UHD Spec Stomps on Current Blu-ray Spec, But Will Consumers Notice?

An anonymous reader writes Details have emerged on the new UHD Blu-ray spec and players set to start shipping this summer. UHD promises resolutions 4X greater than Blu-ray 1080p as well as much higher data rates, enhanced color space and more audio options. But, will consumers care, and will they be willing to upgrade their HDTV's, AV Receivers, and Blu-ray players to adopt a new format whose benefits may only be realized on ultra large displays or close viewing distances? The article makes the interesting point that UHD isn't synonymous with 4K, even if both handily beat the resolution of most household displays.

Comments

I won't notice

[itzly]

I don't even have a Blu-ray player. :)

Re:I won't notice

[Pinkfud]

Neither will I. My eyes have gone bad with advancing age, and I can no longer see any difference between current definitions. :(

Re:I won't notice

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

A human adult with average vision can't distinguish anything much above current HD resolutions from normal TV viewing distances at typical physical TV screen dimensions either. This is one of the big problems all the businesses creating flashy new 4K TVs haven't quite worked out how to deal with yet.

Meanwhile, plenty of people still have DVD players rather than Blu-Ray, because even moving to HD doesn't make much difference for a lot of material in practice, and the old "get them to buy Star Wars for the seventeenth time two step" has run out of music.

Then you have to consider the rise of on-line sources and the generally poor experience of the physical disc systems. Most of that poor experience isn't actually because of swapping discs. It's because of all the other silly things that all legally manufactured players are required using tortured legal tricks to implement, preventing otherwise obvious improvements in competing devices such as skipping to the !~%# movie straight away.

So personally, I'm expecting 4K and other very high resolution formats to flop outside of niche markets, like say luxury home cinema systems with a projector and a screen several metres across. Even where they do get adopted, I'm expecting the market to demand less messy distribution, which would make any sort of disc-based successor to Blu-Ray even less likely to succeed.

Re:I won't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

A human adult with average vision can't distinguish anything much above current HD resolutions from normal TV viewing distances at typical physical TV screen dimensions either.

Yes, you can. Anti-aliasing and various techniques to reduce or compensate for Moire patterns only exist because the display resolution is still outmatched by the human eye. In terms of being able to "resolve" individual pixels your statement is more accurate... but there are still other aspects of the image which benefit from greater pixel density.

So personally, I'm expecting 4K and other very high resolution formats to flop outside of niche markets

I agree that adoption will be a lot slower than current HD formats, but eventually it will get here. But what we are going to see is a gradual shift from defining our displays in terms of absolute resolution in favor of pixel density. And as you mentioned, if you want to maintain a good pixel density for a large screen you will need a larger absolute resolution along with it.

Re:I won't notice

[Echo_Hotel]

On the other hand, the color space of current TV grade LCDs is absolutely atrocious and any improvement is going to be noticeable.

Re:I won't notice

[Tough Love]

Well, if Sony and their idiot partners had not made such an absolute hash of the Blu ray experience by excessive DRM, offensive warnings that can't be skipped and crass shovelware loading of endless previews that are opt out (and sometimes, randomly either can't be fast forwarded or can't be skipped) and super slow clumsy content menus due to the braindamaged Java tie then consumers might actually care about the next Blu Ray standard. But Sony did make a hash of it and delivered an experience that makes you want to throw a shoe at the TV every time. The kick in the face that just keeps kicking. Sorry, no more crappy optical disks rubbing my face in whatever a content provider wants to rub my face in. Solid state, hard disk or streaming for me, Blu Ray can fuck off and die, and so can Sony.

The answer is always no

[drinkypoo]

When a slashdot submission asks a question, the answer is always no. And this case is no exception.

UHD promises resolutions 4X greater than Blu-ray 1080p as well as much higher data rates, enhanced color space and more audio options. But, will consumers care, and will they be willing to upgrade their HDTV's, AV Receivers, and Blu-ray players

No, no they won't. 1080p is already really good. What we will notice, however, is high-resolution monitors getting cheaper.

Nope

[markdavis]

>"But, will consumers care, and will they be willing to upgrade their HDTV's, AV Receivers, and Blu-ray players to adopt a new format whose benefits may only be realized on ultra large displays or close viewing distances?"

Nope

4K is such a crazy marketing gimmick. Most of the population can already barely tell the difference between a quality DVD upscale and a Bluray at any reasonable size or distance. The manufacturers *want* to keep making everything obsolete so people "have" to keep buying new stuff, and re-buying their content over and over.

Uh...no

[Radical Moderate]

I miss the days of NTSC, a standard that lasted half a lifetime. This upgrade-your-TV-every-6 months crap is getting old. And get off my lawn.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a load of nonsense. I have a 4k set and have watched 4k shows and movies already, it looks absolutely amazing. I've watched the same shows with a 1080p set of the same size and it looks like crap after watching 4k. Yes, 4k is noticeable. It's extremely sharp and unless you have absolutely horrible eyes, you will notice the difference between 1080p and 4k. So yes, it's worth upgrading and they wouldn't be investing so much money to make 4k possible if it was just "useless" like you say.

Re:Nope

[Nerrd]

Congratulations - you have made the exact same argument that was made against HD in the first place. Guess what: people will upgrade, because people who aren't you, can notice a difference in the living-room.

I didn't even need HD ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... I've often thought "I wish the content/story were better", but never "I need to see more pores".

Article leaves out the new DRM on the output

[LamaBrew]

The content providers have threatened to require the new HDCP 2.x DRM system on the HDMI outputs instead of the existing HDCP 1.x. HDCP 2.x has required all of the IC providers to design new chips, and the standard is much more restrictive and much more fragile than the existing HDCP 1.x.

HDCP 1.x took several generations of product to get to function ( most people's problems with HDMI in the first few years was due to the HDCP DRM failing, not HDMI, which only specs how to send data).

Given the past history of HDCP it could be years before you can reasonably expect multiple pieces of consumer electronics from different vendors to play together well. I'm sure the message "HDCP violation" will look much nicer in 4K.

There is one thing that I notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the resolution. Increase the frame rate!

Every fast action movie or sporting event is just so choppy. I want 120 frames per second.