.
Not "more lossy". Better, more efficient compression. In other words they will likely use HEVC, commonly known simply as H.265. So 2-3 layer Blu-Ray discs should be sufficient. The alternative is to stick with the aging H.264 AVC and "make do", but that seems foolish and unlikely.The problem, as I see it? Existing players won't support it, possibly with the exception of things like computers and consoles armed with Blu ray drives, which have more general purpose hardware. They might see updated player software - provided any device in question has the muscle to decode 4K HEVC and the requisite display/output support.
 

techguy911

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I don't get it the streaming companies want to go 4k are they crazy the internet can't handle that the way it is now average speed in US is 4mb/s it would take 2 days, 7 hrs, and 33 minutes to download that file not to mention the download caps.The avg size of a 4k movie is 100gb+ that was reported by sony.
 
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