4k BluRay is a bad idea. We need something better. *spawn

[Deleted member 11852]

Bluray 4k is a stop gap and a way to wring out more money from an old format that never reached the heights of DVD.

I'm curious, what is it about Blu-ray as a standard (format) that you believe flawed and needing a completely new standard? Resolution, framerate and colorspace are a matter a bitrate and codec and Blu-ray from day one has supported variable codecs, codec profiles with a wide range of bitrates.

No engineer would throw out a standard out when you can build on/extend a standard.

 

[eastmen]

I'm curious, what is it about Blu-ray as a standard (format) that you believe flawed and needing a completely new standard? Resolution, framerate and colorspace are a matter a bitrate and codec and Blu-ray from day one has supported variable codecs, codec profiles with a wide range of bitrates.

No engineer would throw out a standard out when you can build on/extend a standard.

The whole spec mostly the fact that we now have to shoehorn in HFR 3D video and HDR and atmos into a 100 gigs spread across 3 layers.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The whole spec mostly the fact that we now have to shoehorn in HFR 3D video and HDR and atmos into a 100 gigs spread across 3 layers.

This is data structure issue and there is ample provision with the specifications to accommodate this. You have to remember that, despite popular consensus, Blu-ray is not a Sony format, the standard is the result of collaboration between dozens and dozens of companies including IBM, Hitachi, Sharp, LG, Intel, Samsung, TDK, Panasonic, Oracle, Dolby, DTS, AMD, Canon, Broadcom, Fuji, NEC, JVC and many more. Even Apple and Microsoft jumped in and Apple have never shipped a Mac with a Blu-ray drive. The bastards.

The specification was envisaged to be extensive and grow and the inclusion of three codecs (MPEG-2, AVC and VC-1) was in part intended as proof of concept that this really could work in multiple devices with good interoperability. Single and double-sided specifications, and within those single, dual and tri-layer manufacturing was intended in the [then] future at the outset.

Standards expand as technology moves on. 802.11, ethernet, old analogue tech low-baud modems. The only technology carbuncle that I dislike about Blu-ray is, ironically, the one you have not mentioned: BD-J.

 

[London Geezer]

Well... The simple question here is, what would the alternative be? Nothing else is going to have capacity for 100GB all for one movie.
That's still probably an order of magnitude more data than a 4k stream from Netflix or other services.
What's the alternative? It's not like disc formats are all the rage these days, but for IQ lovers like me, that's quite a massive difference from any other alternative for 4k content.

 

[MrFox]

There is no alternative because it's a negociation between the CE industry and the film studios. If the studios, or CE, wanted a higher bitrate they would have negociated it in the bluray disc association. HDCP 2.2 is there because the studios wanted it. They decide if they make films for a format or not, and CE industry decide if they make players or not. The format war happened, and no gullible consumer will buy an hddvd2 player to be used as a doorstop once BR4K becomes the new standard. The consumer exists in this decision in the form of market research as an argument point for what technology will provide higher adoption or higher margin, etc..

If a large part of the industry doesn't get what they want, then a format war happens. The stupidity of the dvd forum is now legendary, and it caused all companies to ditch them and go with Sony.

At some point all players sold will be 4k, and still support any disc purchased in the last 20 years. Nothing is being replaced as bluray was designed to be extensible.

The disc production costs peanuts so the previous formats will remain available as pricing tiers. Cinephiles buy 4K super extreme platinum edition, and low income population buy the dvd at walmart. The adoption is not as important as the move from vhs to dvd. Now it's just bonus cash for premium edition... It's still a sale whether a dvd or bluray or 4K. The consumer pays for the quality he want.

 

[Malo]

Does Netflix 4k provide Dolby ATMOS, DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD audio? Or is it the same even less than AC3, 384kbps 5.1 crap.

 

[Grall]

@Malo Considering the sometimes really shitty image quality, I can't imagine the soundtrack as well is anything but the lowest of the low.

 

[Malo]

Well it's a further point to the benefit of large capacity high bit rate physical movies. Sure bandwidth on the Internet is very high nowadays but I can't see Netflix serving 50mbps+ streams any time soon.

 

[tuna]

Well it's a further point to the benefit of large capacity high bit rate physical movies. Sure bandwidth on the Internet is very high nowadays but I can't see Netflix serving 50mbps+ streams any time soon.

Why not? As long as they can't get paid for the bandwidth I do not see any problem.

 

[Malo]

Why not? As long as they can't get paid for the bandwidth I do not see any problem.

Well it wouldn't be worth the investment to provide the infrastructure to support that kind of stream to such a limited audience. Most don't care about high bitrate video and audio. The kind of audience they really make money from are the ones who display 480i 4:3 content in widescreen AR on their 55" and think it looks great.

 

[tuna]

You can make money on early adopters/geeks/people like us. The real question is if you can make enough money to make it worthwhile.

 

[Grall]

Why not? As long as they can't get paid for the bandwidth I do not see any problem.

A server infrastructure to serve 50+ MBit/s video to tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people would become unviably expensive. Your Netflix sub would end up costing maybe a hundred bucks a month. Too niche to be commercially viable.

 

[eastmen]

@Malo Considering the sometimes really shitty image quality, I can't imagine the soundtrack as well is anything but the lowest of the low.

There are a bunch of bluray's out there with encodes worse than netflix

A server infrastructure to serve 50+ MBit/s video to tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people would become unviably expensive. Your Netflix sub would end up costing maybe a hundred bucks a month. Too niche to be commercially viable.

Of course you can improve the compression tech while server infrastructure gets better. At a point they will meet in the middle.

 

[Grall]

There are a bunch of bluray's out there with encodes worse than netflix

While I don't doubt you, I've never stumbled on any such beasties. Also, nothing I've seen on Netflix (which isn't that much, granted) comes close to any of my own blu-rays. It's visibly less sharp/lower rez, and with visible artifacting in busy scenes.

 

[eastmen]

While I don't doubt you, I've never stumbled on any such beasties. Also, nothing I've seen on Netflix (which isn't that much, granted) comes close to any of my own blu-rays. It's visibly less sharp/lower rez, and with visible artifacting in busy scenes.

yes the majority of the time bluray is better than Netflix however the gap is narrowing esp when you throw up a 4k encode on Netflix , some of it looks extremely nice. Bluray 4k may look better than 4k Netflix , but its still going to sell less than bluray did which is less than dvd sold. There is no stopping streaming , at some point the encoders and bandwidth will meet and be better than bluray 4k and I think it will be much ealier in its life time and I think people will be less inclined to invest in a new format for 4k when 8k tvs will be announced and release in the next few years.

 

[Malo]

Well wake me up when h265 real-time encode/decode is fully mainstream.

 

[Rikimaru]

yes the majority of the time bluray is better than Netflix however the gap is narrowing esp when you throw up a 4k encode on Netflix , some of it looks extremely nice. Bluray 4k may look better than 4k Netflix , but its still going to sell less than bluray did which is less than dvd sold. There is no stopping streaming , at some point the encoders and bandwidth will meet and be better than bluray 4k and I think it will be much ealier in its life time and I think people will be less inclined to invest in a new format for 4k when 8k tvs will be announced and release in the next few years.

Semiconductor industry is slowing down. Computational power does not increase much anymore. h265 will be used even longer than h264. Unless new disruptive video codec algorithm comes.

 

[eastmen]

Semiconductor industry is slowing down. Computational power does not increase much anymore. h265 will be used even longer than h264. Unless new disruptive video codec algorithm comes.

I'll disagree with you there. h.265 is already done in hardware like the xcode 6800 , the tegra x1 , Carrizo. Bluray 4k may never go past the start of h.265 but for streaming there is no reason to disregard increases in h265 by pushing more rendering time to the encoding process by pushing block size lower. Since this was designed around hardware based on 28nm newer lower processes coming down the pipe will allow for more computational power to push both sides further. Even HBM avalibility will help increase the efficenty of the encoder

 

[Rikimaru]

I'll disagree with you there. h.265 is already done in hardware like the xcode 6800 , the tegra x1 , Carrizo. Bluray 4k may never go past the start of h.265 but for streaming there is no reason to disregard increases in h265 by pushing more rendering time to the encoding process by pushing block size lower. Since this was designed around hardware based on 28nm newer lower processes coming down the pipe will allow for more computational power to push both sides further. Even HBM avalibility will help increase the efficenty of the encoder

I can't comprehend what are you talking about.

Also for max compression it's better to increase block size. This leads to more blurring though.

 

[eastmen]

I can't comprehend what are you talking about.

Also for max compression it's better to increase block size. This leads to more blurring though.

H265 has been in the works for awhile and has targeted old hardware. Its already implemented in older designs and on the 28nm process. the computational power of hardware is where one of the biggest increases in the codecs lay.

Even the h265 implemented in bluray 4k is limited. For example Bluray 4k specs call for 10bit color dispite h265 supporting 12bit . Its color sub sampling is only 4:2:0 while h265 supports 4:4:4

Then h265 isn't the only game in town , Google is working on VP9 as we speak.

And of course like I said , Bluray 4k will be steam rolled by all the media boxes supporting 8k tv formats as soon as that hits