4K Blu-ray Confirmed, Coming in

[Dex Robinson]

Originally Posted by KRW1

I didn't really think we'd still be talking about bluray in 2015/6 anyway, so just for sticking around it's a winner.

I was told that we'd all be buying downloads by about 2013 and bluray was released just as physical media was about to go obsolete so would never be more than a niche format with very few releases and certainly no B-movie or cult movies would be released on the format. Sounds familiar.

The problem with that line of thought is that I never dreamed we'd be talking about DVD as the dominant format in 2015/6.

So if Blu-ray is considered a "winner" for sticking around with about 30% of the physical market, then how do you describe DVD with 70% of the market?

If people describe BD as "winning", then I can only think of Charlie Sheen and his famous statement of "WINNING"!

When HD discs of both formats were about to debut nearly a decade ago, I was a blind cheerleader. I loved the idea of high def (still do). I was on the forums fighting for the high definition cause. I got into bitter fights with people who told me DVD would be good enough. People would ask me, "Do you actually believe Blu-ray will be the dominant format?". I told them. "Absolutely...but it might not be until 2011 or 2012 until BD replaces DVD". And I believed it. With all my heart, I believed it. After all, people were being forced to convert to digital and they were all buying new high definition TVs. I knew for a fact that people wouldn't be stupid enough to keep buying standard def DVDs to watch on HDTVs.

Right?

Nope. Wrong. Wrong big time.

Turns out that the overwhelming majority of home video buyers don't care nearly as much as me. They were...and still are...blissfully buying DVDs to watch on their 60" HDTVs. People just don't care. They really don't.

I wish they cared. I thought that they would. As God is my witness I believed they wouldn't tolerate standard definition media on high definition TV sets.

But facts are facts. We have a decades worth of hard numbers that tell a story. Nobody can honestly look at the numbers and say that Ultra HD Blu-ray has a bright future. With over of decade of HDTV (I bought my first HDTV in early 2003) and 8 years (or so) of Blu-ray sales, standard definition DVD owns the physical media market.

There is NO empirical evidence that Ultra HD Blu-ray will magically be able to capture a large market share from it's predecessor. None.

I hate always being negative. I come here everyday trying to think of something positive to post, Nobody wants a constant downer posting in a thread. It's just that I see the same ill-conceived cheerleading that I was guilty of 10 years ago.

[dubious]

Originally Posted by Dex Robinson

If people describe BD as "winning", then I can only think of Charlie Sheen and his famous statement of "WINNING"!

In hindsight, the irony is hilarious. "WINNING! ... or how to score AIDS"

That's kind of the analogy to UHD right?

[raygendreau]

Sony introduced Blu-rays to the home entertainment consumer market in 2006. (The first Blu-ray Disc titles were released on June 20, 2006: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Twister, Underworld: Evolution, xXx (all Sony), and MGM's The Terminator) They believed it would replace DVD and promote a new buying cycle for home entertainment equipment. What Sony and the rest of the CE industry failed to realize was that the improved quality of the format would not motivate the entire universe of home entertainment consumers to replace their equipment.

The CE manufacturers addressed this issue by making equipment backward compatible and the content creators addressed it by offering combo packs thinking that the non quality conscious home entertainment consumer would eventually “see the light” and make the switch from DVD to BD. It did not happen. It won’t happen, and if you are a “video junkie” (7% of internet subscribers that buy the most physical media and, ironically, the most digital EST) YOU DON’T WANT IT TO HAPPEN.

Rather than acting indignant and sometimes downright arrogant when price and convenience conscious consumers stick to their DVDs and increasingly support digital delivery, YOU SHOULD APPLAUD THEIR BEHAVIOR and hope that it continues.

Home Media Magazine provides a snapshot of DVD/BD revenue share comparing the current week with the same week in the prior year. There is a weekly vigil and forum members alternately cheer when BD market share grows at the expense of DVD and ignore when it doesn’t. I wonder if any of them have thought this through to the end game. Let’s say the studios stopped selling DVDs tomorrow and every one of the DVD buyers switched to BD. (Obviously, in the real world most of the DVD buyers would simply increase digital purchases and rentals.) With the huge influx of new BD buyers (remember these folks haven’t changed their buying motivation; price and convenience with quality a distant third) the major studios will respond with a gradual degradation of content quality. Net result: a very unhappy “video junkie” collector market segment.

“Blu-ray should never have been marketed as a mass product,” Stephenson said. “It should have been more of a collector format that could support the numbers that it would ultimately do because as all of us can attest, we would pay.”

“Panelists sung the praises of independent distributors such as Shout Factory, Criterion, Olive Films, Arrow Films, Twilight Time and Kino Lorber, among others, who have continued to embrace physical media with new special-edition Blu-rays of catalog titles.”

“It’s a niche business but they’re finding their audience and they’re targeting that audience and they’re delivering quality,” Hunt said. “But the studios aren’t interested in doing that. They just don’t want to be part of that niche business.”

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/com...al-media-36233

So, here comes 4K UHD BR and my advice to the major studios is, retain digital distribution rights for your hot new releases and license physical distribution to the independents that can provide the content and packaging that the quality conscious collector demands. The independents have a business model that makes this work. The major studios do not. They need to stop being greedy. Surely, those brilliant minds in Hollywood can structure a licensing deal with the independents that allows everyone to win, including the collector.

“Blu-rays are for collectors, cineastes, and connoisseurs: Treat them accordingly”

read:https://thedissolve.com/features/exp...elevant-again/

Note: The term “video junkie” is not derogative. It and the “7% of internet users” is from an SNL Kagan analyst quoted in this HMM article http://www.homemediamagazine.com/new...ital-hd-32632: (See Who is Buying?)

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by DVD Polizei

I give Blu-ray a C-.

Name something better

It's the only choice in town, so when you have no competition, why strive for quality. How can you say Blu-ray has done well when no other competitor has been allowed into the market.

It's a STANDARD. Competing formats just kill themselves confusing customers. And there's all the streaming formats now anyway, so what are you talking about?

HD DVD would have done just fine, and would not have used a crappy-ass layer of Java, screwing up Blu-ray players on a consistent basis.

HDi was better? How? Even your current basic cheap (sub $100) BD player has no issue with Java.

You wouldn't have needed updates just to play a movie. But Sony wanted an extra layer of protection from copying.

Sony didn't want anything. It's the studios that demand things like DRM and Region locks. And I hope you're not drinking the format war kool-aid of thinking BD was a Sony format. Panasonic has more patents, and along with Pioneer and Philips formed the core of the BDA (not to mention it was SAMSUNG who launched the first BD player). Toshiba was far more monopolistic...it was them and NEC. That's pretty much it.

And who the F**K uses BD-Live, anyway?

Same studios that would have used HDi.

Additionally, studios haven't even taken advantage of the damn Blu-ray format's storage capacity. We have extras MISSING and COMPLETELY DISREGARDED from those who put releases on the Blu-ray format.

Blame the studios. NOT THE FORMAT.

How many DVD-only shows have been put on Blu-ray for consumer convenience?

This matters why?

Most movies should be at the 30Mbps rate, and I see routinely they are at 18Mbps. Color gradients of shadows and solid colors are still seen...just like DVD. BD-25 discs are preferred over BD-50 discs.

And if we had HD DVD we'd have bitrates in the single digits. In VC-1.
This isn't 2007. The vast majority of releases are on BD-50. I'm surprised when I see a BD-25 these days.

Even though consumers now have an average of 3x the average television size, the quality of Blu-ray has not caught up with them.

UHD-BD is almost here. We had HDTVs long before HD DVD was launched before it was ready. And those HDTVs were much smaller than they are now. BD was *too good* for them. A lot of consumers complained they couldn't see the difference between DVD and BD on those small displays. Only NOW are we getting displays that stretch BD to the limit...and even then it still looks pretty darn good.

Yeah, bring on 4K. You better keep your Blu-rays...and your DVDs...because the same material you saw there more than likely will NOT be on your super fancy awesome 4K disc.

Mind telling me tomorrow's lottery numbers while you're predicting the future?

This game of better quality is slowly eating itself to the point of being unsustainable, and this is not because of lack of consumer interest...but the lack and apathetic behavior of movie studios not giving consumers what they want in a release.

Consumers want a definitive release.

Movie studios want you to continually upgrade your physical collection.

It's been this way for going on 40 years now. It's called progress. We're finally to the point where we can exactly duplicate the theatrical quality experience at home with UHD and Atmos.

Never understand why the luddites continue to threadcrap here.

[Derb]

iHD. Yeah it ain't an Apple thang. lol

There is too much in those c- rants I can't even get into it being an adopter to both formats & heavily supporting them.

Back to iHD, I actually enjoyed the PIP with what WHV was doing & Universal. (WHV was more stable at it though) Just the other day I was thinking how come that never took off on BD? If you remember Terminator 3, that was done but when first released they had to put 2 movie files on 1 BD-50. It worked. Waste of space but worked.

Since then I never followed BD's PiP features & since they are scarce I figure studios gave up on them or the BD tech wasn't there.

[elwaylite]

It's amusing the amount of people that hate on something they dont have to buy...

I held out on a 4K display waiting on players, once they were planned I was in. XBR is all calibrated and ready to go, bring on CES 2016...

[Wendell R. Breland]

For the record:

Tokyo Japan, February 19, 2002: Nine leading companies today announced that they have jointly established the basic specifications for a next generation large capacity optical disc video recording format called "Blu–ray Disc". The Blu–ray Disc enables the recording, rewriting and play back of up to 27 gigabytes (GB) of data on a single sided single layer 12cm CD/DVD size disc using a 405nm blue–violet laser. The companies that established the basic specifications for the Blu–ray Disc are:

Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Thomson Multimedia

For BD patents see MPEG-LA and One-Blue.

[bailey1987]

iHD in all fairness was better implemented. It was a standard feature across all HD-DVD players from launch also I have yet to see a Blu-ray use Java in a way which I thought was interesting. One film I can remember on HD-DVD that had an interesting use of iHD was Warner Bros. Poseidon there was a feature where you could track the passengers though the ship, their progress was charted on a graph and there was making of videos along the way. For some reason this feature was not re encoded for Java and ported over to the Blu-ray.

Another thing of note is that HD-DVD did have 50Gb discs and they were used and look at it this way it's not as if Blu-ray progressed any further in it life time to say 100Gb discs without needing a new player. Almost all Blu-ray discs use variable bit rate as well so there's not much to go on there although HD-DVD did shoot it's self by using Dolby Digital + on a lot of titles.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by Dex Robinson

The problem with that line of thought is that I never dreamed we'd be talking about DVD as the dominant format in 2015/6.

So if Blu-ray is considered a "winner" for sticking around with about 30% of the physical market, then how do you describe DVD with 70% of the market?

If people describe BD as "winning", then I can only think of Charlie Sheen and his famous statement of "WINNING"!

.

I've snipped that for length but I don't disagree with any of it. You'd be a fool to suspect UHD will persuade people to stop buying DVDs and snatch back the market share. It won't happen, it won't stop my buying UHD either. DVD is popular because it's cheap and everyone has a player in one form or another. I don't see that it's much of a problem, I guess. If I buy an album on vinyl, it doesn't stop most people buying it as an MP3. I don't see much of a difference. The days of mass market formats are over, it's fragmented - everyone does Netflix, ITunes, UV DVD, BD and, soon-ish, UHD.

[raygendreau]

I have been reading the http://www.nrdc.org/energy/files/uhd...use-report.pdf and I thought fleshing this out was warranted: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=4477

“we tested two movies on the Samsung UHD TV model UN55JS9000, first with the 4K version of content and then with the 4K HDR-encoded edition. On average, the HDR version of the movie caused this television to use 47 percent more energy than the non-HDR version (Figure ES-3). Even though the power use of the two versions was similar for very dark scenes, it was dramatically higher (often double) on extremely bright scenes, as evident by the energy usage spikes in the graph below of a 20-minute segment from Exodus—Gods and Kings.”

Recommendations from the NRDC:

CONSUMERS
n Buy ENERGY STAR–qualified models n Review the FTC EnergyGuide label while shopping to compare the energy use and operating cost of models you are considering n Make sure automatic brightness control (ABC) is enabled Avoid quick-start mode if you can.

MANUFACTURERS

Optimize 4K TVs for energy efficiency Ship TVs with ABC enabled
Update test methods: include 4K and HDR content; revise standby testing for Internet-connected TVs

Get ahead of HDR: develop consensus test clip, perform testing, and bring down energy use Limit growth in standby power as new apps/features are added

INDUSTRY POLICY MAKERS/GOVERNMENT

EPA: Reduce (and possibly eliminate) the additional power allowance for 4K/UHD TVs in the next revision of ENERGY STAR specifications

Utilities: Offer rebates for the most-efficient models on the market

Consider mandatory standards at the state or federal level to remove the least-efficient models from the market


I see trouble ahead for high nit displays and HDR. State and Federal Gov. will do this.

[elwaylite]

:yawn

These people worried about that nonsense will be the same ones that go get in a Chevy Tahoe and drive 50 miles one way to work...

[spectre08]

I replaced a Panasonic plasma with my 4K LCD, so don't look at me. My energy consumption went down by a lot.

[spectre08]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

I have been reading the http://www.nrdc.org/energy/files/uhd...use-report.pdf and I thought fleshing this out was warranted: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=4477

“we tested two movies on the Samsung UHD TV model UN55JS9000, first with the 4K version of content and then with the 4K HDR-encoded edition. On average, the HDR version of the movie caused this television to use 47 percent more energy than the non-HDR version (Figure ES-3). Even though the power use of the two versions was similar for very dark scenes, it was dramatically higher (often double) on extremely bright scenes, as evident by the energy usage spikes in the graph below of a 20-minute segment from Exodus—Gods and Kings.”

Recommendations from the NRDC:

CONSUMERS
n Buy ENERGY STAR–qualified models n Review the FTC EnergyGuide label while shopping to compare the energy use and operating cost of models you are considering n Make sure automatic brightness control (ABC) is enabled Avoid quick-start mode if you can.

MANUFACTURERS

Optimize 4K TVs for energy efficiency Ship TVs with ABC enabled
Update test methods: include 4K and HDR content; revise standby testing for Internet-connected TVs

Get ahead of HDR: develop consensus test clip, perform testing, and bring down energy use Limit growth in standby power as new apps/features are added

INDUSTRY POLICY MAKERS/GOVERNMENT

EPA: Reduce (and possibly eliminate) the additional power allowance for 4K/UHD TVs in the next revision of ENERGY STAR specifications

Utilities: Offer rebates for the most-efficient models on the market

Consider mandatory standards at the state or federal level to remove the least-efficient models from the market


I see trouble ahead for high nit displays and HDR. State and Federal Gov. will do this.

at the risk of having parallel conversations in 2 threads, big deal. If Chevy can figure out how to sell a 505HP Camaro that gets 20mpg and meets all of the regulations that the industry said would kill fast cars, then LG can make a high nit display that meets energy requirements.

It's not a problem of physics, it's a problem of engineering, and they're up to the task. Problems of engineering are only ever temporary problems.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by spectre08

I replaced a Panasonic plasma with my 4K LCD, so don't look at me. My energy consumption went down by a lot.

I am close to doing just this, have you noticed motion issues? Or the difference in black levels?

[spectre08]

Originally Posted by dvdmike

I am close to doing just this, have you noticed motion issues? Or the difference in black levels?

no motion issues once you get the configuration right. I found a canned calibration for my tv over at AVSForum that worked brilliantly.

Black levels are good, not plasma good obviously, but better than you'd expect.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by spectre08

no motion issues once you get the configuration right. I found a canned calibration for my tv over at AVSForum that worked brilliantly.

Black levels are good, not plasma good obviously, but better than you'd expect.

I did that for my plasma before I got the isf peeps in.

What set did you get

[spectre08]

Originally Posted by dvdmike

I did that for my plasma before I got the isf peeps in.

What set did you get

I have a 55" LG UB9500. I think it's about equivalent to this year's 55UF8600

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by spectre08

I have a 55" LG UB9500. I think it's about equivalent to this year's 55UF8600

I know of it, I am going Sony

[spectre08]

Originally Posted by dvdmike

I know of it, I am going Sony

it was a straight toss up between the LG and the Sony, and really all it came down to is that they were priced the same, but Best Buy would accept a 10% off "movers coupon" toward the LG but not toward the Sony.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by spectre08

it was a straight toss up between the LG and the Sony, and really all it came down to is that they were priced the same, but Best Buy would accept a 10% off "movers coupon" toward the LG but not toward the Sony.

I missed an amazon lightening deal on the Sony