4K Blu-ray being finalized by BDA!!

[Troy Lamont]

Players rolling out hopefully by holiday 2015!

Press release

Preliminary specs look decent: H.265 @ 50-60Mbs (possibly up to 100Mbs), no mention of audio but extended color space (rec 2020?).

[John C. Chu]

Great news. At least there isn't any competing formats this time.

I wonder how many times I will need to rebuy/upgrade a movie?

VHS, LaserDisc, Letterboxed version LaserDisc, DVD, anamorphic DVD, HDDVD/BluRay.

Should be an awesome delivery format though.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Troy Lamont

Players rolling out hopefully by holiday 2015!

Press release

Preliminary specs look decent: H.265 @ 50-60Mbs (possibly up to 100Mbs), no mention of audio but extended color space (rec 2020?).

About time. UHD is yet another opportunity to lose crap like interlacing and drop frame timecoding. I'd love to think that will happen, but I'm sure it won't. If we didn't drop these things with the change over from analog to digital when it really made sense to drop them...

Can you imagine 3840i59.94? How stupid is that?

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Bruce Watson

If we didn't drop these things with the change over from analog to digital when it really made sense to drop them...

Can you imagine 3840i59.94? How stupid is that?

The trouble is with the downconversion for live broadcasting, and unfortunately I can see that being the case with 4k as well. It's easy to see a situation where a big sporting event may get originated in 4K - but most transmissions being downconverted HD. In which case you really want a frame-frame conversion - which means 4k 59.94.......

Mercifully, I live in a 50Hz country where we don't have to think about drop-frame timecode, but as far as I understand you don't HAVE to have drop-frame with 59.94 - but it will mean that timecode won't anymore exactly represent real elapsed time.

Unless the video is run slightly faster - at exactly 60fps - which is fine if you're not having to worry about a live downconversion.

The wonderful world of legacy standards..... :-)

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by John C. Chu

I wonder how many times I will need to rebuy/upgrade a movie?

VHS, LaserDisc, Letterboxed version LaserDisc, DVD, anamorphic DVD, HDDVD/BluRay.

The saving grace is that Blu-Ray players are backwards compatible - they'll play standard def DVDs, and for that matter Video CDs and audio CDs as well.

I imagine the same will be true of 4k Blu-Ray - get such a player and it will still play your existing library of DVD and HD Blu-Ray, so a far better scenario than the VHS-DVD move.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Bruce Watson

Can you imagine 3840i59.94? How stupid is that?

As an editor do you like your hour long program to end after 1 hour or 1 hour and an extra 108 frames?

DF won't go away for any time critical application, such as broadcast television.

[James Manford]

I'm fairly sure hollywood film studios haven't even finished transferring a lot of popular films on to 1080p HD Blu Ray yet and we've now moved on to 4K Ultra HD. Some one said 8K is on the way too.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by James Manford

I'm fairly sure hollywood film studios haven't even finished transferring a lot of popular films on to 1080p HD Blu Ray yet and we've now moved on to 4K Ultra HD. Some one said 8K is on the way too.

As far as 8k goes, then I really don't see it for normal usage. The eye is barely able to see the difference between 1080 and 4k except for the largest screens, or unless you're sitting very close. Even 4k is getting into the law of diminishing returns. Unless, of course, the advertising people really make it their big thing to encourage another buying round.

That said, I do see 8k coming about for specialist applications - scientific, industrial, medical and defence - and quite likely for things like live screening of events at cinemas.

But surely 4k is more than good enough for even the majority of cinema screenings, let alone the home?

[Shaun Roemich]

TECHNICALLY 8k IS on the way - it is already in development in Japan. I BELIEVE it was shown at NAB this year. NHK is planning broadcast by 2016.

BUT... and this is a HUGE but... 4k monitor uptake is so slow right now that unless the market jumps on 4k broadcast and screens, 8k will never hit the air here... well... not NEVER but you catch my drift.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

As an editor do you like your hour long program to end after 1 hour or 1 hour and an extra 108 frames?

DF won't go away for any time critical application, such as broadcast television.

I think what Bruce is meaning is to have a framerate of exactly 60fps, and then you can do away with DF timecode and still keep real time/timecode counts.

But the trouble with going to 60fps is as I said above - a live downconversion to HD or SD would mean a frame rate conversion, not a simple frame by frame rescaling.

[Shaun Roemich]

If it was that easily solvable, SMPTE would have fixed it for HD.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

TECHNICALLY 8k IS on the way - it is already in development in Japan. I BELIEVE it was shown at NAB this year.

I saw 8k at a public screening by the BBC at the 2012 Olympics, and very impressive it was too.

BUT - it was in a large theatre, and a very large screen. The question is whilst I'm sure it was more impressive than HD would have been under the same viewing conditions, would I have noticed it as any better than 4k, all else equal?

I may be wrong, but whilst I can see 8k being technically developed and having niche applications, is not 4k good enough for even high end work?

[Jack Zhang]

4K is the limit when it comes to home televisions. 8K REQUIRES a large IMAX sized screen to tell the difference. Making a 100'' 8K panel at normal viewing distance will have no difference between 8K and 4K. Current small 4K sets require you to sit a foot from the TV to notice the difference/immersion.

[Paulo Teixeira]

And yet, Adobe wont make a Creative Cloud version of Encore. Heck, the least they should do is offer simple DVD or Blu-Ray authoring in eighter Premiere Pro CC or Media Encoder CC even it's very low featured. Better than not being able to author discs unless you want to go through some hoops to go from Premier Pro CC to Encore CS6. Discs aren't dead yet.

[James Manford]

I'm sick and broke following these trends. Clients still want delivery in DVD and rare instances in Bluray (although the Bluray usually collects dust on their shelves).

Don't think i'll be selling my FS700 and other cameras to buy a native 4K camera in the near future. May be 4-5 years time.

I still know people using HDV.