Solid Snake

a job at CompUSA. Sounds horrible.

bruceames

Interesting article that mentions the possibility of a (competing?) 4K digital format (I assume UV).

4K movies are coming to Blu-ray discs and hard drives

Adam Tyner

I'd definitely prefer downloading over streaming. I might even opt for downloading over physical, depending on how prices shake out. There'd almost certainly be a greater variety of 4K films to download than for sale at retail. I just feel like I'd have a much greater selection to choose from that way.

bruceames

That's the main advantage. With such a small market not many catalog films would be viable for disc distribution. So the selection on digital could be far greater, since distribution (and by extension, viability) is one of the key advantages of digital.

Also another possible advantage would be studio support. They would be more inclined to support a delivery system that is more secure.

JimRochester

I'm hoping 4k HD DVD wins this time.

E Unit

Supposed to be called RCBD - Really Clear Blu Ray.

RocShemp

It's as if the people who name these new formats are the same idiots who do atrocious BD cover art.

kd5

It took me a long time to upgrade to DVD from VHS, an even longer time to upgrade to Blu-Ray from DVD. I'm still doing both with no intention of upgrading to anything else. Definitely sick of finally deciding to upgrade to the next new technology only to be told there's yet another new technology out there. Not interested in 4K, DVD and BD are fine with me.

5 years from now I'll be bitching about having just upgraded to 4K only to find out there's brain implants available now.

Drexl

I wouldn't mind downloading, provided it was like Steam so that you could re-download your movies at any time. I wouldn't want to have to buy all the HDD space to store them, then more if I wanted them backed up.

E Unit

I'd mind if it was streaming or downloading. Until they come up with a compression that could retain full resolution 4k at a fraction of the space it would take up now. I mean how much space would 1 4k movie take up? I'm guessing quite a bit.

DVD Polizei

Ok, well if you guys can do it, I'm going to trademark this:

Bullshit per square foot (bs/ft2)

RocShemp

What's the ratio of that in Other?

DVD Polizei

This: ∞

morriscroy

Similar sentiments here.

Already I find it annoying to deal with tv show season sets, which freeze, skip, pixelize, die, etc ... during disc playback, such as numerous Universal tv season sets released on double-sided dvd flipper discs around a decade ago. So I ended up watching these tv show season sets from several computer hard drives, in order to avoid these aggravating playback problems.

It's a very annoying time consuming process. I would guess it's even more annoying dealing with 4K digital movie files.


In hindsight, it would have been easier, less aggravating, and less expensive to just watch these same tv shows on various streaming services.

milo bloom

I love my disc collection but I'm starting to see the wisdom of my wife's thinking in taking advantage of streaming or using the cloud in order to save space and money. I bought way too many DVDs over the years that ended up being single watches (or worse, zero watches) that I've ended up selling to make space.

I just can't get excited about another disc format. I'll gladly pay a few extra bucks a month for 4K Netflix though.

Adam Tyner

AV Watch posted some more technical stuff about Ultra HD Blu-ray. There is, as expected, native 24p support along with the previously announced 60p. European markets and the like will have 25p and 50p, but it doesn't sound like this is required in hardware elsewhere.

No 30p or 48p, though.

bruceames

Still haven't outlined the copy protection scheme. Probably still trying to hash that out with the studios (and luck they'll need with that, given the BD+ fiasco still fresh in their minds). These are master level quality movies we're talking about, so the studios are going to be very picky about security.

RocShemp

EDIT: The footnote is rather interesting.



Makes it seem like the framerates are available but won't default to 25p or 50p unless a 50 Hz TV is used. That seems perfectly reasonable, as long as it's an option you can toggle (useful for content natively shot at 25p or 50p).

RocShemp

So when do you suppose we'll be getting calibration discs that conform to BT.2020?

big e

I love my collection too, but I came to the realization a while ago that I just don't have the time I once did to watch movies. Like you, my collection is full of movies I watched once or maybe twice and never thought of revisiting. I don't want to flat-out get rid of them, but at the same time, I really don't have much interest in revisiting them.

I'm fully aware now that I don't have a strong desire to revisit movies, except personal favorites, but I'm wondering if that desire was ever present? Even when I was younger, the only stuff I would revisit was horror/sci-fi and anime, but even then the revisits were few and far between. And, honestly, even stuff I like, I don't feel like revisiting that often.

For years now, when I watch a movie, I never think of buying it. I watch it, give it a rating in my logbook, and move on to the next. Even the few films I see in theaters, I rarely feel like revisiting afterwards.

brainee

The recent Criterion Blu-ray bronzing issue (which affected some of my collection) prompted similar thoughts for me. I don't rewatch movies too often, but I liked the idea of having a high quality library in my house. And the selling point of collecting DVDs and Blu Rays (over VHS) was that it was advertised as not degrading over time ... your library would last your lifetime (if properly stored). But now we're seeing it doesn't last a lifetime. I feel like any physical media I own could go at any time. And if that's the case, I don't want to buy physical media anymore.

Alan Smithee

That's still the exception rather than the rule, as I have tapes and discs that are more than 35 years old that still play. I'm seriously doubting that any "Ultraviolet" movies I have will be accessible that long from now. It'd be nice if CDs and DVDs had a lifetime guarantee since they're never supposed to wear out, if they ever become unplayable due to rot then they get replaced free of charge. I heard Criterion didn't even have the rights to some of those rotted titles anymore so they couldn't print new ones

Doctorossi

hanshotfirst1138

Isn't 25p still not supported for 25 FPS material since Blu can't handle it, making most 25 FPS material encoded at 50i? If the format can support 60p? Why would it not be able to support lower frame rates?

Adam Tyner

Ultra HD Blu-Ray does support 25p. No need for any interlacing tricks. In fact, there aren't any interlaced options at all in the docs I've seen. 30p and 48p are the glaring omissions.