4K Blu-ray Confirmed, Coming in

[Geoff D]

With all due respect, I hope you're dead wrong.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Guess what? 100 "bucks" equals £63 at current rates, so we're approaching this from the same angle after all.

That said, the bastards will do what they always do and simply change the dollar sign into a pound sign, so instead of £190-£320 (as per the rate of exchange) they'll be £300-£500 over here. ****s.

Not that this accounts for the entire difference but GBP and EUR prices already have local tax included in the price where as in the US tax is added on top of the advertised price.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

$300-500 for a launch player? Dream on. It will probably be $800-1000.

I'm thinking along the same lines although the players may be more in the $600 (low, budget, entry) - $1200 (high end) range.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Not that this accounts for the entire difference but GBP and EUR prices already have local tax included in the price where as in the US tax is added on top of the advertised price.

Bah, we still get shafted with the price of our tech, we always have. And with the dollar resurgent against the pound it makes importing a cheaper US deck less feasible. I might do what I did with HD DVD when that debuted, wait for six months then bag a player on ebay.

And if the players ARE £600-£1200 over here (all you do is change that sign! ) then the format will be dead as a dodo in the UK. You can buy a ****ing 4K TV for less than that.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Bah, we still get shafted with the price of our tech, we always have. And with the dollar resurgent against the pound it makes importing a cheaper US deck less feasible. I might do what I did with HD DVD when that debuted, wait for six months then bag a player on ebay.

And if the players ARE £600-£1200 over here (all you do is change that sign! ) then the format will be dead as a dodo in the UK. You can buy a ****ing 4K TV for less than that.

Then I don't think the players will be super expensive ($300-$500, probably). I mean you can get a basic 50+" 4k TV for $800 during some sales in the States. Why would they price the players more than the TV's?

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Bah, we still get shafted with the price of our tech, we always have. And with the dollar resurgent against the pound it makes importing a cheaper US deck less feasible. I might do what I did with HD DVD when that debuted, wait for six months then bag a player on ebay.

I realize it sucks as it has and does go both ways. When the American dollar was weak we got shafted on the exchange rate but now the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other direction. Of course, a lot of the UK releases seem to always be less than their US counterpart even with shipping. UK box sets even sell for a fraction of the American price.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

And if the players ARE £600-£1200 over here (all you do is change that sign! ) then the format will be dead as a dodo in the UK. You can buy a ****ing 4K TV for less than that.

This would be no different than past formats. The first DVD players sold for $500-$1200 and Blu-ray players were also in the $500 (PS3) - $1200 range.

[raygendreau]

[So, based on the Martin interview, the two surviving options from the AACS proposal are Device Bind and Media Bind. Bound Copy streaming to mobile devices local to the UHD player is out; as is Domain Bind which would have allowed cloud storage of content. I think this last will be offered eventually because most HE consumers will consider it a value added benefit. There were probably content protection issues that needed more work between DECE and AACS for those options.]


“Martin explains: "Ultimately, if I have a piece of media, I put it in my player and it will give me the option to make a copy of that disc on a local hard drive attached to the player. I don't have to reload media every time, I just go right to the hard drive and access the library.” [This might mean that internal storage for the UHD players is out and you will have the added expense of adding external storage in order to use the Device Bind option.]

"It's part of the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification. It will be optionally implemented but most manufacturers will embrace it. I will also be able to take that media and export it to a personal device, tablet, smartphone or whatever device is enabled, as a CMF (common media format) file."

“Naturally, the issue of piracy looms large.”The difficult part is protection mechanisms but those are resolved now and ready to go. It will have to be attached to the player to be loaded, there's a negotiated hand-off involving connecting to the internet and getting authorization. The number of devices can be set by studios. There could be a fee associated; it could be part of the disc package." [This is the Media Bind option. It will involve downloading content securely to a flash drive or SeeQVault type SD card. The mobile devices will have to be registered and probably need to initially be connected to the UHD player, not to download content directly to the mobile device, but to handshake with a secure HDCP 2.2 link during registration.]

[Regarding the fees: Rights can be offered and extinguished once accepted. So a fee may or may not be charged for each download to an external drive or SD card. A fee may be charged for each mobile device registered. Or, DRM may limit you to one download to an external drive or one flash drive. It is all up to the content providers. If you wish to take advantage of the Digital Bridge, you will not be able to avoid DRM or authentication].

http://www.whathifi.com/news/ultra-h...etflix-quality

“Additionally, an expansion of the technology to meet the robust content protection demands associated with 4K-UHD content is coming soon.”

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...s#.VVZmyGfbLDd

[Pseudo poll watchers are still left with the burning question: Will I be able to buy an Ultra HD Blu-ray that has the title key on the disc or will I require an online connection in order to download a title key to decrypt my content?]
[bracketed comments are mine.]

[Dylan34]

My guess would be 300 to 350 for entry level, 500 to 550 for a fully loaded model. Discs around 30-35 bucks.

[Mavrick]

I don't doubt that the first gen players will be quite high at launch.

Now if Sony release a redesigned PS4 with a UHDBD Drive instead of a PS4 "Slim" then I'd be all over it.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

I realize it sucks as it has and does go both ways. When the American dollar was weak we got shafted on the exchange rate but now the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other direction. Of course, a lot of the UK releases seem to always be less than their US counterpart even with shipping. UK box sets even sell for a fraction of the American price.

Sure, but the cost of the hardware has ALWAYS been slanted in favour of the US or the Far East. Being able to buy the 8-disc Superman BD set for something like £8 is certainly a bonus - our boxsets are much cheaper in general, you're right - but I'd have to buy a lot of boxsets to get close to making up the difference of about a third of the price of what could be a very expensive piece of hardware. And the UHD discs won't be cheaper over here to begin with, no sir.

This would be no different than past formats. The first DVD players sold for $500-$1200 and Blu-ray players were also in the $500 (PS3) - $1200 range.

I could stomach a £500 player but the line must be drawn here, no furthah!

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Mavrick

I don't doubt that the first gen players will be quite high at launch.

Now if Sony release a redesigned PS4 with a UHDBD Drive instead of a PS4 "Slim" then I'd be all over it.

There is that option too. A PS3 was my first foray into the world of Blu-ray so a PS4 Slim with the appropriate upgrade would also be acceptable.

[Mavrick]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

There is that option too. A PS3 was my first foray into the world of Blu-ray so a PS4 Slim with the appropriate upgrade would also be acceptable.

Yep. I couldn't justify £1k on a stand alone But a PS3 at £425 was a relative bargain and maintained a pretty high standard compared to the early players that ended up obsolete 6 months down the road, the PS3 kept up to date through all the revisions even 3D (minus some issues with certain audio playback).

I'd think a PS4 with UHDBD would be a much safer prospect than a first gen stand alone. But I doubt it would happen, would be nice though.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Sure, but the cost of the hardware has ALWAYS been slanted in favour of the US or the Far East. Being able to buy the 8-disc Superman BD set for something like £8 is certainly a bonus - our boxsets are much cheaper in general, you're right - but I'd have to buy a lot of boxsets to get close to making up the difference of about a third of the price of what could be a very expensive piece of hardware. And the UHD discs won't be cheaper over here to begin with, no sir.

I could stomach a £500 player but the line must be drawn here, no furthah!

The US Superman box set originally went for ~7x that (not including US taxes) in the states. You could say you make up the difference in the volume of media purchases over time compared to a less frequent hardware purchase. But most of the hardware is designed by Asian (Japanese or Korean) owned companies (Panasonic, Sony, LG, Toshiba, Samsung, Denon, Yamaha, Marantz, Onkyo, etc.) and manufactured in Asian countries. The US based/owned hardware companies disappeared long ago. How is that the fault of the Americans.

There have been some differences though in the hardware. It's more common to find dual voltage players in European (Region B) countries and it's quite common to find hardware which supports both 50 and 60 Hz video signals. A lot of times those extra features are stripped from the US versions. But what might work to the advantage of everyone is region free players. The manufacturers have pushed the BDA to go region free with UHD BD. This would help to lower the overall production cost per unit if the hardware manufacturers could simply design and distribute one model worldwide rather than having country/region specific variants.

[Kirsty_Mc]

Originally Posted by Brightstar

I dont care if they charge £35 as long as they do a very good job on remastering old classics

I'd rather pay more for a quality non online DRM copy.

[raygendreau]

No wonder they dropped "disc" from the Ultra HD Blu-ray logo.

"The last disc format


And will Ultra HD Blu-ray be the last disc format we see? Even Martin is prepared to concede that's almost certainly the case... but never say never.

"As of today, yes. We'll see how mature digital distribution networks become. You could probably say the same about the next-gen of terrestrial broadcasts. We think this will be the last iteration of this but we're certainly open to discussion."

http://www.whathifi.com/news/ultra-h...oHaqyPJLMM4.99

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

With all due respect, I hope you're dead wrong.

So do I, but if Sony is charging $700 for a 4K media player (and a 2nd gen player at that) then I don't see how a fully loaded UHD BD player will be cheaper. Especially if it has an internal hard drive. There's not going to be a big market for these players, so they can't count on volume to keep the price down. And I doubt there will be a lot of content to support it either.

Edit: they might be cheaper than I thought. Perhaps around $500-$800.

http://www.whathifi.com/news/ultra-h...rices-revealed

[GenPion]

Now the wait for Oppo to announce their 4K players. I really hope it isn't too long of a wait from them. I want a 4K Oppo.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

So do I, but if Sony is charging $700 for a 4K media player (and a 2nd gen player at that) then I don't see how a fully loaded UHD BD player will be cheaper. Especially if it has an internal hard drive. There's not going to be a big market for these players, so they can't count on volume to keep the price down. And I doubt there will be a lot of content to support it either.

Edit: they might be cheaper than I thought. Perhaps around $500-$800.

http://www.whathifi.com/news/ultra-h...rices-revealed

I think a lot of these Bridge compatible players, except for the higher end models, will require external storage supplied by the consumer of some kind. That will keep initial player costs down.

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by GenPion

Now the wait for Oppo to announce their 4K players. I really hope it isn't too long of a wait from them. I want a 4K Oppo.

As of Jan 2015 Oppo was in no hurry. (Home theater Forum post)
call them if you are interested, BDA spec finalized may have changed their schedule.

"We will likely not have a native 4Kx2K player until sometime in late-2016 if not early-2017.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.
2629B Terminal Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Service@oppodigital.com
Tel: 650-961-1118
Fax: 650-961-1119"

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

I think a lot of these Bridge compatible players, except for the higher end models, will require external storage supplied by the consumer of some kind. That will keep initial player costs down.

At launch, pricing tends to be at parity or slightly below teardown cost. PS3 for example: http://www.pcworld.com/article/156138/article.html

So, new drive, Digital Bridge, maybe internal storage. I still think the first UHD players are going to be 4 figures.