Better than BD quality

[Ace_of_Sevens]

While Blu-ray represents the best consumer format on the market now in terms of A/V fidelity, it's theoretically possible possible to be better. For instance, all of Onkyo's current mid-to-high-end receivers support 4K video. (3840x2160) Apparently, they expect this to appear in consumer displays soon if it's available in a $600 receiver. This should wring the last bit of effective resolution out of 35mm film.

Also, while BD is tied to 24 fps, it looks like 48 fps is about to become the new standard. This could possibly be supported with current Blu-ray. You would just need a second stream with additional iframe data, much like how 3d was implemented, but I haven't heard any rumblings about this.

[FoxyMulder]

While Blu-ray represents the best consumer format on the market now in terms of A/V fidelity, it's theoretically possible possible to be better. For instance, all of Onkyo's current mid-to-high-end receivers support 4K video. (3840x2160) Apparently, they expect this to appear in consumer displays soon if it's available in a $600 receiver. This should wring the last bit of effective resolution out of 35mm film.

Also, while BD is tied to 24 fps, it looks like 48 fps is about to become the new standard. This could possibly be supported with current Blu-ray. You would just need a second stream with additional iframe data, much like how 3d was implemented, but I haven't heard any rumblings about this.

Blu Ray capacity is the issue here.

As for 4K, i'm all for it, better fill factor on projectors, but studio's need to invest more in 4K masters otherwise there is no point, garbage in and garbage out, some studio's like Sony already do 4K for all their masters, others still do 2K and some studio's like Universal just recycle outdated ten year old transfers.

48fps makes sense for 3D content, little sense for 2D traditional content because higher frame rates tend to have smoother motion but they end up not looking like film, just my opinion, maybe in time i'd get used to 48fps but i see it benefitting 3D more than 2D shot content.

I think 4K for the home will come but it will need a new format, blu ray cannot handle it without too much compression which would damage the quality.

Also a new format would see 10 bit colour introduced, that to me would be great and a step up from what we currently have, resolution increases on their own is not that great unless you add in other factors like increased colour depth and perhaps new disc codecs and much higher disc capacity ( think Terabytes )

Its exciting for anyone who has a projection system due to the fill factor and less visible pixels, Panasonic wouldn't need smoothscreen with 4K projectors, thats just one benefit, for television displays, not so sure about them but anything that gets us closer to the master is a good thing and if its proper 4K it means no cropping off sides and top of the image ( slightly ) as they do now on many releases to prevent downconversion issues, thats another welcome benefit of true 4K for the home.

[AV_Integrated]

Off topic - Panasonic uses smooth screen technology to deal with the interpixel gap inherent to LCD front projection technology, and likely will continue to use it all the way through 4K projection for home theater products because they really have it wired.

On topic...
4K for the home is 10 years away minimum.

Don't take that as 'there will be NO 4K' - there will be some.

But, mass market 4K for home use is just not a seroius consideration. Consider, by example, the difficulty Blu-ray has had in penetrating the home market place. With sales not meeting expectations of corporations, it is a tough sell to get $99 Blu-ray players into people's homes to replace their DVD players.

So, we may see 4K 37" displays, and the "Why the hell bother?" question springs instantly to my mind. Yet, marketing can drive a ship and there is no doubt that people are foolish and will just buy what they are marketed to as the 'best' - and resolution is easy. 10-bit color? Nobody cares! Extra pixels? Everyone cares!

Still, while we may see 4K consumer displays, the content delivery system doesn't exist for it. Where is mass market 1080p cable? Satellite? How many channels? Digital delivery of 1080p? Besides BD? So, where is the starting point for 4K home delivery and what is the likelihood of consumer acceptance of buying into another format when they aren't even willing to buy, in droves, Blu-ray disc?

Do you really think studios will walk down this road again?

Especially if they aren't making as much as they want with Blu-ray?

I think the geek crowd is getting excited about 4K technology, but I strongly believe that if we are to get content it will only be through digital delivery, on very select titles and that the majority of what we see on 4K displays will come from good upconverting BD players, not from actual 4K sources.

[FoxyMulder]

Off topic - Panasonic uses smooth screen technology to deal with the interpixel gap inherent to LCD front projection technology, and likely will continue to use it all the way through 4K projection for home theater products because they really have it wired.

On topic...
4K for the home is 10 years away minimum.

Don't take that as 'there will be NO 4K' - there will be some.

But, mass market 4K for home use is just not a seroius consideration. Consider, by example, the difficulty Blu-ray has had in penetrating the home market place. With sales not meeting expectations of corporations, it is a tough sell to get $99 Blu-ray players into people's homes to replace their DVD players.

So, we may see 4K 37" displays, and the "Why the hell bother?" question springs instantly to my mind. Yet, marketing can drive a ship and there is no doubt that people are foolish and will just buy what they are marketed to as the 'best' - and resolution is easy. 10-bit color? Nobody cares! Extra pixels? Everyone cares!

Still, while we may see 4K consumer displays, the content delivery system doesn't exist for it. Where is mass market 1080p cable? Satellite? How many channels? Digital delivery of 1080p? Besides BD? So, where is the starting point for 4K home delivery and what is the likelihood of consumer acceptance of buying into another format when they aren't even willing to buy, in droves, Blu-ray disc?

Do you really think studios will walk down this road again?

Especially if they aren't making as much as they want with Blu-ray?

I think the geek crowd is getting excited about 4K technology, but I strongly believe that if we are to get content it will only be through digital delivery, on very select titles and that the majority of what we see on 4K displays will come from good upconverting BD players, not from actual 4K sources.

I'm definately a geek then, i think you will find projector owners want 4K and want 10 bit colour, that will eliminate banding seem on some films.

As for Panasonic and 4K, well my assumption is that bulb based projectors will eventually be replaced by LED, its not going to happen overnight but in ten years, i think so and by that time LED will be bright enough for full on 3D and anything else you throw at it on large sized 160inch plus screens.

There is no point in 4K for smaller screens, i do think the market is heading for ever bigger tv sets though, in 10 years i can see the average size being over 60 inches, seating distance plays a large part in all this though and the average tv owner sits too far away to even see the difference between SD and HD content.

I think there is a market for digital download delivery and a new format that has 4K, its some time off, i think it could happen though, i'm not keen on downloads, look at MP3, huge hit and CD has been destroyed by it but in my opinion its lower quality compared to the way we should have been heading which was higher quality audio than the CD, of course SACD and DVD Audio were not hits, people bought into MP3 and you could be right and they may buy into inferior HD downloads.

[Ace_of_Sevens]

I think there are limits to how big a TV the average person wants, no matter how cheap they get because of practical matters of moving the TV and putting it in a room. I doubt anything over 55" will ever get a huge section of the market.

[Malanthius]

Off topic - Panasonic uses smooth screen technology to deal with the interpixel gap inherent to LCD front projection technology, and likely will continue to use it all the way through 4K projection for home theater products because they really have it wired.

On topic...
4K for the home is 10 years away minimum.

Don't take that as 'there will be NO 4K' - there will be some.

But, mass market 4K for home use is just not a seroius consideration. Consider, by example, the difficulty Blu-ray has had in penetrating the home market place. With sales not meeting expectations of corporations, it is a tough sell to get $99 Blu-ray players into people's homes to replace their DVD players.

So, we may see 4K 37" displays, and the "Why the hell bother?" question springs instantly to my mind. Yet, marketing can drive a ship and there is no doubt that people are foolish and will just buy what they are marketed to as the 'best' - and resolution is easy. 10-bit color? Nobody cares! Extra pixels? Everyone cares!

Still, while we may see 4K consumer displays, the content delivery system doesn't exist for it. Where is mass market 1080p cable? Satellite? How many channels? Digital delivery of 1080p? Besides BD? So, where is the starting point for 4K home delivery and what is the likelihood of consumer acceptance of buying into another format when they aren't even willing to buy, in droves, Blu-ray disc?

Do you really think studios will walk down this road again?

Especially if they aren't making as much as they want with Blu-ray?

I think the geek crowd is getting excited about 4K technology, but I strongly believe that if we are to get content it will only be through digital delivery, on very select titles and that the majority of what we see on 4K displays will come from good upconverting BD players, not from actual 4K sources.

Agree 100% even though I would probably buy a 4k display. I know I wouldn't until the price was right. And for the issued you mentioned I have to agree. I think such a product would never make it out of the niche market. Bluray was barely able to make it into the mainstream market. And that is at very affordable pricing. You bring up an interesting point. I have always said that I think the studios expected more from Bluray. That's met with, let's just say disagreement. what do you think the studios expected? And what do you think they would want from a 4k release?

Something like 4k would never be accepted by mainstream consumers IMHO. Hope anyone that really wants one gets the chance to own one though.

[Malanthius]

I think there are limits to how big a TV the average person wants, no matter how cheap they get because of practical matters of moving the TV and putting it in a room. I doubt anything over 55" will ever get a huge section of the market.

That's a great point. I agree. Big 100" screens will always be a niche market. Maybe if that market us big enough to support the 4k market has a chance?

[Kosty]

I saw the 4K front projectors that JVC and Sony were showing at this year's CEDIA 2012 event in Indianapolis last week.

The native 4K content they showed was limited and server based to the displays but looked stunning.

One advantage of the two times Full HD 1080p resolution was that it meant better 120 hz 1920x 1080p streams to both eyes for regular Blu-ray 3D content.

One other thing was that regular Blu-ray 1920x1080p 24fps content looked stunning as well when converted to 3840x2160 120 to fill the display. Its just easier to upconvert 1080p to 2160 even though its four times the pixels than it is to upconvert from 480i60 content to 1080p24 as you start off with more data and the pixels to be created in the gaps are smaller and more fine in resolution.

So regular Blu-ray looks even better when used on a 4K display even on a huge screen, certainly looks outstanding on a display that would fit in a typical consumer's home. Plus Blu-ray 3D looks even better on a 4k display as well.

In addition, I was told by many engineers and the product manager from Sony that 4K resolution data is capable of being introduced on future iterations of Blu-ray Disc in the future and possibly on a 4K Blu-ray standard that might be introduced just like Blu-ray 3D is now with mandated backward compatibility with older players. That might be possible technically but most feel its unlikely to be marketable as a mass market consumer product as things migrate to the cloud in a few years. But you never know.

[Sarang]

I don't want Blu-ray 4K unless it's full color. Seriously the next step we go shouldn't just be a higher resolution. Honestly, if you ask me, even before we go 4K we should go full color 2K as some films were shot on 16 mm. and 1080p full color digital cameras, the Lucas prequel trilogy for one.
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm not a big fan of upscaling and an upscaled, what should be 2K master in 4K without full color doesn't appeal to me. I also feel it would be a huge ripoff.

[Kosty]

I don't want Blu-ray 4K unless it's full color. Seriously the next step we go shouldn't just be a higher resolution. Honestly, if you ask me, even before we go 4K we should go full color 2K as some films were shot on 16 mm. and 1080p full color digital cameras, the Lucas prequel trilogy for one.
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm not a big fan of upscaling and an upscaled, what should be 2K master in 4K without full color doesn't appeal to me. I also feel it would be a huge ripoff.

Well that would be nice as well. But all I can say was that regular Blu-ray shown at 4K resolution with the advanced 4K projectors shown by JVC and Sony at the CEDIA show looked better than regular Blu-ray on a current display from a regular production Blu-ray Disc.

So just plain old 2D Blu-ray or Blu-ray 3D on a 50GB dual layer everyday disc looked was able to take advantage of the better display.

[Malanthius]

Hard to imagine better than Bluray. But that's human nature. We were saying the same things about DVD 10 years ago. Same with games. It's funny to go back to an older game that you thought looked amazing at the time. And then be disappointed.

[Kosty]

Hard to imagine better than Bluray. But that's human nature. We were saying the same things about DVD 10 years ago. Same with games. It's funny to go back to an older game that you thought looked amazing at the time. And then be disappointed.

Better than Blu-ray as a source is certainly possible.

The question is it commercially viable as a mass market product and worth deploying at retail as a physical product or distributing over the cloud at that higher resolution.

At the moment it does not look like that would be the case, but you never know what the future holds.

With Blu-ray being high bit rate AVC/MPEG-4 or VC-1 encodes at 1920x1080p24 resolution now as the best available quality for a consumer format, I am happy that it is a mass market consumer product success story that is now large enough as a product category to be sustainable for many years to come with new releases for five years or more and most of the viable studio library titles of theatrical releases now destined to have a Blu-ray release.

Blu-ray quality at least now is good enough to look even better on advanced displays like these 4K displays.

Would I like even higher quality? Sure. But I'm not even sure myself if I would be willing to pay for it or re buy my Blu-ray Discs on a 4K format. I might incrementally upgrade to an advanced 4K Blu-ray version in the far future but if I am not replacing some DVDs I own on Blu-ray I am not certainly going to replace my Blu-ray Discs with another physical format. Nor would most humans.

But if bandwidth was super duper all over the place and I go get downloaded a 4K version of stuff as part of a subscription service or as a free bonus or modest upgrade to my previous Blu-ray purchase I may consider it.

Or if there were 4K Blu-ray 3D players that could play the advanced discs as well as the older Blu-ray content I might buy one of those too.

But I suspect Blu-ray 3D will be the most advanced mass market physical disc or physical format deployed. If a 4K version is created and distributed to mainstream consumers I would be surprised.

But there are just diminishing returns here. My Blu-ray collection looks awesome on a 100 inch screen in my home theater right now. An expensive 4K display might look better but nothing like going from DVD to Blu-ray as a change in quality.

[Malanthius]

Better than Blu-ray as a source is certainly possible.

The question is it commercially viable as a mass market product and worth deploying at retail as a physical product or distributing over the cloud at that higher resolution.

At the moment it does not look like that would be the case, but you never know what the future holds.

With Blu-ray being high bit rate AVC/MPEG-4 or VC-1 encodes at 1920x1080p24 resolution now as the best available quality for a consumer format, I am happy that it is a mass market consumer product success story that is now large enough as a product category to be sustainable for many years to come with new releases for five years or more and most of the viable studio library titles of theatrical releases now destined to have a Blu-ray release.

Blu-ray quality at least now is good enough to look even better on advanced displays like these 4K displays.

Would I like even higher quality? Sure. But I'm not even sure myself if I would be willing to pay for it or re buy my Blu-ray Discs on a 4K format. I might incrementally upgrade to an advanced 4K Blu-ray version in the far future but if I am not replacing some DVDs I own on Blu-ray I am not certainly going to replace my Blu-ray Discs with another physical format. Nor would most humans.

But if bandwidth was super duper all over the place and I go get downloaded a 4K version of stuff as part of a subscription service or as a free bonus or modest upgrade to my previous Blu-ray purchase I may consider it.

Or if there were 4K Blu-ray 3D players that could play the advanced discs as well as the older Blu-ray content I might buy one of those too.

But I suspect Blu-ray 3D will be the most advanced mass market physical disc or physical format deployed. If a 4K version is created and distributed to mainstream consumers I would be surprised.

But there are just diminishing returns here. My Blu-ray collection looks awesome on a 100 inch screen in my home theater right now. An expensive 4K display might look better but nothing like going from DVD to Blu-ray as a change in quality.

"Success story" is debatable. But let's not go there. I think you have answered your own problem as to why Bluray has not been as sucessful as the studios had hoped. Look at you. Even as an enthusiast you have admitted your limitations on what level of quality you would be willing to buy. What we are seeing is that limitation for mainstream consumers being tested. Many have decided that DVD is good enough for them. Just like you are saying Bluray is good enough for you. Your standards are much higher than an average consumer. This is a point some of us have been trying to get across for some time. You are the missing link.

[Lee Stewart]

Toshiba will be selling a 55" 4K Display in Germany this coming December. It is also an Auto 3D display. The cost will be right around $11,500.

[Malanthius]

Toshiba will be selling a 55" 4K Display in Germany this coming December. It is also an Auto 3D display. The cost will be right around $11,500.

Cool. Do you think the prices on them will ever be able to drop to the levels we see for the current tech? I think Bluray is showing us the limit of what consumers feel they are willing to pay for in masses. I think DVD was the last super format IMO. Bluray although a great product is doing not so great in converting DVD owners over. I think it would be an even harder sell to 4k.