4K Movies Releases

[Toptube]

Just lemme know when they quit color grading everything in teal and orange.

[Esox50]

Well, if the Sony guy said CES would provide clarity on streaming vs. physical media...I'd say we're up sh!t creek without a paddle. All of these "exclusive" 4K streaming deals with Samsung and their cohort & Sony with Netflix.

$30,000 77" OLEDs, pseudo-4K panels, Panasonic basically dead (i suspect this may be their last year in the TV business), streaming...

Good luck guys! It's gonna be mediocrity streaming and sh!t 4K. What a wasted opportunity. It's no wonder most of these CE companies are in trouble.

OK, I'm done...but I don't feel any better...

[Esox50]

Oh yeah, and more dumb curved TVs. WTF?!?!?! WAs it Samsung that is showing where you can press the button and the TV "flexes" to a curve?

What people are they surveying that makes them think we want this gimmicky garbage? I don't get it.

[BozQ]

Will having a curved screen help reduce crosstalk issues with 3D BD?

[saprano]

With the word 4K being said a billion times (as Penton hinted) at Sony's conference, I would have thought something about 4K bluray, or a standard coming soon, would be mentioned.

Panasonic's done with plasma. Claiming its LCD's will be plasma like. Yeah right.

I do not like where this industry is headed. When I started this hobby in 2007 it had sense of wonder and excitement. Who can forget when Pioneer showed that thin plasma prototype? Now it's nothing but disappointment.

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by Esox50

Well, if the Sony guy said CES would provide clarity on streaming vs. physical media...I'd say we're up sh!t creek without a paddle. All of these "exclusive" 4K streaming deals with Samsung and their cohort & Sony with Netflix.

$30,000 77" OLEDs, pseudo-4K panels, Panasonic basically dead (i suspect this may be their last year in the TV business), streaming...

Good luck guys! It's gonna be mediocrity streaming and sh!t 4K. What a wasted opportunity. It's no wonder most of these CE companies are in trouble.

OK, I'm done...but I don't feel any better...

Yes. Not a single word about 4K physical disk during the Sony CES press conference (4K discussion starts at 00:7:20):

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/42493231

[Penton-Man]

We last left off talking about future *wow factors* – https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...2A#post8609029

Well, you all should be familiar with this ‘wow’ word by now , just click on the arrow, watch the commercial then scroll back to about the 18-19 min. timestamp while still available to view the entire keynote by Sony’s Kaz Hirai - http://live.cnet.com/Event/CES_2014_...keynote?Page=0

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Yes. Not a single word about 4K physical disk during the Sony CES press conference (4K discussion starts at 00:7:20):

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/42493231

LOL, you guys don't get it. Sony is promoting its 4k streaming service to assist its dismal TV sales. Thus, they will push a few hundred titles via streaming and sell as many 4k TVs as they can in the next 3-4 years. After, that they will move to something else and try to sell you a new kind of TV. At the rate technology is advancing and with the focus being the short term, that is what you will get from Sony and others.

Electronic sales via a multitude of platforms which make true ownership and tranfer/sales of those rights difficult to impossible is the goal of the industry...makes sense for THEM. They sold you SDTVs, they sold you 1080i/720p TV, they sold you a 1080p "Full HDTV", they sold you a "smart HDTV", they sold you differing varations of 3D TVs, 4K TVs, Virtual TVs?

The premise is simple, the perceived benefits from one generation to the other become progessively smaller. Fewer customers upgrade to the " next best thing". Thus, in face of fierce competiton, prices are reduced fast and profit margins are small.Thus, the only alternative is to introduce something else...with the lifeline of each generation also being shortened.

[Mavrick]

So the "industry" has decided to deliver 4k content via online streaming. Aparently you only need broadband speeds of 15Mbps, currently I get 4Mbps.

I can't see this taking off like BD if no one is going to deliver content on a physical format.

I'm more interested in the revolution that is Dolby Vision than 4k now. I believe theres more of a "revolution" to be found in increased nits than pixels.

[Penton-Man]

Geez guys wasn’t this pre-CES bone which was tossed out by the BDA Promotions Committee VP sufficient?.... http://www.insideci.co.uk/articles/i...f-blu-ray.aspx

P.S.
Here’s the article/interview in its entirety if you can’t connect -

Interview: 4K Ultra HD and the future of Blu-ray
posted on Monday, 30th December 2013 by Steve May

Few doubt that 2014 will be the year that 4K Ultra HD breaks into the big-screen mainstream. With second generation HDMI 2.0 screens incoming and plummeting prices, the 55-inch plus TV market is set for an irrevocable upgrade. However questions persist about the availablility of native 4K software. Pay broadcasters are quietly considering options and Netflix has a streaming proposition, however it's packaged media that potentially offers the most exciting platform for UHD. To learn more about Blu-ray's 4K upgrade, Inside CI talked to Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) Promotions Committee VP Marty Gordon (pictured above).

Gordon tells us that the BDA has had a Format Extension Task Force working on recommendations for over a year. It's time is well spent, he says. "We need to get it right. That means getting feedback from many different stakeholders, studios, the hardware companies, the technology suppliers. These people are all part of the BDA and all part of the discussion."

Talking to Gordon, it's clear that 4K Blu-ray won't just be about enhanced resolution. "We view the next step in Blu-ray as more than just 4K," he explains. "After all, if you're going to enhance the format, then really enhance the format, from dynamic range to bitrates and sound-quality. Blu-ray is the perfect format for 4K Ultra HD." Of course, all this extra data will consume space. While the BDA officially refuses to be drawn on the nature of the storage media itself, it's known that replicators have been trialing triple layer BD media able to store 100GB, offering a storage capacity per layer of around 33GB. Of course we want to be able to offer films like Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy in native High Frame Rate, he adds.

4K Blu-ray versus 4K streaming technology
Interestingly, Gordon does not seem to be alarmed by the rapid UHD progress made by rival streaming technologies: "We view streaming as very complimentary to the Blu-ray experience," he says. "But Blu-ray remains the quality play. Netflix? It's a fundamentally different experience. It's all about what you want to consume and when you want to consume it." The format battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray may well now be part of tech history, but Gordon says such competition will always play a part in progress: "I personally think that as long as there are new technologies and innovations, there will be different possibilities…"

That said, he stresses that Blu-ray as a format continues to grow. Despite unparalleled competition from other content sources, the humble disc appears in rude health. "Western Europe is good, and the US is great," enthuses Gordon. "Over the last quarter, Blu-ray software sales were up 20 per cent. Germany is up 41 per cent over the first half of the year, in the UK it's up 37 per cent over the same period. There's a lot of momentum behind the format. Studios are still very keen to promote the studio ownership model, and physical media remains a big part of that. What it boils down to is all roads lead to the consumer - and a vast majority of the business is bright shiny discs getting sold."

The proliferation of viewing technologies is inevitable, says Gordon. What's happened is the home entertainment market has fragmented, he says. "It used to be one size fits all, and that was DVD. But if you think of all the services which are now coming up, the new ways of consuming content has seen people getting ever more inventive. This was all unimaginable when we launched DVD."

Ultimately though, says Gordon, there's "nothing simpler than disc in tray. Nothing is more beneficial to consumers than a disc in tray that works across all manufacturers products."

Perhaps surprisingly, the BD format has also found a role to play in the growing adoption of High-Res Audio, with the development of Blu-ray Audio. Interestingly though, this doesn't fall under the remit of the BDA. "The discs are compatible with Blu-ray," explains Gordon "but Blu-ray audio is not part of the BD specification." However the BDA spokesman is quick to offer support for the concept. It offers music labels another opportunity dig into their catalogues, he notes.

Educating consumers about 4K Blu-ray
While there's certain to be buzz about 4K generally, the man from the BDA is under no illusions when it comes to marketing the technology. "Yes, ther will be a need for consumer education" he says, "but everything in its time. There's always the early adopter who wants the latest greatest of everything in the best quality. And that will always be there. They're the influencers. History will repeat itself in that regard."

Of course, Blu-ray has its own affiliated cloud technology in the shape of UltraViolet. However despite grand talks of millions of UV accounts in the wild, there still seems remarkably little consumer awareness, or indeed interest, in UV as a platform...

"We view UltraViolet as a digital extension to the overall content consumer experience," says Gordon. "The growth is impressive. We have a lot of registered users in the US, around 15 million - and a lot of this has grown from the Blu-ray experience. Buyers get the disc and register the code to get a portable version. We see Blu-ray and UltraViolet working hand in hand in that regard." UV is very studio driven, he adds. "It's easy to look at UV and say that was too little to late, but the reality is studios are doing an awful lot, taking an entire industry to the cloud…"

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Mavrick

So the "industry" has decided to deliver 4k content via online streaming. Aparently you only need broadband speeds of 15Mbps, currently I get 4Mbps.

I can't see this taking off like BD if no one is going to deliver content on a physical format.

I'm more interested in the revolution that is Dolby Vision than 4k now. I believe theres more of a "revolution" to be found in increased nits than pixels.

Mav, I owed Richard Paul a little elaboration as to the challenges (but they are not restrictive impossibilities) to the previously discussed 3 significant enhancements to 4K in order to make it truly UHD.

Give me a few moments to go back and try to address each one individually while you listen to Kaz’s ‘wow’ keynote which I’ve linked to in the post above (note to Wendell, a new projector is coming out).

I’ll try to touch on Dolby Vision a little...while I have time here.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

I am interested in the Rec. 2020 color space since it sounds like a big improvement that could be seen on UHDTVs a few years from now. There are likely several problems with using a wide color space in terms of properly displaying it (since most flat panels could only display 60% to 80% of it) and it would require more advanced video processing but it looks like it could happen in 2 or 3 years.

Impediments to B.T.2020 chromaticity coordinates being (but which simply represent challenges easier to overcome than those for HFR and HDR displays (4,000 nits capable):

1. Native LCD is ~ 97% of DCI P3. BT.2020 is 1.52 x that of P3. So, LCD (even expensive LCD reference (i.e. color grading) displays only show about 70% of B.T.2020. To get closer to 100% of B.T.2020, that would require some serious ‘more advanced video processing’. Though, funny thing is….turns out that in regards to the color coordinates for BT.2020, the primaries lie just slightly outside the range of OLEDs. Imagine the *coincidence* of that.

2. B.T.2020 RGB signals are not compatible with Rec.709 legacy devices; therefore, there must be a color space conversion and some form of gamut mapping to get to Rec.709. Color space conversion is not a problem. Gamut mapping can be tricky, and as of yet, nobody I know of has worked out a good solution on display circuits for gamut mapping that would work at the rates required by 4K TV. You see, gamut mapping is subjective and different engineers from different companies desire to do it differently with no real consensus as of yet. This will lead to different results on different manufactures’ displays. It’s a generic problem of WCG signals with limited color gamut legacy displays, not specific to B.T.2020 colorimetry, per se. It will be solved by either finding one specific standardized method or controlling it by metadata about the source's actual color gamut.

[vargo]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Yes. Not a single word about 4K physical disk during the Sony CES press conference (4K discussion starts at 00:7:20):

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/42493231

I got a good laugh when they showed off their 'flagship' TV around the 29:59 mark ... you could see ridiculous blooming around the white Sony logo. Typical LCD garbage.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

HFR is less likely since there is resistance to anything higher than 24 fps in Hollywood. Even James Cameron decided to record only some scenes of his Avatar sequels at 48 fps and he was one of the most vocal supporters for HFR. While a few European broadcasters are considering 100 fps they are also planning to have a phased introduction for UHDTV (with HFR getting added in the second phase) so HFR looks like it is at least 5 years out.

Not speaking to you specifically but to general readers who may not be that familiar with HFR. HFR is not of value solely for objects or people moving as in the demo by the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ghcm9 , but also, for almost anytime the camera pans during a soccer or football (or any filmed activity), because that dang panning usually causes motion blur, which results in less resolution.

Impediments to the implementation of HFR include, amongst others, standardization and actual physical making of at least a 25G single link interface on the production side, a new version of an HDMI interface (greater than HDMI 2.0, unless TV manufacturers use DisplayPort 1.3…which is coming soon) as well as increasing the practical memory bandwidth in home receivers and HEVC decoder integrated circuits capable of handling 120fps becoming available.

But like with WCG, scientists and engineers are now thinking about and working on solutions to some of those challenges, for instance 120fps capable HEVC decoder ICs are expected by 2018. On the production side, working groups in SMPTE are working on the upgraded interface to carry all the extra data which shooting at 120fps would require.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

HDR is the least likely to happen since there are no real standards for it and the only major company promoting it is Dolby. The costs to make a 4,000 nits display is very high so I don't see how they could hope to make affordable consumer displays for it.

In order to make a 4,000 nits capable LCD with power consumption efficiency meeting the Appliance Efficiency Regulations Pertaining to Television Efficiency for California (http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/2009_tvregs/ ), it would require something on the order of Albert Einstein thinking.

Good luck with that.

The only feasible solution at this time is to boost the brightness of OLEDs (which could be done). Alas, there is yet another reason for OLEDs to succeed rather than just excellent contrast and black level performance that well-heeled videophiles like to publicly swoon about.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

Yep, and as someone who is interested in the future of video I have tried to keep up to date with UHDTV since it has a lot of potential.

Although not amongst the choices given because rather than for general content TV watching, this is more related to cinematic (filmmaking) content per se - a perceptual HDR Dolby-type encoding at the post production level for mastering (as alluded to starting about here - https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...by#post8569719) is set to arrive first…. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/beh...nced-4k-668557

Attention Mav, even without 4,000 nits displays, this stuff looks very good on LDR displays. The question is will filmmakers and studios get on board this revolutionary technology?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Amir would certainly dismiss your referenced report because of the PSNR charts. I remember dr1394 (a.k.a., drmpeg, Ron) would post some of his test results using PSNR and Amir (and his colonies) would go into long-winded mode of why PSNR test were invalid.

Despite the fact that PSNR is sometimes criticized for its poor correlation with perceived (subjective) image quality, it still remains the most popular and primary objective quality reference in codec development. For example, both HEVC and VP9 developers use PSNR based video quality metric in their comparison graphs for quality/bitrate comparisons against h.264.

As long as one understands its limitations (no interframe interactions are considered with the PSNR model, so some specific temporal artifacts such as flickering are ‘missed’ with this metric), I think most investigators believe it is not “invalid” and actually systemically underestimates the coding gain of an advanced codec.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

With the latter point in mind Penton, I think you're bang-on about the possibility of a two (or more ) tier system of UHD...

My wife says I’m also brilliant at tying a half and full Windsor knot.

[raygendreau]

My impression is that nobody is promoting 4K physical media at CES 2014. Is that correct? (Penton-That Life Space UX Short Throw $30,000 projector to be introduced this summer by Sony was a definite wow, at least in concept)

"Ultra High Definition (UHD), which includes higher 4K resolution, better color depth, and improved sound
This new format provides a crystal clear picture, and makes TVs, some say, look like a window. Sharp trotted out endorsements from directors who talked about the fact that more detail lets them capture more subtle emotions. One hurdle for 4K TVs is their price—today, the premium for 4K over a comparable HDTV set is about US $3000. Another hurdle is lack of content, but Netflix announced at the show that it would be streaming “House of Cards” in 4K, and will start producing all its original shows in the format. Finally, there’s the bandwidth issue—more pixels on the screen means more data to transmit, and with streaming rapidly overtaking disc-based media, telling folks to go out and buy a 4K disc and player isn’t going to cut it. But Netflix had more good news on that front: it announced 4K streaming support, and said streaming will even work at bitrates under 15 Mbps. Comcast’s Xfinity on Demand will be upgraded to support 4K as well, and Samsung said it’s working with Direct TV to include streaming in 4K."

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/c...y-smart-and-4k

and re the short throw 4K projector: http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/07/s...row-projector/

[vargo]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

As long as one understands its limitations (no interframe interactions are considered with the PSNR model, so some specific temporal artifacts such as flickering are ‘missed’ with this metric), I think most investigators believe it is not “invalid” and actually systemically underestimates the coding gain of an advanced codec.

PSNR is unfortunately close to useless as a visual quality metric. It is useful for lots of things but doesnt reliably tell us that X looks better than Y to human eyes.