True 4k-blu-ray players/discs-coming to store shelves Christmas 2015

This wouldn't be the first time the industry decided on major technical compromises in order to a) do it cheap, and/or b) do it simply. Don't forget, we still get 8-bit images for broadcast, Blu-Ray, and all internet streaming. 10-bit images look much, much better. But 99% of all consumer sets and displays are 8-bit.

 

And some don't even do true 8-bit, but simulate it with dithering.

 

Sad stuff Marc! Shame the shift to 10 bit didn't happen. Look bow many years we lived with NTSC.

 

It's funny: 20 years ago, I thought a 27" tube TV was almost too BIG. Now, I have a 60" flatscreen and it seems too SMALL!

 

That 27" tube was mostly a big box with a 2.25-foot diagonal rectangle in front...most screens today take up way less space than that and are designed to be MOSTLY screen/image with ultra-thin bezels...

 

I can recall when the Sony 36" TVs came out in the early 1980s and everybody said, "oh, they're so huge!" Little did we know...

Whenever anybody asks me a recommendation for a flatscreen TV in an average-size living room, I generally say, "if it's a 15x20 living room or bigger, you need at least a 55" screen. 65" is not too big."

Some pro monitors claim to do 10-bit, then you find out they're using FRC (frame rate control) which is a bit of a numbers game that sort of creates a 10-bit effect from an 8-bit panel:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/featurescontent.htm

 

I'm currently using a Samsung 56" DLP rear projector for my main viewing room...when I upgrade to a 4k system, the screen size will go up to at least 65, since flatscreen technology makes it possible for a TV that big to take up less floor and shelf space...

 

This is funny. I just purchased my first ever Blu-ray player last week. It was a cheapy: a $88 Sony on Amazon with wifi. Now, the format is being upgraded. Isn't that the bees knees. I haven't even played a Blu-ray on it yet.

Being that this new player will be a 4k player and being that the recent rumor is that the original unaltered Star Wars trilogy has undergone a 4k restoration, I wonder if Disney is planning to release this trilogy for the 4k Blu-ray players.

 

Probably. But they'll release to Bluray first, then a year or so later, re-relase to 4K, so they can squeeze more money out of everyone!

 

It will be years and years before we get Star Wars in 4K. It certainly won't be this decade.

 

Given the fact my vision is getting worse as I age and glasses don't seem to 100% correct it, I'll pass. My guess is I'd not see the difference and most of my viewing is old movies anyhow. Blu ray is good enough for me.

 

This is it in a nutshell, for me.

My interests lie primarily in classic, cult, and art house cinema from the 1940s through to the 1970s. Availability of desirable titles was getting there on DVD, but many were MIA. Many more still have yet to make the transition to BD, as the market for catalogue titles has fallen away, and only the major studios' flagship titles from the era have been afforded an expensive 4K archival restoration.

In reality, the kind of films I'm interested in are unlikely ever to be released in a physical 4K format. But I'm sure the latest Michael Bay flick will look stunning.

 

Until a few years ago, my friend had a 27" tube set. It died and she wanted to replace it with a 26" flatscreen. I encouraged her to get something bigger but she seemed convinced that even a 32" set would be "overwhelming"

Admittedly, she does have a small living room, but it's not THAT small - she probably sits 8-10 feet from the set. Eventually she agreed to get the 32" set but she genuinely doesn't understand why anyone would want a bigger TV - she thinks it's insane that I have a 65" TV.

Though she likes it, I think she still believes her 32" TV is "too big". Of course, she also thinks anyone who has Blu-ray in 2014 is an "early adopter"...

 

We've got a decent 46" Panasonic display and a $100 Blu-Ray player. We can watch Blu-Ray offerings but seriously, we are not going to buy Blu-Ray offerings. I see used Blu-Ray offerings regularly for $5 a pop. While a tiny number of the visually obsessed will think of 4k viewing as revolutionary, most people simply will not care, rather like the "Hi-Rez" issues for audio. I'm all for technological improvement but this new format is going to go nowhere in a world of Roku streaming boxes and remaindered DVDs.

 

I understand that there's a lot of that going around these days.

 

I suspect you're right. It's hard enough to get the "average viewer" interested in BD, so another high-res format seems like a non-starter.

I have friends who can't tell the difference between DVD and BD on my 65" plasma - I kinda doubt that they'll notice any change between BD and 4K on a similar-size screen.

As others have noted, this seems destined to be a very niche format - much more niche than BD...

 

I've got some friends who are in denial that they even watch TV, although it's on every time I visit them. The wife wants the TV to fit into a cabinet that she loves and won't part with, although that means having a TV no larger than 32". The cabinet has front doors that can "hide" the TV, although, again, I've never seen those doors closed.

I love and embrace my TV. The larger the better. And I want the world to see my big-ass TV so I don't pretend to hide it.

 

Damn right!

My friend has a weird techno-phobia. I'm not sure what horrible event she believes would occur if she had a big TV, but she seems freaked out by the notion.

She also was really reluctant to get a Blu-ray player. When her DVD player died, I encouraged her to get a BD player so she could still inherit some of my leftovers - since I review mostly BDs now, she wouldn't be able to play much of the product I don't want if she stayed DVD only.

God, you'd think I asked her to donate a kidney! The BD player wasn't much more expensive than a DVD player but the notion that she was an "early adopter" drove her nuts. Never mind that BD had been around for 6 years or so and you could buy BDs everywhere - to her, it was a brand-new, "experimental" format and she hated the notion she was buying into it "so soon".

Sorry - when you can buy Blu-rays at grocery stores, it's clearly a mainstream product. Not in her mind, though - like I said, she still believes she's on the cutting edge of technology because she has a BD player and a 32" LCD TV!

 

You would only need ~20Mbps download speed to stream 4K Netflix.

 

Regarding 4K. I've seen it and think it's impressive. Larger screens (60"+) is where it will really shine. If your TV is smaller you probably won't see much of a difference. Imho.

Of course I'd like to have one but I don't want to pay the "early adopters" penalty. I'm satisfied with my 52" (non 4K) and hi-def from satellite and blu-ray, so I can wait until I upgrade.

Some of the arguments here are cracking me up - they're the same arguments made when blu-ray came out. "DVD is fine for me". "I won't be able to tell the difference". "I'll be able to buy DVDs super cheap now". Etc., etc.

 

For my own viewing, I'll reserve judgment until I can see 4K. Am I happy with BD? Yup. Could I see room for improvement? Yup, and if it's noticeable, I'll probably upgrade.

But for a whole lot of the viewing public, DVD really IS fine with them. Most people just don't care that much about picture/sound quality. Like I mentioned, I've shown A/B comparisons of DVDs and BDs to some friends on my 60" set and they've had a hard time telling the difference. That stuns me, but most people don't pay a lot of attention, really.

Given how few "average folks" have gone from DVD to BD, it's gonna be an even tougher sell to get them to 4K - especially since new TVs will be involved.

I think the average viewer needs a really obvious upgrade to make a change. DVD was a really obvious upgrade over VHS - better quality and more versatile format. BD was seen as an incremental upgrade, not a revolutionary one.

The same happened with TVs. Flatscreens were bigger and more detailed than tubes, so people made the plunge. 4K will be another incremental step up and not something most people will deem worth the money...

 

What the heck does Dithers have to do with this???

 

I've talked to people that think along these lines. In some cases, they simply have to see it for themselves and "live" with it for awhile, and then they realize they dig the bigger displays, BD player, etc.

There are others who see it, acknowledge it, and don't care. I think it's just more of a case of some people simply devoting less of their thoughts to caring about that stuff. That's fine, until those people start asking me why I need a big TV (which, by the way, is at this stage not exactly state of the art, a 7-year old 50 inch Panasonica plasma set) and BD, as if the whole thing is a marketing gimmick I've fallen for.

There are some relative marketing shams. There is a lot of subjectivity in comparing HD and SD and viewing distances and all of that. But I think an HD (or 4K!) smartphone screen is overkill, and I'm pretty sure next to nobody can tell the difference on a 4 inch smartphone screen.

I still contend the biggest leap in quality, all else being equal, that I've seen so far is the jump from 480 DVD resolution to even just 720 HD resolution. Each subsequent jump has been less and less noticeable (720 to 1080, and 1080 HD to 4k, of which I've admittedly only seen a small bit). I can look at a 480 DVD of a film, and then look at the 1080p Blu-ray taken from the same source transfer, and see a clear upgrade in quality on my old 50 inch HD plasma set.

I think part of the 4K thing, at least as far as the disc format goes, is simply doubling down on the niche audience that will pay a lot for physical media. When something (in this case, physical media) is diminishing in sales, you either try to do something to market it to a wider audience, or you double down on the smaller group that you know will buy into it, and sell fewer units of more expensive items to them.

 

This will be a niche format a la Laserdisc, only with even smaller market penetration, in my opinion.

Given how widely available DVDs still are and how many people still buy them, I just can't see there being a healthy enough market for THREE competing formats of physical media. Are they going to start packing in all three formats in the combo packs?

This would be like introducing BD when people were still transitioning from VHS to DVD.

Top it off with the fact that you have to have a huge screen and/or sit really close to see the difference between HD and 4K, and I just don't get it. For crying out loud, 4K is what they currently use in digital projection at movie theaters, where the screens are measured in FEET. What is the point of taking that image and shrinking it down to a 55" TV???