UltraHD Blurays and players will start coming by Christmas 2015. Still buying blurays

[master gandhi]

Originally Posted by 42041

For 35mm movies, I think 4K will yield no revelations. It will undoubtedly look better, but not like some store demo shot on high-end digital cameras. Film just doesn't have much sharpness beyond 2K.

Originally Posted by 42041

4K is pretty much the tippy top of 35mm's capabilities, but the sharpness starts dropping off considerably before that. There's a reason 16mm films tend to be far softer than 35mm ones of the same vintage (though admittedly they hold up on the big screen just fine) though you're essentially looking at 2K's worth of a 4K scan (of footage that is, pound-for-pound, sharper than that shot on 35mm).

Thanks, I didn't look at it that way before, but it does make sense. 4K will probably impress more when it comes to films that were shot in IMAX and/or high-end digital cameras (like the ones being used on Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War) than traditionally shot films.

You convinced me not to wait for the UHD Blu-ray version, so I picked up the current Blu-ray. I doubt it'll disappoint from a technical standpoint.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by master gandhi

Thanks, I didn't look at it that way before, but it does make sense. 4K will probably impress more when it comes to films that were shot in IMAX and/or high-end digital cameras (like the ones being used on Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War) than traditionally shot films.

You convinced me not to wait for the UHD Blu-ray version, so I picked up the current Blu-ray. I doubt it'll disappoint from a technical standpoint.

Only traditional film that will really have a chance of looking significantly better on UHDBD is 70mm & IMAX... 35mm will be diminishing returns city.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by kidglov3s

I imagine the hipsters leading the charge on vinyl would be more interested in VHS than (UHD) Blu-ray.

Nah. First off vinyl has the coolest packaging and still sounds good, while VHS had mostly lame packaging and looks like shit. Secondly CDs still sell a considerable portion of music sales, pretty much half of full album sales. The markets for physical media aren't going away, they're just getting smaller.

That said, what gets a physical release will get more and more choosy, and prices are only going to go up. Niche markets have advantages (cool collector focus) and downsides (limited runs, higher prices, not everything gets released).

[Gold Ranger]

Ya know, just for Sh*ts and g*ggles i'd love to find a VCR and a random High Quality VHS tape and watch it on my 50 inch, 1080p/120hz TV and see how it actually looks!

[#Darren]

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

Ya know, just for Sh*ts and g*ggles i'd love to find a VCR and a random High Quality VHS tape and watch it on my 50 inch, 1080p/120hz TV and see how it actually looks!

It will look like a lot of poorly mastered DVD's.

[sukraj]

Originally Posted by conradforever

from articles i've read. the disks should be around the same price as bluray disks now. players around 2-3 times more than a regular bluray player.

Even though I own a 4K TV I think I will wait until the price of Ultra HD Players come down when they arrive they will be far too expensive for me.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by #Darren

It will look like a lot of poorly mastered DVD's.

Even worse. I tried it a while back. The analog to digital conversion isn't pretty along with the other abberations and lack of resolution with VHS.

[Bob Kramer]

I'm holding out for BSRay Discs. The more data you put on the disc, the more room is left over. Unfortunately, once the info is on the disc, you can never access it again. Ironically, the only film you can't put on BSRay is The Black Hole.

[Blu MacReady]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Only traditional film that will really have a chance of looking significantly better on UHDBD is 70mm & IMAX... 35mm will be diminishing returns city.

So how does this work for older titles? 70s-00s hold mostly all my all time favourite movies. We're they shot on this?

I'm just asking to understand, because I read reviews and comments here about how this or that BD looks amazing, so film like etc, grain this and that. (Not to offend anyone who's into this).

So won't UHD go all super clean and crisp and then these film like BDs become a false unreal too perfectly clean type of image, almost like when people complained about waxy look, DNR, etc??

One of my all time no.1 is Jaws. On BD this to me, imo, looks perfect. I would show this as reference to any 'no difference to DVD' and like me they'd be blown away. UHD Jaws. This going to be better (if possible?) or like the Predator BD that people say is waxy and awful?

[42041]

Originally Posted by Blu MacReady

So won't UHD go all super clean and crisp and then these film like BDs become a false unreal too perfectly clean type of image, almost like when people complained about waxy look, DNR, etc??

One of my all time no.1 is Jaws. On BD this to me, imo, looks perfect. I would show this as reference to any 'no difference to DVD' and like me they'd be blown away. UHD Jaws. This going to be better (if possible?) or like the Predator BD that people say is waxy and awful?

Only if the mastering engineers digitally scrub the grain.
35mm color films shot before 1976 or so or so should yield pretty marginal improvements over the best blu-rays, since the film stock had more limited resolution, and they were often shot on anamorphic lenses with less-than-stellar optics (Jaws is among these).
Any film not transferred from original negative will yield essentially no meaningful improvements over the best blu-rays.
I also think UHD will be more forgiving of less-than-stellar jobs in converting the uncompressed master to the UHD image than blu-ray is (since the 4K image would be less sensitive to things like aliasing), so many of the same masters will look better just because of that.

And no, only a relative handful of films were shot in 70mm. The vast bulk of the cinematic catalog is 35mm.

[master gandhi]

Originally Posted by Blu MacReady

So how does this work for older titles? 70s-00s hold mostly all my all time favourite movies. We're they shot on this?

I'm just asking to understand, because I read reviews and comments here about how this or that BD looks amazing, so film like etc, grain this and that. (Not to offend anyone who's into this).

So won't UHD go all super clean and crisp and then these film like BDs become a false unreal too perfectly clean type of image, almost like when people complained about waxy look, DNR, etc??

One of my all time no.1 is Jaws. On BD this to me, imo, looks perfect. I would show this as reference to any 'no difference to DVD' and like me they'd be blown away. UHD Jaws. This going to be better (if possible?) or like the Predator BD that people say is waxy and awful?

In theory, UHD will just look that much closer to the quality of the original film elements. It's up to the compressionist to try to make sure the transfer from the master file to the disc goes as smoothly as possible without adding any discernable DNR, Edge Enhancement, etc.

Time will tell what a quality transfer to UHD looks like compared to a poor transfer.

[Member-167298]

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

Ya know, just for Sh*ts and g*ggles i'd love to find a VCR and a random High Quality VHS tape and watch it on my 50 inch, 1080p/120hz TV and see how it actually looks!

I still watch VHS on my 50" plasma and they look awful. Even worse than on old school televisions. As a matter of fact, I want to find an old TV so I can better enjoy my VHS.

[Blu MacReady]

Originally Posted by master gandhi

In theory, UHD will just look that much closer to the quality of the original film elements. It's up to the compressionist to try to make sure the transfer from the master file to the disc goes as smoothly as possible without adding any discernable DNR, Edge Enhancement, etc.

Time will tell what a quality transfer to UHD looks like compared to a poor transfer.

So when I read that the transfer is poor, issues that seem to happen to a lot of Scream Factory releases going by that thread, or cropping issues like with Goldeneye for example. These aren't just going to disappear are they? WB or Universal or whoever if they provide poor quality then poor quality is going to be produced. It's just going to be better looking incorrectness.
Current BD releases which aren't the correct ratio or aren't this or that, that they should be, this is going to just continue with UHD. Can't see why studios will suddenly correct issues which could have been from dvd to bd but were not.

Looking forward to a perfect Weird Science

[42041]

Originally Posted by Blu MacReady

So how does this work for older titles? 70s-00s hold mostly all my all time favourite movies. We're they shot on this?

It's also worth nothing that starting around 2001-2002 (with the Star Wars prequels and LOTR films), films were increasingly mastered in 2K digital, and that was pretty much universal by 2004 or 2005. Redoing most of these in 4K would be cost-prohibitive.

[bobbydrugar]

Nail on Head MacReady. Studios are in the business of making money. They are likely going to put the least amount of effort into capturing a reasonable return on investment (make money) Could the put a tech on the project for several weeks to lovingly restore and properly transfer and compress the content. sure they could but push the button walk away 5min time is so much more cost effective. End result they have the only way a consumer can get that content so competition (especially early on and then later on) is not a thing. in other words thousands of people buy UHD tv and UHD players and need content. Its early on so prices on media are high. Number of titles is very low and the walking cash machine er I mean early adopter erhm I mean loyal customer will take what they can get. A year or so in and competition picks up as more content becomes available and so you need to distinguish your product to compete for the money so you will put a little more effort in. A year or two later the market is saturated and prices have to be lowered on the media and so you need to shave costs where you can so back to least effort possible. Its a cycle as old as time.

T

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by PrestonXI

I still watch VHS on my 50" plasma and they look awful. Even worse than on old school televisions. As a matter of fact, I want to find an old TV so I can better enjoy my VHS.

On a 20" standard def CRT they do look better.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Nah. First off vinyl has the coolest packaging and still sounds good, while VHS had mostly lame packaging and looks like shit. Secondly CDs still sell a considerable portion of music sales, pretty much half of full album sales. The markets for physical media aren't going away, they're just getting smaller.

That said, what gets a physical release will get more and more choosy, and prices are only going to go up. Niche markets have advantages (cool collector focus) and downsides (limited runs, higher prices, not everything gets released).

Vinyl will always be limited, even if the market for it increases because there is no longer a single manufacturer of cutting lathes and pressing capacity is also limited since most of the pressing plants converted decades ago to CD pressing (at least the ones that didn't close completely).

I've been surprised that some Chinese company didn't start producing clones of Neumann lathes, but it hasn't happened.

The RIAA hasn't released the mid-year sales stats yet, but in 2014, they reported 144.1 million CDs and 13.2 million LPs sold. That compares with 942.5 million CDs, 76 million cassettes and 2.2 million LPs in 2000. (In 1982, two years before the widespread introduction of CD, 243.9 million LPs were sold + 192 million cassettes.) In 2014, in the U.S. (at list prices), physical media generated $2.7 billion, "digital" sales generated $2.6 billion and streaming generated $2.06 billion. So non-physical now generates 77% of U.S. industry revenues.

However in some other countries, physical is still big. Japan, Poland and Germany all still (as of 2014) have physical market shares above 70%.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by PrestonXI

I still watch VHS on my 50" plasma and they look awful. Even worse than on old school televisions. As a matter of fact, I want to find an old TV so I can better enjoy my VHS.

Digital TVs really don't handle analog signals well. Of S-VHS tapes that I recorded myself (mostly TV music specials), I converted those to DVD-R. No resolution increase of course, but my LED TV does upscale them and while they still look pretty bad, they look surprisingly good for VHS technology. I had some commercial VHS tapes that I wanted to convert as well (like the unaltered Star Wars OT), but some had copy protection and I couldn't get around it.

But having said all that, I find it very hard to watch low-res material. I won't even watch any SD digital TV. I have all the SD stations "de-programmed" on my cable box, even if there's no HD equivalent. Even though we used to watch it that way, once you see something better, it's really hard to go back. Remember when we thought that DVD was spectacular?

[Oniros]

Probably not. The only big purchase I'm doing this year is the Hayao Miyazaki BR collection and that's about it. It will take at least 5 years for all those films to be brought to 4k IMO.

[KidSqueek]

After Blu-ray, I'm done. I'll move on to digital media. I need space in my living room.