Amazon Instant Video Now Streams In 4K

[Guest]

Customers can buy or rent certain movies in 4K, and Prime members can also stream certain movies and Amazon Original shows in 4K.

Amazon Instant Video Now Streams In 4K : Read more

 

[MustSee4KTV]

I got my 50" Vizio 4k UHDTV for $698 + tax on Thanksgiving from Walmart. Only tried YouTube 4k, which is not as good as the demos that I have seen at CES. It's a pretty good TV though and definitely worth the price.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Yikes 24mbps!!! If you want to watch a 4k video then most people are gona have to use amazons unbox player to download the video first so buffering isn't an issue. 😉

 

[Coloradorocker]

Nice, got a 60" Vizio 4K for a steal during the Thanksgiving madness. I know that it will be compressed in order to stream, but I'm still excited by the growing amount of 4k content that is available. Just waiting for some 4k physical media, that's still quite a way out though.

 

[airborn824]

Sony is by far the 4k leader. Keep in mind that these early 4k tv are top of the line and they have up scalars and great panels. Sony has already adopter 10 bit panels ahead of everyone else. With phones and tablets these days 4k will hit hard and fast so don't be afraid of it. and again if your looking for a quality 4k tv Sony and Panasonic are light years ahead of the competition.

 

[ubercake]

I honestly did not think providers would be streaming 4K this soon.

Is the required bandwidth for the stream 4x that of a 1080p stream? Anyone know?

 

[kapitalistas]

who"s buying 4k tv"s anyway .i watch blue-ray movies i use my monitor 25"with 1920x1080.pay that kind of money for tv which you only can use for same movies not on daily bases watch news.

 

[-Lone-]

Get the Panasonic AX900 for $7,500 😀

 

[trog69]

I admit that I am a PC gaming fanatic, and so I don't really know about streaming movies, but did they just skip over 1440p/1600p and go straight from 1080p to 4k? I see on YouTube that there are a lot more 4k videos than 1440p ones already.

 

[slowur]

4k Samsung here. Been waiting to use my bandwidth on something. 192 Mbps from COX.... Yea baby!!!

 

[bit_user]

Lol, even at 25 Mbps it's not gonna look much better (and might even look worse, in some cases) than 1080p, at least assuming they're not using H.265 (which I doubt most devices yet support). Bluray goes up to like 50 Mbps.

And just running the numbers... a 100 minute movie will use almost 19 GB of whatever your ISP's monthly bandwidth quota is.

The other problem is actually getting 25 Mbps at peak hours.

For now, I think I'll just stick to Redbox & discount bin blu-rays on my 1080p plasma.

 

[ubercake]

Lol, even at 25 Mbps it's not gonna look much better (and might even look worse, in some cases) than 1080p, at least assuming they're not using H.265 (which I doubt most devices yet support). Bluray goes up to like 50 Mbps.

And just running the numbers... a 100 minute movie will use almost 19 GB of whatever your ISP's monthly bandwidth quota is.

The other problem is actually getting 25 Mbps at peak hours.

For now, I think I'll just stick to Redbox & discount bin blu-rays on my 1080p plasma.

Unless I'm missing something, a standard HD 1080p stream (e.g. over Netflix) takes a little less than 6Mbps of bandwidth? If a 4K screen's res is 4x that of 1080p (it's actually a little less), even with current compression it would put the 4K stream in the low to mid 20Mbps's which is consistent with information in the article.

 

[dishaets21]

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[dishaets21]

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[bit_user]

Unless I'm missing something, a standard HD 1080p stream (e.g. over Netflix) takes a little less than 6Mbps of bandwidth? If a 4K screen's res is 4x that of 1080p (it's actually a little less), even with current compression it would put the 4K stream in the low to mid 20Mbps's which is consistent with information in the article.

I dunno. I've never used Netflix streaming. I have streamed one 720p H.264-encoded movie at about 8 Mbps, and it looked okay. The detail was a little lacking in a few places.

Over on avsforum.com, I've seen comparisons of top teir 1080p streaming quality vs. blu-ray. And as recently as 6 months ago, you could clearly see in the A/B comparison photos posted that streaming was visibly worse than blu-ray.

Is it good enough for most people? Sure, but so is the current status quo. Will a 25 Mbps 4k stream typically look better than a lower bitrate 1080p stream? Yes, if the encode is well done. It just won't do the format proper justice, IMO.

The best-case scenario is that it starts a competition between streaming services & cable channels to deliver better quality. The worst-case outcome is that it kills 4k blu-ray, without ever rivaling its quality.