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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.
I don't even have a Blu-ray player. :)
The future is increasing frame rates for more realism. Unfortunately, the big manufacturers need to sell 4k televisions, and will keep pushing the dead horse of increased resolution, which is completely pointless for a massive majority of users..
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have a 1080p projector that I'm projecting onto a 116" screen. At 1080p, the results are acceptable to me, and it's the only video I ever look at that would really get much of a noticeable benefit from being 4K. So, when 4K projectors drop under $1600 CAD, I'll start to be interested.
Anybody able to afford this upgrade is probably too old to be have eyesight good enough to see it.
(4K does not count)
And why not?
Because unless you live in a palace with a real fucking movie screen 10 meters across and 6 meters high, 4K will be about as noticeable as an acarian bug. In other words it is completely useless for a normal consumer living in a normal house. You know the 99,99% of the world's population ?
>"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.
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.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
And again, my media PC combined with torrents is still better. It can already play 4k videos. Don't have to buy any new hardware, don't have to re-buy movies I've already bought. Don't have to worry about the kids breaking the disk. Don't have to worry if that disk you bought in Europe will work back in the States. DVDs were a large upgrade from VHS, the next step is better digital distribution. Blue-ray and UHD are just stepping stones to them realizing physical media is dead.
Give me a digital distribution system that will work even if the company goes out of business. One that I allows me to backup the media. One that allows for offline storage so I can watch when I don't have internet. One that works on all platforms. One that I can re-download the file if I do lose it. The only thing that satisfies all of that is DRM free files. Until they provide that, torrents will still win.
Well, what's the difference between typical NTSC and 1080p? Holy crap, it's massive. What's the difference between 1080p and 4k? The numbers are big, but the perceptual difference is nowhere near.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Mostly people don't bother with all this stuff to start with, and the manufacturers are so busy trying to sell new TV's that they don't even bother to build good one to begin with.
For instance, I just set up a Sonos 5.1 surround system. During the process I checked compatibility with my TV and I found this list of televisions that don't pass 5.1 surround data out the TOSLINK port under various conditons: https://sonos.custhelp.com/app... . Some only pass it from specific sources and some don't pass it at all. I'm lucky, my TV works under all conditions. Never mind problems with HDMI/HDCP/CEC/ARC compatibility.
I don't care about increased resolution because I can't be sure that the next TV I'll buy will meet my minimum specs. Purchasing is a gamble these days and once you engineer a working solution why would you upgrade? I didn't jump on the 3D idiocy and I'll bet you didn't either. Even if you have a 3D TV did you buy extra, or any glasses for it?
The producers, in a genius move enabled by "vertical integration", will add a new broadcast or regional flag or change an encryption key or some shit and stop making media in the old format. People will run like lemmings to Walget or TarMart to buy new equipment because the old stuff has been artificailly obsoleted. It's enough to make me stop watching altogether. Good luck selling your advertising time when no one gives a shit assholes.
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.
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.
The new spec also brings HFR (up to 60 fps, probably), wider colors (Rec. 2020), more accurate colors (10-bit seems to go mainstream) as well as double resolution. But hey yes, a BluRay looks pretty sweet already. In any case, it doesn't hurt unlike 3D that some - me included - just doesn't like. I just checked my local version of pricewatch and of 646 TV models for sale 102 now feature UHD. They even sell 40" UHD TVs for $500 now, which makes no sense at all and all this with Netflix being just about the only source of non-upscale UHD content. So I think it's beyond a doubt that mainstream TVs will go there eventually.
Besides, the trend is only bigger TVs. When I grew up we had a 20-something inch TV, now I have a 60" TV. When prices go down, sizes go up. It won't be quick and it's not urgent at all, but just like FullHD settled in - there were a lot of naysayers then too - UHD will too. It's not like SACD and DVD Audio where people listen on the go and want playlists, watching movies/series is still primarily a living room couch activity where you sit down to watch one for 40 mins - 3 hours.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Will the standard contain provisions for unskippable items? Then I won't buy an UHD player.
Reminds me of how VGA could readily handle higher resolutions than modern displays, component video even better, but everything had to be digital so they could sneak in their DRM.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
... 4K will be about as noticeable as an acarian bug.
I'm guessing you've never had a dust mite allergy.
The original Ghostbusters film from years back recently had a '4K' remaster released in a 1080P Bluray edition. The film had no more detail than a good DVD version, because the 'original' negative was obviously in a horrid state, and the film had been shot mostly partially out of focus. The 4K did wonders for the GRAIN, though.
4K is great for nature documentaries. Everything else, less so. 4K tears apart the compromises in CGI and VFX, for instance, and the cost of improving the production so it appears 'perfect' in 4K just isn't worth it when ordinary people with ordinary vision watching in the cinema or at a standard viewing distance at home just won't notice the improvement.
Older movies never reached 4K on film, because of lens imperfections, camera judder, film grain, and other 'mechanical' issues. The Bluray transfers of the best 70mm anamorphic movies of the 60s and 70s have been variable, but the best of them definitely benefit from 1080P. Beyond this resolution, almost all of these older movies gain nothing.
Most films shot in the 80s and earlier 90s are noticeable WORSE in image quality than the best from the previous two decades. Their masters are also usually in a terrible state today, and so-called 'digital restoration' largely adds fake detail like edge 'enhancement'.
New material shot digitally CAN exploit any improvements in resolution, but as I said, at a horrible increase in production costs. Sets, costumes, props etc have to be so much better made, and the pipeline skills for doing this don't exist. The DREADFUL Hobbit movies show the problem. Razor sharp images of cheap sets and CGI, with 4K 'detail' of a shoddy and pleasing nature.
The IMAX trick of switching to much higher film quality on specific scenes, like landscapes and crowds, works best for 4K- real detail that isn't created for the movie obviously contains minute elements that 4K captures better. But the synthetic scenes that are crafted for most of the movie will always look WORSE as the resolution increases.
... I've often thought "I wish the content/story were better", but never "I need to see more pores".
I want large-data formats to succeed because I want my "boxed sets" to take up less shelf space. Give me an entire season at as-broadcast resolution on a single disk (13 episodes of HD or 3-4 times that for a very-good-quality digitization of old stuff that only exists on broadcast-quality NTSC tapes would be nice), including bonus material, and I'll be happier than if the large disks are used only for higher-definition content. My eyes aren't what they once were and neither are my ears.
For the same reason I wish all CD players (especially those in cars) were replaced with "audio disk" players that could play audio from video DVDs, DVD-audio, and all common computer audio formats in addition to the current CD-audio/MP3/WAV formats that seem common for new players today.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
As the article states, two of the most important changes in this standard are high dynamic range (HDR) and wider color gamut (Rec. 2020) images. I have been working on this with Dolby Laboratories for the last few years, and whenever we bring in movie directors, cinematographers, colorists, or studio executives to see our ridiculously HDR wide-color-gamut display, their jaws hit the floor. The ability to reproduce the dynamic range and color gamut of real life is breathtaking. One of the studio executives, when asked if she could see the difference said "Do I look like a potted palm?"
You will see the difference, and you'll be able to see it from across the room. HDR and wide color gamut combined with UHD resolution is a revolution.
I know this sounds like a sales pitch (ok, it is!) but I've been working in the film business for 30 years before I started working on this; I know what creatives want, and this is it. I spent that time working on CG visual effects, and I think that HDR will have a comparable impact on filmmaking that VFX did.
The Dolby Cinema theaters opening in the next few months will have similar extreme dynamic range and wide color gamut. They look astonishingly better as well.
Wait and see. It's coming, and it's not far away.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
A large majority of the market switched to HD. They're not having trouble convincing the market to adopt HD. They already did.
I know of people who have their HD set hooked up to cable and satellite boxes with RF cables...and then they stretch the SD image because they think they're not getting what they paid for.
As an audio-visuophile, all I can say is, seriously, just like the megapixel war in digital cameras, we're now having a megapixel war in TVs. But, what most people realize is that these new, super high resolutions are useless to most people, because while they may have the 4K TV, all of the equipment around it fails to deliver the content to the TV properly.
Cables are a simple example of this. Your run of the mill $10 HDMI cable from Walmart is not going to faithfully reproduce the digital signal between a UHD Bluray player and a 4K TV. No oxygen-free copper. No gold plating (or maybe just a few microinches of it). No super high twists per inch. The bits are just going to get fuzzy between the source and the TV and this makes it impossible to reproduce 4K content accurately.
Even more jitter and fuzz is introduced by poor power conditioning, inadequate and noisy power cables, and lack of solar irradiance dampers (lab tests have shown that even having the sun shine on equipment introduces noise and inaccurate pixels).
It's nearly impossible for a home A/V setup consisting of crap you get from Walmart or Bestbuy to do a good job of presenting UHD or 4K content in the truest, deepest form and with the most clarity.
Will the displays calibrate themselves?, and provide some useful fudge setting for people that like their display brighter to see the details easily. :-)
Most people badly set their brightness or whatever it is (and they don't want me to turn it down) whereas that's really glaring to me as I'm used to deep blacks.
If there were gamma in the TV manus instead of just "brightness" it would be a good thing already (that's what I like anyway, in small amount).
With HDR, you'll vitally need some "smart" setting I believe as we risk to be aggressively blinded by other people's TVs instead of just being annoyed
Let me guess - you took the time to adjust the brightness, contrast, color, etc. settings to suit your room? In my experience most people don't, and the defaults that are tuned to look good in the over-bright fluorescent lighting of the display rack look horrible anywhere else.
That makes sense from a marketing perspective, after all the store staff isn't going to fiddle with anything, but it would be really nice if there were a quick and easy option to switch to "living room defaults". Maybe even an overlay in the corner for the first few minutes after being turned on that says "Currently using showroom defaults. Do you want to switch to settings much better suited to the average living room?" That would probably dramatically improve the image quality for 90% of users.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Movies have already started to skip DVD. Ishtar, for example, is on Blu-ray but not DVD. You'll notice the difference between Blu-ray and no movie at all unless perhaps you're deafblind.
Do you have any examples of this other than one of the biggest bombs Hollywood ever made? It probably was never released on DVD due to dismal VHS sales.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Forget the resolution. Increase the frame rate!
Every fast action movie or sporting event is just so choppy. I want 120 frames per second.
The Dolby Vision TVs will have reasonable controls to set brightness and contrast, but one of the selling points to the studios is that we will strive to maintain the artistic intent of the original. The blacks will be black, the whites will be white, and there will be an unprecedented (but realistic) amount of contrast.
It turns out that in high dynamic range content creation, the most important thing is not that the picture be brighter overall; but that there is an increased range between midtones and highlights. In current production, skin tones are set to about half the maximum brightness in the scene. This means that the brightest things in the image (say, a glint off of a chrome bumper) can only be twice that bright; where in real life it's more that 100 times that bright. So, leaving the midtones about where they are, and giving brighter highlights makes the image look better in a way that you have to see to understand. Or, you can just look out the window.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Watching any type of movie, with the exception of real life footage or stylized full CGI moves (not trying to look life like) - such as nature shots, or real world scenes, or Toy Story type movies, look cheap and hokie on ultra high definition formats. Anything computer generated, or a prop, or costume, or makeup is easily noticeable. Anything fake, you can see is fake. Personally I think the 1080p high definition is about the pinnacle of combining a good crisp look with still being able to suspend one's visual cues and pretend they are watching something real.
I thought The Hobbit was shot in high-motion
It was, but no one else seems to be following along. It also seems like 48 fps might hit an uncanny valley spot in the eye -- the better rate might be 60 or 72 Hz. (linked article is speculation, but interesting).
Besides, a lot of more expensive TVs have an option for motion interpolation to turn 24 fps source into (artifacty) 120 fps
It's usually called "Motion flow" or "motion interpolation," and it usually makes the source material look much much worse. Home theater installers worth their salt know to turn it off. It may or may not be worth it for live sports.
The new format is on a harddrive. It is data. Can we be done with these discs? Just period.
What would it cost to put the data on a thumb drive instead of a disc? It doesn't need more space then the movie takes up and it doesn't need to be writable. What would it cost to make a crap thumb drive with the movie on it that wasn't even writable?
Just go with that. We're not going back to the dvd collection days. That's through.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I hear the ultra-fucking-high-def (UFHD) standard will be out in 5 years. I'll wait to upgrade my TVs and players when they support that standard. That way I can watch Ultraporn
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Never, ever be the first person to volunteer to be the guinea pig for new tech. Especially expensive or niche tech. ( cough 3D cough ) You'll regret it when, a year later, you can buy the same gear at a fraction of the cost you spent to be " first ". Assuming they haven't trashed the standard and are moving onto another one.
With a few exceptions, what is even ON TV these days that is worth spending $$$$ on to upgrade all your gear every year or so ? I bought all my favorite movies that I wanted when we switched from VHS to DVD. I didn't even bother when Blu-Ray happened. ( Remember Blu-Ray hardware prices first year or two ? LOL What are they now ? ) Will likely donate the whole collection as I watch the new standards come and go. I don't -think- you'll be streaming UHD or 4K anytime soon as we can barely get decent HD quality across the networks due to compression and bickering over bandwidth consumption. It will only get worse for the newer formats I think. ( US markets only, you folks overseas with enviable high speed symmetric bandwidth, ymmv )
Dunno about you all, but I'm just about done with TV. When the one we have dies, I'll just put the aquarium in its place and be done with it.