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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.'"
Anybody able to afford this upgrade is probably too old to be have eyesight good enough to see it.
>"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.'"
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.
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I'm projecting a 1080p image onto a 150" screen (my wall). It's damn obvious 1080p isn't enough. From 12' away I can see the individual pixels, and the anti-aliasing is obvious on news and sports graphics. I'd say 1080p video looks about as sharp as 480i video (DVD) on a 50" screen - not very sharp at all. And I'm 45 and my prescription 2 years out of date, so it's not like my eyes are as good as they used to be. If my next eyeglass prescription is sharper, I may have to intentionally defocus the projector image slightly to mitigate the screen door effect.
I'm seeing more and more 70"+ HDTVs for sale in stores, so I have to believe people are buying them. That's about the point when 1080p starts to become limiting at typical living room distances (about 8 ft between sofa and TV). Theoretical max for a room with 8' ceilings is just shy of 200 inches at 16:9, so there's still a lot of room for TVs to potentially grow. Add in more cameras capable of recording 4k, and 4k is going to gain traction in the next 5-10 years whether you want it or not. I've already decided that when the bulb on my current projector deteriorates, I'm just going to replace it with a 4k projector.
... I've often thought "I wish the content/story were better", but never "I need to see more pores".
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.
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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.
You're doing it completely wrong. You need to get a clue about viewing distance and the ratio between display size and it.
You're one of those guys who thinks he has this kick ass awesome setup because you made it bigger, but really, you just made it shittier.
You should at least get the most basic of clues from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
At no point should your display be larger than the distance you're viewing it from, thats just retarded.
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