Did Blu-ray resolution take a big enough leap?

[sasquatch451]

DVD to Blu-ray took video resolution from 480p (about 720x480) to 1080p (1920x1080). Could blu-ray have gone further and jumped right to 1440p (2560x1440 to maintain 16:9)?

Was the technology to get the bit-rate there at the time? I'm pretty sure the TV resolution could have been easily done. Computer monitors have been supporting 2560x1600 for many years now after all.

Does anyone know why blu-ray stopped at 1080p?

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by sasquatch451

Does anyone know why blu-ray stopped at 1080p?

Same reason DVD stopped at 480i/p. The vast, vast, vast majority of TV monitors at the time of release were that resolution.

When DVD was announced in late 1996 I had been using 1280x1024 computer displays for four years.

Gary

[Clark Kent]

How many television displays right now can show anything over 1080p? The number must be minuscule. That resolution and above will have to wait for the next format.

[Jtodd]

Originally Posted by Clark Kent

How many television displays right now can show anything over 1080p? The number must be minuscule. That resolution and above will have to wait for the next format.

The only one i have heard of or was thought about being made was a toshiba that could upscale 1080p to a higher resolution,but not sure if its true or not and if it is sounds like a gimmick to me!

[Anim3]

i don't know but i think 1080p looks breathtaking enough on a 52" - 70" so i don't know if higher resolution will be any much different. i could be so wrong on this but we'll have to wait and see the next HD format that supports higher resolution to come out. as technology grows, hollywood seems to amazes us all with their movies techs & cg's as well

[BLindsay]

Originally Posted by sasquatch451

DVD to Blu-ray took video resolution from 480p (about 720x480) to 1080p (1920x1080). Could blu-ray have gone further and jumped right to 1440p (2560x1440 to maintain 16:9)?

Was the technology to get the bit-rate there at the time? I'm pretty sure the TV resolution could have been easily done. Computer monitors have been supporting 2560x1600 for many years now after all.

Does anyone know why blu-ray stopped at 1080p?

yeah and look at the cost of a 30" 2560x1600 monitor lol. Imagine what a big one would cost

[katala]

HDTV is 'full' at 1080p, I don't think the standard nor ATSC have anything higher.

It took many years to get consensus on what encryption, compression and hardware, and consensus only occurred in the last 3 years. The DVD like disc we know as BD wasn't made until 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray...rmat_finalized

[Oddiophile]

Originally Posted by sasquatch451

DVD to Blu-ray took video resolution from 480p (about 720x480) to 1080p (1920x1080). Could blu-ray have gone further and jumped right to 1440p (2560x1440 to maintain 16:9)?

Was the technology to get the bit-rate there at the time? I'm pretty sure the TV resolution could have been easily done. Computer monitors have been supporting 2560x1600 for many years now after all.

Does anyone know why blu-ray stopped at 1080p?

HDTV's came long before Blu-ray or HD DVD did. Blu-ray didn't choose the resolutions were using, TV manufacturers did.

The two competing resolutions for HDTV back in the day was 720p and 1080i.

Kind of like the HD DVD vs Blu-ray battle.

There was a big debate to which was better, 720p with it's lower resolution but progressive video, or 1080i with it's higher resolution but interlaced scan lines.

Eventually technology caught up and a few years back 1080p was created and considered the holy grail of HD offering the best of both resolutions. 720p's progressive and 1080i's resolution.

There are two new HD resolutions dubbed "Ultra HD" offering 2K & 4K (and possibly 8K) resolutions but thats still awhile off.

[syncguy]

1080P blu-ray is certainly a quantum leap from DVD for the home theaters. Blu-ray is really testing the ability of large home theater screens.

D-cinema will give much required even higher resolutions for huge commercial cinemas. However, the benefit of blu-ray to D-cinema transition for the home theaters would be less in compared to the DVD to blu-ray transition.

[RiseDarthVader]

Well over 90% of movies today are still getting the digital intermediate scanned in at 2048x1080 there isn't really any point in Blu-ray having a higher resolution. Even though I would like hollywood to go completly 4K.

[syncguy]

Originally Posted by RiseDarthVader

Well over 90% of movies today are still getting the digital intermediate scanned in at 2048x1080 there isn't really any point in Blu-ray having a higher resolution. Even though I would like hollywood to go completly 4K.

Yes, commercial theaters will benefit from 4K projection and if scanned at 8K would be better to get the best out of high res 4K projection.

[blurayjunkie]

Should I Stop getting Blu's now because there is better resolutions to come in the future? Are we going to get enough time out of blu-ray to warrent keep buying them?

[Kirsty_Mc]

Originally Posted by Oddiophile

HDTV's came long before Blu-ray or HD DVD did. Blu-ray didn't choose the resolutions were using, TV manufacturers did.

The two competing resolutions for HDTV back in the day was 720p and 1080i...

Before that however the Japanese Hi Vision / MUSE system operated on 1125 lines. There were even 1125 line MUSE laserdisc produced for the Japanese market. The MUSE system was an analogue compression technique.

Europe dabbled with HD-MAC, a 1250 line system, unfortunately it didn't get very far. In the UK the carrier that would have broadcast it (British Satellite Broadcasting) went bust and was taken over by Sky. This left us in the 4:3 PAL doldrums for years.

So a system based on HD-MAC would have given an extra 170 lines of resolution.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by sasquatch451

DVD to Blu-ray took video resolution from 480p (about 720x480) to 1080p (1920x1080). Could blu-ray have gone further and jumped right to 1440p (2560x1440 to maintain 16:9)?

That would have been greater than 2K resolution, and it's common for movies these days to be mastered at 2K resolution. That would be stupid.

It's also worth noticing that 2K resolution (roughly 1080p) goes beyond a person's ability to perceive on screen sizes and viewing distances that are most common. Most folks here who care about home theater probably wouldn't even have a benefit of a higher resolution. It's the principle of diminishing returns.

ps Kristy Mc: PAL is actually 5:4.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

ps Kristy Mc: PAL is actually 5:4.

Why 5:4? Where do you get this figure from? Are you talking about analogue PAL? I thought it was 4:3?

[Kirsty_Mc]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

ps Kristy Mc: PAL is actually 5:4.

[blueshadow | Kosty]

1920 x 1080 pixels also gives a lot more data and precision to allow up conversion for the higher 4K 2K displays.

[Anthony P]

I must agree with the rest, it might sound fun to leapfrog (and since anything is "possible" with compressed video) they could have gone beyond 1080p (if in nothing else then just in specs) but in the end 1440p (as in the OP) is just irrelevant to everyone right now and you just can't market (higher cost with no benefit) it. It also leaves the door open for the future (i.e. a new format with higher BW, resolution... where building the processing power for it will be cheaper and easier) .

[katala]

Originally Posted by blurayjunkie

Should I Stop getting Blu's now because there is better resolutions to come in the future? Are we going to get enough time out of blu-ray to warrent keep buying them?

A real issue is whether a home collection is really worth buying, rather than renting, and not that of BD itself. If you collected movies in the past in other formats, e.g. VHS, DVD, etc., aren't they all obsolete?

There will always be something better in the future, so what's the point of buying a movie now to see at home, unless you wish to enjoy it now in the resolution you see today, and see it more than once. I think that's the key issue.

There are a number of barriers to further movement in a 5 year horizon.

TV with higher resolution, while they are getting physically bigger, it remains 1080p

50G BD disks ~ 1080p, if 4k were to be used at home you'd need ~ 4x more memory, so ~ 200G; a 250GB BD disk has only recently been announced experimentally but it likely requires new hardware to decode. If they try to squeeze too much into smaller disk spaces, they risk the same problems as streaming, artifacts.

Streaming vs BD? There are some 1080p streams today but if you see them, they are far away from BD quality despite claims. IMHO technicians tolerate artifacts more than the artists at major studios, so the trend has been to compress a bit much. There are quite a bunch of folks who complain about Comcast's compression today and the slow deterioration of their HD quality, even if the broadcast is still 'HD'.

Will 4K be at home?

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/20...nd-red-ray.ars

http://hometheaterreview.com/five-ti...nema-standard/

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by katala

There will always be something better in the future, so what's the point of buying a movie now to see at home, unless you wish to enjoy it now in the resolution you see today, and see it more than once. I think that's the key issue.

agree, with the general statement, but I take a slightly different view. Going out to the theatre costs around the same as a BD (once you add drink and popcorn, which in a theatre is a must), so even one person viewing one time it is still "worth it" then you have that you are sure to be able to watch it when you want and extremely conveniently (last night I went to the hot air balloon festival, got home around 11pm-too early for bed and too late to organize something with friends, sat down and put in race to witch mountain, did not need to go to the rental place, did not need to decide on a movie that was there in-stock...) and in the end if you rent you might not see a movie again but if you buy it, even if you think you might not see it again after the first time, if it is there then you might (friends come over and never saw it, in a discussion it comes into the conversation and so now you are curious about something...).

50G BD disks ~ 1080p, if 4k were to be used at home you'd need ~ 4x more memory, so ~ 200G; a 250GB BD disk has only recently been announced experimentally but it likely requires new hardware to decode.

no, with every jump in resolution the difference is smaller not proportional let me ask you this simple question, let's say you have a completely black screen (let's face it, there are usually a few frames that way just before the credits) do you think you need to describe every one of the millions of pixels or if you could just describe it as a 1x1 pixel that is black. Even though you can't, describing as a 1x1 block would be enough to describe that whole frame no matter what resolution you can support, the next frame (also let's assume it is all black) would not need anything more (i.e. it is exactly the same). Now you could say "there are very few all black frames" but that is not just for a uniform pictures, let's say it is 2.4 AR the black bars would be the same, let's say it is someone standing in front of a white wall then that whole wall area might not have any more detail if it is 4k or 2k resolution. In real life most stuff are big and relatively uniform, so several areas in each frame will not need to go down it individual pixels. That is why even though DVD 8.7GB and BD has 6x the resolution(480->1080) @5.7 x bigger in capacity BD is much less compressed.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with asking for 4x or 10x the BW and capacity, just that if it is then you will not only have more resolution but also relatively speaking much less compression.