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

I agree with that statement. The studios know physical media is fading, so they need to find a way to sell it to those of us who still want it. The average viewer seems to be moving toward streaming and it's gonna be extremely hard to bring them back into the physical media fold so they need to get the Dedicated Minority to continue to buy.

It'll be interesting to see if eventually prices shoot up because it IS just the Dedicated Minority buying media. Is it likely we'll go back to laserdisc-style pricing? I don't think so - people are too accustomed to high-quality media for low prices. But it's possible - the market may be small enough for 4K (or whatever) that the studios can charge $60 for a 4K disc...

 

Speaking of pricing on BDs, I dunno where you guys are finding sub-$10 discs, at least for recent releases. Most new releases still seem to be around $30 since they come with a BD, a DVD, and a digital copy.

 

It's gonna be tough to get REALLY recent titles - like last 2 months - for super-cheap, but past that point, prices can drop a lot. I popped onto Amazon for a quick look and saw the "Wolf of Wall Street" BD for $10, for instance...

 

Yeah, I'm planning to get a super Blu, almost 4K player but first I'm looking to buy a good, used drive-in theater.

 

This is the part that "bugs" me. How many years will it take the content providers to actually exploit all the potential picture quality that the latest format offers?

 

I'm kind of with you but I like my audio lossless and right now I don't think I can get that from a download or stream.

 

Just enough time for a new format to come along, of course!

 

I remember back in the late 80's where movies on VHS sold for 80-90 USD! I think things are kind of cheap these days and better quality.

 

My tv is only 720p.

blu-ray is fine

 

Fake 4K, heavily compressed.

 

This article from thedigitalbits.com touches on the fact that 4k will not only suffer from consumer indifference, but also the waning support of the film industry itself for any physical format:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/090814_1530

 

I don't understand this.

 

This guy Bill Hunt totally knows what he's talking about. He nails it on this one:

More and more, in order to shave costs and increase profitability, the major studio’s home video operations have gotten slashed. Huge numbers of employees have been let go, including many of the very people who understood the home video enthusiast market best, who made sure that problems were corrected before the discs went to replication, and who were actually invested in their own product. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment almost exists in name only at this point. Paramount outsourced their almost their entire home video catalog operation to Warner Bros. Fox isn’t even bothering to send out review product to the press, and even Warner Bros recently shut down their press site. These are all signs of an industry that’s not really interested in promoting physical media anymore. Sadly, most of the studio home video executives who really built the DVD and Blu-ray business are gone – either laid off, downsized, retired or they’ve moved on to other things. They’ve been replaced with personnel from the theatrical side of the industry (which hasn’t exactly been well run of late – see this story at the L.A. Times), who have little experience with the home video business, little connection with the actual product they produce, and little understanding of the audience for that product (in other words… you). These people are naturally eager to make their mark with “the next big thing” while also increasing studio profits. Digital streaming serves both of those needs very nicely. Discs do not.

That is the problem. Massive corporate indifference is what's really hurting the reissue business, and that counts for both films and music.

 

I can feel de ja vu. A friend of mine only wants and looks at a tiny 24"-26" LCD panel. It drives me nuts. She does not a TV "overpowering" the aesthetics of the room. I hate watching movies on it with her. When she comes to my place she hates my 65" plasma. To her it overwhelms the space and becomes the centrepoint of the room. And the problem with that is?

This! The television manufacturing industry is literally in crisis with most players making huge losses. After reaping the windfall with the move from analogue PAL/NTSC CRT to flat panels, digital transmission and hi-def, they lost sight of the fact that people don't update their TVs like their smartphones. Once sales declined and profits were decimated by the race to the bottom price-wise, the industry required something else to get consumers to buy a new TV to prop them up. First up was 3D - miserable failure. Now we have 4k. Coz more resolution is better right? For the vast majority of the consumer market, 4k is a solution looking for a problem. And once again, quality will be turfed out the window in an effort to boost sales. Most people wouldn't even know that D-cinema projectors less than 10 years ago had chipsets in them with a resolution of 1280 x 1024. How many cinema-goers were complaining about 2k resolution when they went and saw a movie. A minute fraction I would guess. 4k in theory offers great potential for improved image performance. But potential doesn't equate success. More importantly, as others have mentioned, attributes such as colour bit-depth and can have a greater impact on image quality than simply more resolution.

It's a bit like the mind boggling stupid introduction of curved TVs in the past two years that are nothing more than a distraction to grab your attention from their flat counterparts. A curved TV does not have the immersiveness of a projection screen to fill your field of view so curving a TV from a visual experience is utterly pointless. It is purely a marketing gimmick. As you mentioned above, unless you are sitting VERY close to the screen, 4k offers very little benefit on a flat panel television.

To me, the biggest benefit that a (curved) 4k screen offers is for computer monitors where you can immerse yourself in the image and have multiple windows/programs open and clearly legible. Here it actually makes sense.

"Exploit all the potential picture quality that the latest format offers?" What do you mean the latest format? They don't even go anywhere near exploiting the potential of the current format. I went to a demonstration back in 1999 that had an appx 110" 16:9 Stewart projection screen, lit by a Sony VPH-G90 CRT projector with content on a broadcast HD VCR borrowed from a TV station - pretty much fully uncompressed content. The image quality was absolutely stunning. The depth of the image and the clarity was something to behold. Unfortunately most people don't get to see what broadcast content looks like before they compress it, crush it into a limited bandwidth and spew it out to consumers. There is scope to greatly improve the consumer experience on HD content but that doesn't sell televisions and Joe Six-pack is only interested in the cheapest TV he can buy irrespective of image quality. The consumer AV industry has done itself a great disservice over the past 10 years by lowering people's expectations and driving pricing through the floor. The consumers are rapt because they're getting a bargain while the manufacturers complain they're going broke.

I totally agree with you however in a day where pretty much everybody believes that it is their right to be able to download any content they want to watch/listen to for free, it is always going to be too expensive for them. The advances in consumer visual quality from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray (I don't include laser disc as it was never a mass market format) has come on in leaps and bounds and any aficionado of quality visuals appreciates the massive step up in performance. Unfortunately the majority of the public is only interested in the cost of the content - the cheaper the better.

This again. The entertainment industry is run by Daddy-Know-It-Alls who cannot see the wood for the trees. They are desperate to do away with all physical content in their misguided belief that it will eliminate piracy while at the same time locking away a vast history of content in their vaults, out of the grasp of consumers/fans who would gladly pay to be able to own it. In a globally connected market the content providers are still living with a 1980s mindset of content distribution and reaping what they sow as a result of it. And when they do try to do something "new & improved" a la Blu-Ray audio they go about it in such a ham-fisted way that it is doomed before it has even started. The music industry has shot themselves in the feet so many times I am surprised they have anything left below their knees and the movie industry now seems to want to follow them down the same path.

Sorry for going a bit OT here everyone but this is one topic that constantly riles me. I am all for 4k IF it offers an improved experience for the consumer but even as someone who loves quality imaging, this is one format that is going to be an incredibly hard sell.

 

I was at the IFA yesterday (the annual Berlin electronics fair) and looked at a couple of those 4 k screens and have to say, it only makes a difference on very large screens to me. My screen is "only" a "46 LCD screen and everything beyond HD would be wasted on that size.

 

This is sadly true. Real uncompressed HD under optimum conditions can be a really thrilling experience, especially when given good source material. And almost nobody gets to see this at home.

 

Happy Birthday to the OP! (Same as the 9/9 Beatles remasters release day, as he mentioned once or twice back then...)

I don't know if he's around here today. Maybe he got a 4K Blu-Ray player.

 

Players

Players and discs won't be available for another 12-14 months, but my bank account's ready....appreciate the birthday wishes!!!

 

Hey, she'd probably have to move her buggy whip collection out of the way to fit in that new fangled player.

 

How many cameras can use the expanded color gamut of Rec 2020?

The joke most of my fellow pros and I have is, "they called it Rec 2020 because 2020 is probably the year most of this stuff will finally work." It's hard to find a modern consumer monitor that can even do Rec709 right out of the box, and that's relatively easy.

 

You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about. The entire post was terribly well thought out, and your writing matched the thought. Bravo!

 

I don't get the excitement. This won't be cheap. Most consumers have format fatigue already. Notice that among the places that still sell physical product that the shift to Blu has stalled and DVDs likely occupy more space.

Many friends of mine don't even care to buy physical product at all.

 

Agreed.

I went to BB to see a demo of the 4K TVs and sitting a comfortable distance away as I do now with my 70" LCD, I couldn't see any benefits as compared to a similarly sized 1080 TV standing the same distance away.

Usually when I'm invited into people's homes and see their big screen set I can't believe how poorly calibrated they are and the same will be true when 4K sets are bought.

 

I've seen demo discs playing on 4K TVs at BestBuy. They look great. Quite honestly, they look better than real life vision does, so is that a realistic picture? Not sure, but it's pretty to look at. I'm just not sure the public will accept it any more than they did 3D.

 

Do you think with a high density disc we may be able to reproduce X2 video format at home in an affordable way? 4K has nothing that catches my attention except for the higher color bit depth, but most of us (NOT TO SAY 100%) will need a bigger-than-8-bit pannel, that is, an 10 bit color pannel.