When do you suppose 8K will be available?

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

It's not obsolete if it still works and can still receive all the video that you want it to receive. Until about three years ago, I was still watching everything on a 19" Sony CRT that worked perfectly. There are 4K sets out there now. I don't consider my 1080p set obsolete. There's Dolby Atmos receivers out there now. I don't consider my A/V receiver obsolete either. I'm typing this on a late-2008 Mac Book Pro. It works fine. The newer machines have higher resolution, are faster, are thinner and lighter, but I don't consider this computer obsolete either.

In fact, I'm driving an 11-year-old car. Certainly, newer cars have lots of great features (especially in terms of the dash) that my car doesn't have, but I don't consider my car obsolete either and I plan to keep it for years to come.

Are vinyl LPs obsolete? They're making a comeback (although admittedly, the hype is far larger than the actual sales), which this year will constitute about 4% of the U.S. music market but will probably double over last year. Aside from streaming subscriptions, it's the only part of the music market that's growing.

As I see it, obsolescence is relative. It's obsolete when you can't use it or enjoy it anymore. I've never understood the hysterical arm-flailing, that if something new and better comes along that you are somehow being "forced" to upgrade to it.

I still enjoy my CD collection that I started 30 years ago and haven't added much to it in the last decade, and I will still be enjoying my Blu-ray library in 10-20 years, alongside all my new media, whenever I choose to get into that.

[Pizzamorg]

But DVD never stopped, everything is still released on DVD now, you didn't need to upgrade, you still don't. I want that to be the case for Bluray but because of how far ahead of themselves they are looking, I fear it won't be - or not for long. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am, but I remain worried.

This isn't down to stupidity, hysteria or whatever insults you for some reason devolved into during an initially well written post just a personal worry of being priced out of the thing I love.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Pizzamorg

But DVD never stopped, everything is still released on DVD now, you didn't need to upgrade, you still don't. I want that to be the case for Bluray but because of how far ahead of themselves they are looking, I fear it won't be - or not for long. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am, but I remain worried.

This isn't down to stupidity, hysteria or whatever insults you for some reason devolved into during an initially well written post just a personal worry of being priced out of the thing I love.

I didn't call you stupid, and it came to hysteria when you started basing your "worry" on events and "facts" that are completely false and imaginary. There's a big difference between an insult and refuting a falsehood. It's not an insult for its own sake, hysteria is the correct word for it, you are going on about auto-suggested fears and anxieties that are based on things that are simply not happening. You are disseminating fear based on false information.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by Pizzamorg

Having to spend an extra three hundred a year on a phone is shitty enough, if I'm expected to spend two grand on a new TV and player every year I'll just start pirating because you're pricing out your own market.

Worst case scenario is you'll have to buy a new 4K player when they stop making new movies on Blu-ray. By the time that happens 4K players will be under $100. You won't have to buy a new TV to play 4K, just to get the full benefit. All of your existing Blu-ray discs will work on your player so there will never be a need to replace any movies you already have if you're happy with their quality. If they move on to 8K after that the same thing will happen again: spend $100 to get an 8K player when they stop making 4K movies and only upgrade your TV if you feel it is necessary.

I'm curious, who is making you spend $300 a year on a phone?

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

Worst case scenario is you'll have to buy a new 4K player when they stop making new movies on Blu-ray. By the time that happens 4K players will be under $100. You won't have to buy a new TV to play 4K, just to get the full benefit. All of your existing Blu-ray discs will work on your player so there will never be a need to replace any movies you already have if you're happy with their quality. If they move on to 8K after that the same thing will happen again: spend $100 to get an 8K player when they stop making 4K movies and only upgrade your TV if you feel it is necessary.

I'm curious, who is making you spend $300 a year on a phone?

Exactly. There is no requirement to be an early adopter, and no evidence to suggest that BD is going to vanish off the face of the earth the instant 4K starts to sell. If anything, 4K BD is evidence that disc media has at least another decade left in it, and as long as we are using optical disc media, all of them will remain viable, the same way DVD and CD are still alive because BD has kept optical disc media alive. Other than HD DVD, which actually WAS a failure, no generation of disc media has yet been obliterated just because a newer generation came along. (LD doesn't count, it was a dead-end tech, not a link in the chain of 5" optical disc media).

So basically, by rooting for the failure of 4K and 8K, these guys are in fact rooting for another round of HD DVD, (which would be bad for all disc media in general, again), rather than rooting for another generation of BD, which would be good for all currently existing disc media.

[AudioWarrior]

One thing is for sure, for film purists 8k should provide a resolution sharp enough that film scanned in 8k should look more like actual film then digital!

[Suntory_Times]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

And 5 years ago we saw the same technical claim from those same people regarding 1080p screens smaller than 50" at more than a 5' viewing distance. As with those claims, a simple firsthand demonstration debunks it. It's like saying you can't see the difference between 35mm and 65/70mm film.

8k has been demonstrated at expos, and deemed to be very impressive.

8k may have been initially designed as a cinema display, but it will find its way into homes, just like digital projectors did.

I never made any such claims though, so your essentially trying to debunk my point by saying others said something else and where wrong. Which is a terrible argument.

I can also see the difference between 35mm and 70mm. Read up about the eye and its limits of perception, what I am saying is not based on opinion. Now if you want to sit notably closer then what SMPTE and THX recommends then yes greater then 4k becomes a plus, which is very useful for some events. For movie viewing at home, not so much.

Originally Posted by AudioWarrior

One thing is for sure, for film purists 8k should provide a resolution sharp enough that film scanned in 8k should look more like actual film then digital!

and why is that. Most so called 'purists' I would wager are seeing an issue caused by their display device. Meaning the motion.

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by AudioWarrior

One thing is for sure, for film purists 8k should provide a resolution sharp enough that film scanned in 8k should look more like actual film then digital!

Some say that 35mm film's resolution goes up beyond 4K, up to 6K. But a lot of factors play into how film ends up looking when scanned at high resolutions, from the quality of film stock to how available the elements closest to the original negatives are. If only an interpositive is available, then even a 4K scan of the film is pointless.

Dr. Strangelove is a 4K scan. But it's a scan of an interpositive because the original negative was destroyed. And while it looks good, I've seen good 2K scans of films with the original negatives that look better.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Pizzamorg

But DVD never stopped, everything is still released on DVD now, you didn't need to upgrade, you still don't. I want that to be the case for Bluray but because of how far ahead of themselves they are looking, I fear it won't be - or not for long. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am, but I remain worried.

This isn't down to stupidity, hysteria or whatever insults you for some reason devolved into during an initially well written post just a personal worry of being priced out of the thing I love.

I personally think Bluray will carry on fine. I too, can be guilty of overthinking everything (as many will bear witness to) but I still think I will be buying Blurays by the end of the decade and beyond. I may buy some blockbusters on 4k disc but I will still buy a lot on regular Bluray.
Hopefully that team of yours win at the weekend and take your mind off your worries!

[mredman]

Blu-Rays will definitely carry on fine. Alone in US its sold in billions of dollars yearly and this 2nd quarter it rose 10% and in october and Dec last year there was reports Blu Ray rose in UK and Germany and it had a record breaking sale on Black Friday

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by mredman

Blu-Rays will definitely carry on fine. Alone in US its sold in billions of dollars yearly and this 2nd quarter it rose 10% and in october and Dec last year there was reports Blu Ray rose in UK and Germany and it had a record breaking sale on Black Friday

We have good taste us Brits! (so do you guys! )

[mredman]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

We have good taste us Brits! (so do you guys! )

Denmark but still an overseas country

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by mredman

Denmark but still an overseas country

Cool.

[bailey1987]

These that say 35mm film is close to 4K or 6K could the people who say its close to 4K have been using a 35mm film brand that has reduced the size of the image to fit both Dolby and DTS and SDDS sound onto the film? Whereas the ones who say its closer to 6K were using a35mm film brand that did not use any space for the sound?

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Suntory_Times

I never made any such claims though, so your essentially trying to debunk my point by saying others said something else and where wrong. Which is a terrible argument.

No, what I'm saying is that the statement you made that 4K is actually beyond the capability of the human eye to see is nonsense which is easily demonstrated at any store displaying 4K models. You can attempt to make logical categorizations of my "argument" all you want, but it doesn't change that fact. All of those so-called studies that presume to put the limit of eye-function within the range of existing technology are pure bunk and always have been, including the one you mentioned. When a group of people who have actually seen 4K and 8K concur and tell me that you can't see the difference, then I will take it with some merit; but when someone makes a pronouncement based on pure theoretics, which contradicts the first-hand-experiences people are reporting, then I call b.s.

If you can see the difference between 35mm film and 70mm film, then you can see the difference between 4k and 8k, because on digital scan it's at least the same difference.

[Richard Paul]

Originally Posted by Suntory_Times

I wonder if people in this thread know that watching a film in 4k from reference as per SMPTE and THX standards actually goes beyond humans ability to see.

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

No, what I'm saying is that the statement you made that 4K is actually beyond the capability of the human eye to see is nonsense which is easily demonstrated at any store displaying 4K models. You can attempt to make logical categorizations of my "argument" all you want, but it doesn't change that fact.

The SMPTE recommended viewing angle is 30 degrees while the THX recommended viewing angle is 40 degrees. For a person with 20/20 vision the recommended viewing angle for 1080p is 30 degrees while the recommended viewing angle for 4K UHDTV is 60 degrees. Even the most vocal advocate of 8K UHDTV, which is the NHK, recommends a viewing angle of 100 degrees.

[AudioWarrior]

Originally Posted by I KEEL YOU

Some say that 35mm film's resolution goes up beyond 4K, up to 6K. But a lot of factors play into how film ends up looking when scanned at high resolutions, from the quality of film stock to how available the elements closest to the original negatives are. If only an interpositive is available, then even a 4K scan of the film is pointless.

Dr. Strangelove is a 4K scan. But it's a scan of an interpositive because the original negative was destroyed. And while it looks good, I've seen good 2K scans of films with the original negatives that look better.

Well I suppose film scanned in 8k would be sharp enough that without extra video processing "DNR" one should be able to see the fine texture of the film stock itself!

Of course, that all depends in the source used and digital process used in the conversion. Aliasing is a digital byproduct of pixel resolution. The more pixels; the less pronounce the effect, along with what you would call the "screen door" effect. 8k should significantly get rid of most digital side effects that come with lower resolutions. Also releasing with 8k would be the rec 2020 color spec, which should bring real world improvements in color quality!

[ikms]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

No, what I'm saying is that the statement you made that 4K is actually beyond the capability of the human eye to see is nonsense which is easily demonstrated at any store displaying 4K models.

No, the only thing you can prove with a 4k demonstration at a store is that the human eye is capable of seeing improvement over standard 1080 HD. To demonstrate that 4k itself isn't beyond the capability of the human eye would take a source of greater resolution (6k or 8k) to fail in blind A-B tests at a standard viewing distance. I clearly see the difference between 4k and 1080 in store demonstrations while standing in front of huge screens (100"+) with eye-enveloping viewing angles - sticking my nose in it - but this is not sitting at a comfortable viewing distance. For my 180" projection and my own sofa seating preference, I know there will benefits beyond standard HD, but even with what is probably the largest home theater in Hokkaido, I have doubts about going further... the irony being that NHK is pushing 8k in a country where most people refuse to (or can't) go above 50" for home use.

[Kirsty_Mc]

What do we need 625 line high definition for when 405 line television is perfectly adequate... I mean to appreciate the extra definition you would have to have at least a 22" set to see the difference and these are impractically heavy... It would also need to stand at least 2 feet from the wall to fit it in the living room.

So would have gone a similar conversation in the 1960s. We should all be glad that no one took any notice of them then, and nobody will now!

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Kirsty_Mc

What do we need 625 line high definition for when 405 line television is perfectly adequate... I mean to appreciate the extra definition you would have to have at least a 22" set to see the difference and these are impractically heavy... It would also need to stand at least 2 feet from the wall to fit it in the living room.

So would have gone a similar conversation in the 1960s. We should all be glad that no one took any notice of them then, and nobody will now!

Indeed. I don't see how this is so hard for some people to understand: I really don't care if THX or some other for-profit industry association thinks that a 60" display at a 5' viewing distance isn't practical -- that's their opinion, and I don't agree with it.

Originally Posted by ikms

No, the only thing you can prove with a 4k demonstration at a store is that the human eye is capable of seeing improvement over standard 1080 HD. To demonstrate that 4k itself isn't beyond the capability of the human eye would take a source of greater resolution (6k or 8k) to fail in blind A-B tests at a standard viewing distance.

That's fine, but since people who have seen both do report detecting a difference between 4K and 8K, I think we should be able to put this crap to rest without any further semantics.

Originally Posted by ikms

I clearly see the difference between 4k and 1080 in store demonstrations while standing in front of huge screens (100"+) with eye-enveloping viewing angles - sticking my nose in it - but this is not sitting at a comfortable viewing distance. For my 180" projection and my own sofa seating preference, I know there will benefits beyond standard HD, but even with what is probably the largest home theater in Hokkaido, I have doubts about going further... the irony being that NHK is pushing 8k in a country where most people refuse to (or can't) go above 50" for home use.

I dispute yours and all others' pronouncements about what constitutes "comfortable" or "practical" or even "standard" seating distances, screen sizes, and viewing angles; and I'm fairly certain that I am not alone. Frankly, I find my 40" 1080p display at 2-3' to be a very limiting experience; it's too small, I want my field of view filled, at high resolution, without sitting so close to the screen that I can see the space between the glass and the pixels. I'm pretty sure that in a couple years when I'm sitting 3-4' from a 60" 4K unit, in a bedroom not a giant HT room, I will not find it "uncomfortable" or "impractical"... and then it will only be a matter of time before I want 8K instead.