8K discussion thread

[Lee A Stewart]

I believe in a couple of years you will see 8K content - streamed, not on a physical format.

As of today, neither Christie nor Barco sell 8K Cinema projectors. Only 4K.

Once again, shooting in 8K gives headroom in the editing process, not with the intention of producing an 8K film, though there will probably be a few made with a 4K DI.

[X-rayvision]

And streamed 8k content is not worth buying an 8k tv for. The higher bit rate of 4k disks will look better then the 8k streams and also look better on too end naitive 4k oleds Then the 8k samsungs. 8k oleds are only available in massive sizes, they are not even a viable option for most people, for me 77 inch is the sweet spot in terms of price and maximum screen size. Why dont they offer the 8k tvs in smaller screensizes? Cause the difference isnt noticable, 8k will have a tough time taking hold until the lrice of these tvs are the same as 4k oleds, even at smaller sizers So customers dont have to pay more for stats they cannot percieve on their smaller condensed screens

[JohnAV]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

[Show spoiler]

Source: IMDB

Hadn't checked recently. Guess he abandoned that. Same IMDB details for 2, 3, 4, 5
Sticking with Sony VENICE X-OCN RAW 6K, Sony F55 4K and Alpha Camera for stills/backgrounds that I find online.

[moreorless]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

I believe in a couple of years you will see 8K content - streamed, not on a physical format.

As of today, neither Christie nor Barco sell 8K Cinema projectors. Only 4K.

Once again, shooting in 8K gives headroom in the editing process, not with the intention of producing an 8K film, though there will probably be a few made with a 4K DI.

I'm guessing disk releases probably wouldn't make sense for 8k since you'd be dealing with a minority format and high costs. I could potentially see quality DL's or flash drives/memory cards offered for less compressed quality than streaming would offer.

Cinemas going 8K as a counter to pressure from home viewing does seem like one way you could get more content.

Maybe you could see a situation were films are being scanned at 8K mostly for 4K releases(4K scans at HD afterall showed a benefit) but we also see an 8K release from them?

[Lee A Stewart]

Theaters will have to purchase new and very expensive 8K projectors on their own. Virtual print fees end at the end of 2020 so no more Hollywood help on equipment costs.

I don't have to tell you how bad the theater business is financially. IMO the Pandemic has put off any thoughts of upgrading projector equipment unless it is absolutely necessary. Sound upgrades to Dolby Atmos are a fraction of what it costs to put in a new high brightness laser projector.

Shooting content in 8K does have a number of benefits:

• Editing headroom
• Down sampled 4K DI
• Archival for the future

The USA is fully entrenched in 4K. I just don't see a desire to step up to 8K just because TV OEMs are selling them. IMO - that's the tail waging the dog. Content creators have more leverage than TV OEMs when it comes to image quality and money spent pursuing that goal. HD lasted from 1996 to 2014. I don't see 4K lasting any shorter of a time period.

There are so many unknowns as to what is going to happen next month when theaters finally reopen. LOL - I wish I had the answers. Then I would know to either buy movie theater stocks or sell them short.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by JohnAV

Here we are in 2020, and you know that in 2017 Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was film at 8K.

Shot in 8K, finished at 2K owing to the masses of VFX. Stuff is being 'shot' in 8K or 6.5K all the time these days because that's simply what the bestest cameras are offering and it provides ample scope for reframing in post, it's not a portent of some wholesale switch to an 8K ecosystem. It's been a massive struggle to get Hollywood to adopt 4K finishing (the dual workflows for 2D and 3D didn't help) and so I can't see how they're going to change to 8K any time soon. Even though there's been more processing power etc etc to help with VFX it seems like they've done what broadcasters have done for years: instead of using the extra bandwidth to provide better quality, they use it to provide more channels of regular quality in the same space and the same translates to VFX: why have 750 VFX shots at 4K when you can have 3000 at 2K?

For streamers it's a different story as they don't have to make 101 different deliverables or worry about broadcast bandwidth, Netflix has been finishing its own content in 4K, VFX included, for years and they even post-produced House of Cards in 6K like five years ago or something and I would be surprised if David Fincher's upcoming Mank is anything less than 6K. Not that 4K and higher VFX still isn't a push (one VFX house on a recent Netflix show noted that it could only QC the finished 4K renders in 2K chunks!) but they don't have to worry about any other platforms aside from their central offering, so everything in post can be geared up for that. Though the irony is that vertical extractions are becoming a lot more common for streaming content, so the 8K horizontal is being kneecapped in service of some eejit being able to view it on their phone while they're on the shitter.

So yes, there will undoubtedly be 8K OTT content in the years ahead - not just shot on, but finished at - but it's been so hard getting the TV and film industries in the western world to adopt 4K as a final output format e.g. upscaled 1080p for the Superbowl (with 4K cameras solely for 'mega zoom' slow motion purposes where they can zoom in x4 and still have a 2K resolution image) that 8K is pie in the sky stuff. And as for catalogue content, forget it: only the relative handful of large format films will give you anything close to 8K resolution. So while 4K felt like a natural progression from 2K, given that 4K is maxing out what you'd get from any particular 35mm show, 8K is overkill in the extreme for 99.9% of all filmed catalogue content. It's the first time in a long time that I've felt that x format was an answer to a question that no-one was aksing.

[Geoff D]

In short: I think 8K will take over as the de facto large screen display device just as 4K has, and some content will undoubtedly be created to take advantage of that. But as the industry at large is still grappling with 4K - itself long established as a mastering workflow well before 4K TVs came along, unlike 8K - and most legacy content won't even touch the sides of 8K then things like 8K disc will be a niche too far.

[HDTV1080P]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

I believe in a couple of years you will see 8K content - streamed, not on a physical format.

As of today, neither Christie nor Barco sell 8K Cinema projectors. Only 4K.

Once again, shooting in 8K gives headroom in the editing process, not with the intention of producing an 8K film, though there will probably be a few made with a 4K DI.

It is a possibility that around the year 2023 that at least one major streaming company might offer native 8K movies. And yes there is a possibility that a new 8K optical disc format might not be released around the year 2026, which would break with the around 10 year tradition. In the year 1997 the 480i DVD format came out. 9 years later in 2006 the standard 2D 1080P Blu-ray format came out (2010 saw the launch of the 1080P Blu-ray 3D format), and then in 2016 the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format was launched. So based on the 10 year cycle for optical disc resolution improvements maybe a new optical disc that is between 200GB to 2TB would be possible in the year 2026. Maybe it would be launched by the DVD association of companies and be called “8K DVD” with a mandatory 480i DVD layer for existing DVD players made since 1997. The Laserdisc format lasted between 1978-2000 in the USA until the DVD format in 3 short years replaced Laserdiscs. My point is the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format is more successful when compared to the Laserdisc format which only had around 2 million active users with a total of around 16.8 million Laserdisc players sold worldwide. There has been over 50 million XBOX systems sold and a certain percentage of those systems are the Xbox one S and X model with a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray drive.

If the consumer electronics industry does around the year 2026 come out with a 8K optical disc format, it most likely will get around the same support as the Laserdisc format. However, if VUDU and Netflix start offering high bit rate 8K streaming with lossless audio then launching a new 8K optical disc format might not happen. Instead a 8K download service to ones 100TB hard drive server might experience a popular launch. But if the streaming companies think they can offer slightly better 8K video streams with lossy audio when compared to 4K Blu-ray with lossless audio, then the demand for a 8K optical format should exist, unless the consumer decides that 8K streaming quality with lossy audio is acceptable sound quality (offering 8K with lossless audio streaming would most likely be the deal breaker that might kill the demand for optical disc formats).

People forget that streaming is a super powerful format that one day could kill off all physical media including DVD once 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray do not exist. I guess people will see what happens within the next 6 years or so.

[Lee A Stewart]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/28/2...premier-league

[JohnAV]

^ I keep wondering about the mentality of current providers in the states have waved data caps thru June 30, that usually place a 1 TB limit on non-business accounts. So how would 8K fly here?

60 Mbps = 27 GB/hour
80 Mbps = 36 GB/hour

HD is usually 5 Mbps or 2.25 GB/hour.
4K is usually 25 Mbps or 11.25 GB/Hour

The average UK consumer averaged 54 Mbps service the article said.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

It is a possibility that around the year 2023 that at least one major streaming company might offer native 8K movies. And yes there is a possibility that a new 8K optical disc format might not be released around the year 2026, which would break with the around 10 year tradition. In the year 1997 the 480i DVD format came out. 9 years later in 2006 the standard 2D 1080P Blu-ray format came out (2010 saw the launch of the 1080P Blu-ray 3D format), and then in 2016 the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format was launched. So based on the 10 year cycle for optical disc resolution improvements maybe a new optical disc that is between 200GB to 2TB would be possible in the year 2026. Maybe it would be launched by the DVD association of companies and be called “8K DVD” with a mandatory 480i DVD layer for existing DVD players made since 1997. The Laserdisc format lasted between 1978-2000 in the USA until the DVD format in 3 short years replaced Laserdiscs. My point is the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format is more successful when compared to the Laserdisc format which only had around 2 million active users with a total of around 16.8 million Laserdisc players sold worldwide. There has been over 50 million XBOX systems sold and a certain percentage of those systems are the Xbox one S and X model with a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray drive.

If the consumer electronics industry does around the year 2026 come out with a 8K optical disc format, it most likely will get around the same support as the Laserdisc format. However, if VUDU and Netflix start offering high bit rate 8K streaming with lossless audio then launching a new 8K optical disc format might not happen. Instead a 8K download service to ones 100TB hard drive server might experience a popular launch. But if the streaming companies think they can offer slightly better 8K video streams with lossy audio when compared to 4K Blu-ray with lossless audio, then the demand for a 8K optical format should exist, unless the consumer decides that 8K streaming quality with lossy audio is acceptable sound quality (offering 8K with lossless audio streaming would most likely be the deal breaker that might kill the demand for optical disc formats).

People forget that streaming is a super powerful format that one day could kill off all physical media including DVD once 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray do not exist. I guess people will see what happens within the next 6 years or so.

Streaming is breaking home video traditions in front of our very eyes. You can't keep using the same 10 year cycle to justify that 8K disc will simply happen, as all bets are off thanks to Hastings et al. People keep mentioning laserdisc over and over and over and over and over again but it's not 1987 any more, the market for physical video media has fallen off a cliff (DVD sales having declined a staggering 86 percent since their record highs of 2004-2007) and although Blu-ray sales haven't declined at the same pace, remaining steady-ish over the last decade or so, they were never a massive seller to begin with.

What keeps a niche format going in the background, like Laserdisc did during the VHS era and now Blu-ray with DVD, is that the mass-market format pulls in enough cash to permit the studios to indulge the weirdos who want the best format. We're still in there fighting our Blu-ray corner but DVD is going to be all but dead in 2026, and will the studios see enough value to keep BD and 4K UHD going by then? Maybe, maybe not, but they are not going to invest the many millions needed just to rejig the 4K UHD format to hold 8K content at any kind of reasonable quality, never mind create some unicorn format that holds 2TB. Again: just applying the same rationales as before and scaling them up is extremely myopic and doesn't take into account what's actually going on around us.

Even if they switch from discs to some kind of flash drive, it will still cost millions upon millions to develop, not the storage medium itself but everything that goes with it: playback devices, new encryption methods, advanced compression schemes and so on. And I can't see any studio in their right mind wanting to do that in an age where streaming is already king, never mind another 6 years down the line. 4K disc itself came perilously close to missing the boat IMO, delayed because of the need to actually add something to the experience rather than just bumping the resolution yet again, that 'something' being HDR. But where's 8K's USP as a playback medium, apart from yet more pixels? I think that's another reason why 8K disc isn't going to happen.

[Scottishguy]

If the studios had all banded together (minus Disney of course) and created a one stop shop of basic streaming, rental, and premium end downloading for us "weirdos" . A platform on an app that can be downloaded onto any device. Then we would not be in this mess. But noooo the likes of Warner wants the short time gain for little investment. Holding the licence of Friends to ransom every couple of year's for Netflix. And other such visionary business strategies form the studios for their IP.

It don't take a genius to see this will blow up in Hollywoods face sooner rather than later.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

If the studios had all banded together (minus Disney of course) and created a one stop shop of basic streaming, rental, and premium end downloading for us "weirdos" . A platform on an app that can be downloaded onto any device. Then we would not be in this mess. But noooo the likes of Warner wants the short time gain for little investment. Holding the licence of Friends to ransom every couple of year's for Netflix. And other such visionary business strategies form the studios for their IP.

It don't take a genius to see this will blow up in Hollywoods face sooner rather than later.

Eh. They all want a piece of the pie, like they always do when some new revenue stream comes along. But if x studio's streaming service goes under in however many years then they'll just go right back to licensing their content to other streaming services again. Apparently that's going to happen anyway with some content, even Disnee stuff, as they have pre-existing agreements with the likes of Netflix which means that some of their movies will actually head back to Netflix for several years.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Eh. They all want a piece of the pie, like they always do when some new revenue stream comes along. But if x studio's streaming service goes under in however many years then they'll just go right back to licensing their content to other streaming services again. Apparently that's going to happen anyway with some content, even Disnee stuff, as they have pre-existing agreements with the likes of Netflix which means that some of their movies will actually head back to Netflix for several years.

And this ladies and gentlemen is one reason why prices on physical media are going to hit the roof on the second hand market. Including DvDs.

[JohnAV]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Eh. They all want a piece of the pie, like they always do when some new revenue stream comes along. But if x studio's streaming service goes under in however many years then they'll just go right back to licensing their content to other streaming services again. Apparently that's going to happen anyway with some content, even Disnee stuff, as they have pre-existing agreements with the likes of Netflix which means that some of their movies will actually head back to Netflix for several years.

I see Netflix only loosing content. What use to be on their service that was associated with CBS/Vicom, BBC/ITV, and Disney/FOX/Marvel is ending up on their dedicated services. Its not going back to Netflix. Why you think Netflix spending billions with rights to their own content each year.

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by JohnAV

I see Netflix only loosing content. What use to be on their service that was associated with CBS/Vicom, BBC/ITV, and Disney/FOX/Marvel is ending up on their dedicated services. Its not going back to Netflix. Why you think Netflix spending billions with rights to their own content each year.

Per a report in Bloomberg, every Disney movie released between January 2016 and December 2018 on Netflix will return to the streaming giant around 2026. So while those movies are still leaving Netflix, they’ll return in about seven years — and disappear from Disney+ at that time, as well.

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/ne...rn-1202146618/

[JohnAV]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/ne...rn-1202146618/

Its a bit of a stretch to believe that especially when they use could return. The article was written before HBO Max, Disney plus existed. The way shows have been disappearing from Netflix is highly viable. Just search for British shows on Netflix, there are all gone.

While that means this won't happen for about seven years, it means that things aren't nearly as simple as they appeared between the two companies. We've certainly been given the impression that once Disney's 2018 blockbusters fall off the service, Disney would be in the clear to do with them what they wished. There's certainly been no indication that any of the content on Disney+ would ever need to be removed once it was added.

That’s not quite saying stuff could return. Blumburg has in the past authored rumors, like other marketplace newspapers.

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/247...rmanently-over

[Fendergopher]

Originally Posted by JohnAV

I see Netflix only loosing content. What use to be on their service that was associated with CBS/Vicom, BBC/ITV, and Disney/FOX/Marvel is ending up on their dedicated services. Its not going back to Netflix. Why you think Netflix spending billions with rights to their own content each year.

They're gaining stuff and they're losing stuff, what really matters is if they manage to make a steady profit off their huge investments, which I doubt will happen just yet if they've been operating at a loss up until today.


https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...ts-to-seinfeld

[Lee A Stewart]

Disney Plus downloads will disappear if titles leave the service

But because of licensing deals struck before Disney crystalized its streaming plan, Disney Plus will lose titles for periods of time. The company hasn't detailed these library gaps, but at least one of them will move popular movies from 2016 through 2018 off Disney Plus back onto Netflix in about six years.

https://www.cnet.com/news/disney-plu...e-the-service/

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by JohnAV

I see Netflix only loosing content. What use to be on their service that was associated with CBS/Vicom, BBC/ITV, and Disney/FOX/Marvel is ending up on their dedicated services. Its not going back to Netflix. Why you think Netflix spending billions with rights to their own content each year.

Because churning out new content is what Netflix have always done to stay ahead, they're not billions and billions of dollars in debt just because Disnee and Friends have left them recently