RED comes back with claims of 4K projection on DVD

[Elandyll]

And seriously, I don't know what to think of it now.

If it is real, and is not some kind of smoke blown up our collective rear ends, then I will admit that they have developped an incredible technology, borderline magic.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/04/25...readercomments

They had already made a claim about Red Ray last year, but without being able to actually show anything. This time, they made an actual demo...
4K footage at 10Mb/s (megabit, not byte)...

Now for those already thinking "Blu Ray Death", a few points to consider:
- does not include multichannel audio, or any format in and of itself. It's just a compression format storaged on a DVD at 10mb/s.
- the amount of processing power on the player (decompression) end is unknown. Could require a dozen Cell processors for all we know. As per the power needed to achieve that kind of efficiency in compression (700:1), it is literally in the domain of applied magic.
- RED RAY is, at least for now, meant for the professional market and 4K footage. There is no indication of their format being adaptable to streaming, or if anyone will be interested in using it for Home Video apps. Given the time it takes to see new formats on the consumer level market, it could be years before anything is developped.

RED blows away small room of videophiles with 4k RED RAY footage at half the bitrate of MiniDV
by Paul Miller, posted Apr 25th 2009 at 3:48PM

While RED has been pretty tight-lipped about its planned RED RAY product, some footage shown off at RED's NAB party gave a sizable hint that RED RAY could be much more than meets the eye -- specifically a $1,000 device that can play cinema-quality 4k video off of standard DVDs. At the party they played an uncompressed showreel of 4k footage on a Sony 4k projector, which clocked in at 1.3GB per second, and then showed that exact same footage under the "RED RAY" codec at a mere 10Mb/s (megabits, not bytes; about half the bitrate of SD DV), at a compression rate of 700:1. Attendees claimed they could see zero visible compression, though a projector in a ballroom isn't exactly the best case scenario to test that sort of thing. Unfortunately, there's little other info about how they're achieving this (we hear "wavelets" come into the equation at some point), or to what nefarious aims, but with compression like this the implications for content distribution are pretty stunning: 1080p+ streaming for all. Naturally, the down side of all of this is probably some pretty hefty processing power on the consumer end, but we'll cross that I/O bridge when we come to it.

Again if this is real, the potential of this compression technology + GE based Holographic projection 500Gb discs boggles the mind (and would be compatible Blu Ray).

[Blu Titan]

Trust me...with the effort that CE manufactures and the studios have placed into marketing blu-ray, the chances of "Red" getting any love is minus infinity.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Blu Titan

Trust me...with the effort that CE manufactures and the studios have placed into marketing blu-ray, the chances of "Red" getting any love is minus infinity.

Blu-ray is just the disc. This would be a compression scheme.

Would require new players, but the technology could be applied to Blu-ray discs (as here it was used from a standard DVD).

But yeah, I'm not going to be impressed just by them saying "4K video at 10 mb/s" and "claimed no visible artifacts". Throw it up on a real theatrical presentation, get some critical videophiles in there, and ask them if they notice visible artifacts.

But I guess this would kill all the bitrate hounds, huh? Even standard DVD would be undeniably capable of providing good 1080p at low bitrates and no one would be able to argue against it, and maybe people would finally shut up about how required high numbers are to subjective quality. Hopefully this is true and as accurate as claimed and they're willing to adapt it for the home market.

[Bobby Henderson]

This whole thing sounds very suspicious. There's definitely going to be some serious compromises taking place. On top of that, the reports have had questionable numbers -such as the bit rate claim for 4K material in uncompressed form.

News flash: it's a lot higher than 1.3 Gb/s. An uncompressed 1080p HD video stream can run anywhere between 1.3Gb.s and 3 Gb/s depending on color depth for each channel. 4K literally quadruples the pixel count and bandwidth requirements. Basically, it sounds like they were merely piping 2K content into a Sony 4K projector. That doesn't make the material 4K.

Over the past 10 years or so technology companies have been playing much faster and looser with the truth than anytime before. The standards and levels of enforcement on truth in advertising are amazingly lax anymore. Compound the problem with the fact many people assigned to reporting technology-oriented news don't know much about the technology and are easily hood-winked. These reporters lack any ability to ask tough questions that can blast through the smoke and mirrors.

In short, I think this whole 4K in 10Mb/s on DVD thing is a lot of bulls**t.

[Anthony P]

In short, I think this whole 4K in 10Mb/s on DVD thing is a lot of bulls**t.

agree.

Blu-ray is just the disc. This would be a compression scheme.

it is not just a disk but a format. Even if the disks are the same (replication) if the codecs are different it is a different format. They can't sell it under the term BD even if it uses the same disk because then it won't work on all players.

[Chevypower]

I would expect to see something like "Super Blu-ray" to take over Blu-ray, or become a home theater enthusiast format at least.
Super HD 2160x3840 resolution, still in 16:9, 3G (3Gb/second) Digital interface, with possible Real-D 3D and 60p support, but still compatible with 2D and existing formats.
It could use 4 and 8 layer Blu-ray discs.

[smiley]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

News flash: it's a lot higher than 1.3 Gb/s. An uncompressed 1080p HD video stream can run anywhere between 1.3Gb.s and 3 Gb/s depending on color depth for each channel. 4K literally quadruples the pixel count and bandwidth requirements. Basically, it sounds like they were merely piping 2K content into a Sony 4K projector. That doesn't make the material 4K.

4K quadruples horizontal and vertical so actually 4k has 16 times the number of pixels. I guess that makes it even less realistic.

[Chevypower]

Originally Posted by smiley

4K quadruples horizontal and vertical so actually 4k has 16 times the number of pixels. I guess that makes it even less realistic.

No, quadruples is correct. It doubles the horizontal resolution from 1920, or 2048 pixels. 4K has a horizontal resolution of 4096, but the TV/video format will probably have 3840 (3.8K).
If you double the horizontal resolution, you should also double the vertical, which would multiply the total pixels by four. In my opinion this does not look like "4 times the resolution", but only appears as double. So, I agree with measuring by horizontal resolution: 2K, 4K etc.

[jadedeath]

Red's dead baby... Red's dead.

Logan

[Anthony P]

4K quadruples horizontal and vertical so actually 4k has 16 times the number of pixels. I guess that makes it even less realistic.

no, traditionally TVs are counted in lines of resolution (height) so when we say a TV (or BD) is 1080p then we mean 1080 lines.

Now movies are traditionally measured in length because the length of the screen is fixed (or if you think of your TV, you have black bars on top of the pic and bottom so you are not really getting 1080 lines of images but you are getting 1920 columns of pixels) so the same is true for the resolution.

so 4K~2x1920 and so 4x the resolution of 1080

[Beta Man]

SOME PEOPLE NEED TO LISTEN TO THEIR OWN ADVICE.

Seems like a lot of negative response to this, despite the numerous threads hoping that 4K becomes a realization....... Who cares 'who' develops it.... if it does happen, and it's truly an audio/video improvement to Blu-ray's current capabilities..... I will be at the store picking up my new player

If it's not truly 4K, better audio/video etc etc... and is just "Upconversion Snake Oil" then I agree... it's trash, and not worth consideration.... but everyone seems to already think "OH WE BEAT THEM..... THEY NEED TO GO AWAY"

What if it's a new, yet superior technology??? Are you going to hang onto Blu-ray despite the obvious improvements? Are you going to say this new 4K technology is "Too expensive" and "won't catch on" or "isn't big enough of an improvement to warrant the cost" and "Blu-ray looks good enough" Those things all remind me of DVD-Upconversion fanatics.....


I'm in the "Wait and See" camp...... there's no doubt a better technology will eventually come out..... I personally never thought it would be this soon, and still don't really think the studios would green-light it at this point (so early) but I'd like to at least see all the cards on the table before I make too many assumptions.

[Chevypower]

yes, i can honestly say I have seen 2160x3840 on a Sony LCD panel (it was at NAB), and it is an incredibly noticeable improvement over 1080x1920. I would do the upgrade if it was available and affordable.

[Anthony P]

Seems like a lot of negative response to this, despite the numerous threads hoping that 4K becomes a realization....... Who cares 'who' develops it.... if it does happen, and it's truly an audio/video improvement to Blu-ray's current capabilities..... I will be at the store picking up my new player

you are missing the point. This is supposedly 4k compressed to hell in order to work on DVDs. the 4k is 10mbps max, I don't care how much some thing it is possible or acceptable, but in the end it will have much less information then the BD. The issue is that compression works by making megablocks of pixels. It is easy, for example, to take the credits and block them a lot and so compress them a lot and still have relatively 4K resolution, it is impossible to do it on a detailed image in an action sequence.