Players rolling out hopefully by holiday 2015!

Press release (http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/BDA/4K/Ultra_HD/IFA/4k-bluray-spec-players-confirmed-for-2015/17656)

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

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.

Players rolling out hopefully by holiday 2015!

Press release (http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/BDA/4K/Ultra_HD/IFA/4k-bluray-spec-players-confirmed-for-2015/17656)

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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_timecode#Drop_frame_timecode). 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?

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..... :-)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not to mention the additional license required to encode AND decode Dolby. It's part of AVCHD... Why did they make it so you have to purchase another license just to get audio from AVCHD cameras!?!

Don't believe the hype. 4K is nice for cropping and specific large screen applications. 99% of my clients still ask for DVD and the odd one will add blu-ray. Consumers are not all into the 4k hype, just the manufacturers are. It took 40-50 years for broadcasters to switch from SD to HD, and they're not going to spend millions of dollars in infrastructure to suddenly upgrade unless it's mandated, but that would take a very long time. 4K may have it's niche audience but i doubt it will pick up the way DVD did over VHS.

As well as supporting 4K formats, I hope that a wider range of HD formats will be added to the standards read by Blu-ray disc players, specifically 1080/50p and 1080/60p. It would also be good if 10-bit 4:2:2 is supported, though perhaps that's less likely at 1080?

Ugh, another format that some people might have and most will not. Not worth the expense to even offer it for me. As other have stated, Blu-ray is a low percentage of delivery. 4k Blu-ray will be another fraction of that...almost never.

By the end 2015 streaming will have totally taken over any hopes of this format being mainstream. The more time that passes the less anybody is going to want to invest in physical media. Haven't they learned you need to have the standards and players ready when the format is ready to go? Buy the TV and the player at the same time...

DVD had the format war, BD had too high of pricing for mass adoption and 4k BD will only be for technofiles who also own expensive record players! BD disc is the best method for high quality delivery and the least used. Just like MP3, people favor convenience over quality and 1080p still looks very good. Even when you give somebody a digital file you have to be aware of the possibility of them trying to play the file on a phone or tablet. So it is safer to lower the bitrate. It is a shame because optical formats give us the chance to use a decent bitrate with high quality playback given the player standards.

I think people are missing the point. 4K BD isn't for wedding and corporate videographers. It's for Hollywood film distribution to home consumers.

And it's not just 4K. It will include HDR, play back at up to 60 fps for sports docs, and support Rec.2020 wide color gamut. I think once people start seeing HDR in person, they will definitely want the upgrade.

And regarding the price of BD players, you can get new ones in the $30 range. You will need a TV with an HDMI input, but all TVs have had that feature for years. If people want multiple copies to pass around, yeah, give them a DVD as it will play in all systems, including PCs. If its for their own use, give them various files on a data DVD as well as a video BD - and throw in a player for free. :)

Friends don't let friends watch 480i.

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

LOL! From Wikipedia: "Drop frame timecode dates to a compromise invented when color NTSC video was invented. The NTSC designers wanted to retain compatibility with existing monochrome TVs."

Dropframe was a kludge from the analog era, that had to do only with the introduction of the color subcarrier over the top of the existing B&W and audio subcarriers. The addition of the color subcarrier caused a visual artifact at the beat frequency between the color subcarrier frequency and the audio subcarrier frequency. This artifact was eliminated by reducing the color subcarrier frequency, and thus the line scan frequency and the frame rate, by 0.1%. That, is drop frame.

Drop frame was a kludge! and an analog kludge! Analog broadcasting doesn't even exist any more! Yet this damnable kludge, this utterly useless, pointless, senseless kludge, continues to zombie along. Because "we've always done it this way". When in fact, we haven't. PAL has never had this problem, or this stupidity. It's only NTSC, and it was done for analog which no longer exists.

So yes, this really is that easily solvable. And yes, it certainly should have been killed off with the transition to digital broadcasting. As should interlacing have been killed off. 4K is yet another opportunity to kill this off. One I have no doubt that we'll ignore, again.

But it won't go away. Broadcasters have millions of hours of 60/1.001 content and broadcasters often share content and there are existing contracts that restrict reformatting.

Mixing and matching 59.94 and 60.0 would be a true headache. It's like driving on the left hand or right hand side of the street. Both systems work, but if we're going to transition between one and another, don't go for a slow, gradual transition!

BTW, the other NTSC kludge was setup. It raised the black level over the "back porch" (the signal right after the sync pulse) by 0.7 V. Why did they do this? It eliminated a single tube from the TV set design. And because of this, the black level of NTSC signals was never predictable as analog systems drifted. Long live the "tweaker tool"!

Fortunately, setup was eliminated when we went to digital. Eliminating fractional frame rates would be a much bigger challenge.

I think people are missing the point. 4K BD isn't for wedding and corporate videographers. It's for Hollywood film distribution to home consumers.

And it's not just 4K. It will include HDR, play back at up to 60 fps for sports docs, and support Rec.2020 wide color gamut. I think once people start seeing HDR in person, they will definitely want the upgrade.

And regarding the price of BD players, you can get new ones in the $30 range. You will need a TV with an HDMI input, but all TVs have had that feature for years. If people want multiple copies to pass around, yeah, give them a DVD as it will play in all systems, including PCs. If its for their own use, give them various files on a data DVD as well as a video BD - and throw in a player for free. :)

Friends don't let friends watch 480i.

With Netflix, Amazon and other large online distributors, 4k can still be delivered. As you know, physical media is mostly found at outlets such as walmart, costco etc. Video stores rarely exist, except a few like Red Box. It's not just about wedding or corporate videographers. Most cinemas still project at 2k with major blockbusters at 4k, but it is said that realistically only about 720p is reached on the silver screen except for formats like IMAX, but that's another argument.

I projected my film provincially here in Canada, on Blu-Ray. Someone asked if i had shot on 35mm when i actually used a Panny HVX and Canon 7D, but that's also another argument.

Physical media doesn't have the same power it did since it's inception.

I think people are missing the point. 4K BD isn't for wedding and corporate videographers. It's for Hollywood film distribution to home consumers. .........

And regarding the price of BD players, you can get new ones in the $30 range.
Exactly, and two other points are being missed.

Firstly, that this looks to make use of fundamentally the same HARDWARE as HD Blu-Ray, as least as far as the drive goes - possible even the same blank discs (?) - just different codecs etc. As such, there is little technical reason to expect 4k Blu-Ray players to cost much more than HD Blu-Ray.

Secondly, then it can't be said too many times that such a new player will happily play all your existing DVD or HD Blu-Ray library. It won't make it obsolete in the way DVD players did for VHS.

I foresee the time relatively soon when all you'll be able to buy in the shops are 4k Blu-Ray players - no DVD or HD Blu-Ray only. And if they cost the same, so what if they spend most of their life playing DVDs or HD Blu-Rays?

A question in Hollywood is "will you re-buy your favorite film on 4K BD?"

Imagine that you owned The Wizard of Oz on VHS, then DVD, then BD. Will you buy the 80th Anniversary High Dynamic Range Edition on 4K Blu-ray in 2019?

Some people I've spoken with believe that if it was for 4K only, the shiny, gold box would collect dust on the shelves. But with HDR, the film will sparkle in a way that you've never, ever seen it. Ever. If this leads you to upgrade older titles, you'll also seek the HDR version for newer titles and the format will more than pay for itself.

The thing about good HDR is that you can see it from across the store. No pixel peeping required. It will be interesting to see if it's strong enough to entice sales.

BTW, keep your RAW masters. You might just want to re-grade them after HDR gains steam. ;)

I just hope the unskippable trailers and FBI warnings one has to be forced to watch to get to the movie is tempered. That should be part of the specification!

Just let me watch the movie!

"Coming soon to Bluray!" ----At least it will be in 4K,

A question in Hollywood is "will you re-buy your favorite film on 4K BD?"

Maybe not - but I may buy films in the future in that format. And I may pay a supplement for such.

I just hope the unskippable trailers and FBI warnings one has to be forced to watch to get to the movie is tempered. That should be part of the specification!

Just let me watch the movie!

"Coming soon to Bluray!" ----At least it will be in 4K,

One of the reasons why I regrettably still rip my films in 1080p and keep them on a external hard drive, even though I own the original Steelbooks/Limited editions etc

I WISH they got rid of the annoying advertisements. I've bloody paid for the disc!! let me just watch the film.

I think people are missing the point. 4K BD isn't for wedding and corporate videographers. It's for Hollywood film distribution to home consumers.

And it's not just 4K. It will include HDR, play back at up to 60 fps for sports docs, and support Rec.2020 wide color gamut. I think once people start seeing HDR in person, they will definitely want the upgrade.

And regarding the price of BD players, you can get new ones in the $30 range. You will need a TV with an HDMI input, but all TVs have had that feature for years. If people want multiple copies to pass around, yeah, give them a DVD as it will play in all systems, including PCs. If its for their own use, give them various files on a data DVD as well as a video BD - and throw in a player for free. :)

Friends don't let friends watch 480i.

Great points! Big thumbs up for the last line! :D

And regarding the price of BD players, you can get new ones in the $30 range.

I should clarify my post - Blu-ray players were overpriced at the beginning of the rollout. This crucial time when streaming was still weak and the format still had a chance. But they missed the boat and priced them in the $150-$200+ range. People bought the HDTVs and many skipped the Blu-ray purchase. Streaming won and then they lowered the price of the players.

People love DVDs. They were such a tour de force back before and into 16:9 TVs. Blu-ray could have capitalized on this glow, kept things affordable and created a real user base. But no, they wanted to make it an elite format and wound up freezing it in time.

Good points, Tim. Another difficulty is that Apple never adopted the format - and dropped DVD drives (Air) as well. Had the prices dropped more quickly and computer manufacturers adopted BD, it would be a different story today.

Then again, Apple wanted iTunes to succeed. Packaged media was a key competitor, so they weren't motivated to adopt BD regardless of cost.

Back on the HDR thing, SMPTE will soon release its HDR transfer function document.

SMPTE backs ?dazzling? HDR spec | Advanced Television (http://advanced-television.com/2014/09/09/smpte-backs-dazzling-hdr-spec/)

Typically, Hollywood features are graded for 50 cd/m2 in the cinema and 100 cd/m2 for TV. TVs typically have much higher peak brightness than 100 cd/m2 (like 450 cd/m2 or "nits"), but that makes sense as grading is done in dark rooms and TVs are often viewed near windows at noon.

We don't necessarily need linear coding all the way to sunlight. The eye wants great accuracy around skin tones, but we just need to see that specular highlights, glints, and explosions are bright and shaped well. We don't need great accuracy there. HDR transfer functions often give about half their code values to the 0-100 nit range. The other half of the code values will get you to 1,000 nits if not 10,000. Generally, 10,000 nits is the limit as brighter images can cause discomfort and even eye damage. ("Kids, don't sit so darn close to the 20,000 nit TV!")

I saw an example of the recent Star Trek film where the view is from inside of a large hangar with the door open in the distance. The graphics artist had made a beautiful outdoor image, but after standard grading, the outdoor scene was blown out to near and full white. With HDR grading, you could see the city under sunlight in the background.

One concern is that bright highlights could make films look like high contrast video. That hasn't been my experience. HDR looks really vibrant compared to normal film, but with the details preserved, it looks like what film was intended to be. It doesn't have a video look whatsoever to my eyes - and I'm a person who really dislikes the 120 Hz, high contrast, high noise reduction, soap opera look of many TVs. Instead of looking plastic and processed, HDR looks like quality.