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

Women use to have a peculiar perception of big and small

 

Next up will be a brain implant where you can also be interactive within the movie! You will not even need a screen! You can even join in with others who have the same movie implanted. All you have to do is just embed yourself into a matrix type system and off you go!

 

By the time you eat your words 8K will be standard. How do I know this? Because 8K is already around. Fook 4K.

 

8K already exists, so no.

 

The irony is if you can't see it in 1080p, 4K probably won't help.

 

In the home environment what would be point of 8K? Words are nice to eat but want to make sure they are not overdone.

 

There are people who have run 70mm film on Norelco AA-IIs in their living rooms. Sometimes the answer is as simple as "because we can".

 

IMO 4K really has no business for home viewing either. Who has a screen big enough to take advantage of it? Not only that but we still don't have uncompressed 1080p- even on blu rays so this new format is nonsense: streamers won't care or pay for it and those who actually care about an optimal home viewing experience are smart enough to know that 4K is diminished returns (and not using the format to it's full capacity.) And still yet, others know 8K is already in development/production.Who will fall for the new format other than the very vain? Epic fail.

 

Good luck turning a profit with that small group of people.

 

Remove the compression from 1080 broadcasts and software (I know, I know ) and that image on any screen you'll fit in your home (reasonably) will be quite satisfactory I think.

 

60 inch+ screens aren't that uncommon now and will only gain in popularity as prices keep dropping. At those sizes, 4k does make a difference and the bigger the screen, the bigger the difference.

Nonsense. People obsess too much about 'compression'. Yes, when overdone, as is often the case in broadcast TV, the picture does look crappy. But a properly mastered bluray will not have issues resulting from compression as the bitrates used and the general quality of compression is better than the eye can discriminate.

Furthermore, the new H.265 compression standard has much better performance (such as quality vs bitrates vs filesize) than the current H.264 standard. And 4k TV now come with H.265 decoding built in.

Well, you can already get 4k streaming on Netflix and now Amazon Prime and people are seeking it out. The trend is clear.

Those that do care know full well under which circumstances they will extract a tangible benefit (as I've outlined above).

You don't appreciate how the market works. I would tend to agree that 8k is overkill (unless you have a stadium sized screen) and there are issues with source content. But the market doesn't care. If the panel manufacturers find a way to make 8k panels dirt cheap (say by printing them), then they will market them and over time that is all you will be able to buy (as is now becoming the case with 4k).

So, there's little point in being a naysayer about the technology trends - you'll eventually be an adopter when you next need to replace your set.

 

I'm already perfectly happy with HD at 20Mbps or above. But the thought of 4K at the same or less bandwidth makes me ill.

 

Not with H.265. Same or better quality at lower bitrates (in general). From memory, something like 15-20% lower bitrates to maintain the same quality as the current H.264 standard or for the same bitrate, higher quality result.

 

Unless you're talking about South Korea or Japan, no. None of your ,musings about about the higher/optimal version of the format being employed in US will come to fruition. At most, people will be swayed by a marketing campaign PRETENDING that the new format is available for streaming or whatnot. Much like the fake 1080p that is currently streaming. It isn't. It's a bold face lie.

I do agree (some form of) the new format will take hold. But not because people care, but because marketers and big business don't want home video to become stagnant. They will force it upon us, much like the ****ty new masterings of music. They'll leave us no choice. They want to sell new crap, much like the videogame market. There's hardly been any changes to warrant new hardware, but rather than wait until they've created new hardware that takes advantage of more power, they've simply released marginal improvements because, apparently, new hardware must be released (by every company mind you) every 5 years.

And I'd like to see screens get much bigger than 80" on a regular basis, especially in the North East US. You may be right about 80" but the way I hear it you need a monitor at least 100" to notice a difference. And it also depends on where you're sitting. As it stands now I've seen 4K TVs at my normal viewing distance on a 65" screen and I didn't see much (if any) changes. Certainly not enough to care.

I'm not going to pretend the new format won't take hold. But I also won't pretend that they're making optimal use of the format or that it's even needed.

 

On paper I should be the target market for this. I spend a lot of money on both hardware and software to squeeze every drop of video and audio quality from music and movies. I am not patient and am almost always an early adapter. I have an 80" screen and even love 3D and if a BD is available in 3D that is the version I buy.

But I am not in a hurry to embrace this technology. I think BD looks great on my 80" with my Oppo player, and titles that are only available on DVD look pretty darn good with the Oppo upscaling. Yes, I can tell the difference, but I can live with it if the movie is really good (I sit about 15' away).

I will probably get a 4k TV when it is time to replace my current one (probably won't have a choice), but the thought of buying movies yet again does not appeal to me. But I will be following this with interest- I just don't see it really taking off.

 

This problem is very much like the videogame trend of rereleasing games on a newer system-even if the game is less than a year old. The conundrum is should I stop buying titles on the current format knowing there will be a version for the latest hardware or start purchasing an untested medium (leaving sales of the current medium to suffer.) These are the business practices that are biting all entertainment industries in their @SS, as is the push toward digital (read: easily pirated versions).

While it's obvious that I have my own opinion on the matter, for the most part, as the new eras of all mediums roll out I'll be like

 

Which one of my 'musings' will not come to fruition?

They cannot pretend that 4k streaming is available if it is not. Netflix & Amazon do have 4k streaming as of now, but the 4k content is currently limited to a handful of shows/movies. This is a fact. And we're just at the beginning of the trend. It's up to you whether you want the service or not.

Yes, as I've said, this is the main driver of the market. But there is also a much more tangible benefit to be had once the other aspect of the 4k standard is implemented, ie, a much wider color gamut (>8bpp). Some sets are now offering wider color gamuts (though still 8bit).

Yes, it's always a trade-off between screen size and viewing distance. The further back you sit, the less detail the eye will resolve. The closer you get to the screen, the more detail you will see, but only up to a point. Move closer than that point and you will begin to see either pixel structure or artifacts introduced by the image processing system.

That sweetspot is also variable between individuals and depends on sharpness of eyesight and sensitivity to color. As a general rule, I'd say sets of about 60-65" and larger would benefit from 4k resolutions.

 

4k will not die like 3d. 3d would be alive and well if you didn't have to wear the glasses

 

Dude. They're totally lying right now about 1080p streaming. Give me a break. Yes, you win the argument about adoption (consumers will have no choice), but about optimal implementation of the format you lose. They will not and never will (in the US.)

EDIT: wider color gamut?!?!?? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Television with optimal specs will get no foothold in the industry because it isn't economical to do so. What people will get is what is economical to the industry NOT what is optimal technologically. No. Never. Convenience is the name of the game. See Betamax vs. VHS.

 

I thought Panasonic was working on glasses free 3-D. Whatever happened to that?

 

You keep using the word 'optimal'. What the dickens do you mean by that??

 

You're asking me, in a thread about technology whose performance can be measured, what I mean by "optimal"?

 

I saw my first 4K display this weekend at Sam's. Granted it was a Vizio, but still, it was absolutely stunning. Even my wife, who is always skeptical about stuff like this, commented on how awesome it looked.

 

Yes.

 

Anybody running a Norelco film projector in their living room ain't gonna be able to hear the soundtrack. Those things sound like a jack-hammer. God help you if you get the threading loop wrong. I've used those and Simplex projectors back in the day -- both ornery and unpredictable unless they're precisely well-maintained (which they rarely are).

4K video is going to be better than most print film projection simply because 4K is pin-registered (or done from a digital source that needs no registration), so it's almost always going to be optically sharper. True, there are very rare pin-registered projectors, but 99.9% of most projectors out there are not. Combined with going down 3 or 4 optical generations, the resultant print is gonna be crappy compared to anything struck directly from the original negative.

I'll say this, though: no 4K or 8K sources go beyond 8-bit video yet, so they still have a way to go in terms of color accuracy. If you get low-compression 4K with 10-bit bit depth, I'd call that optimal by any definition. (High or otherwise.)