I was hoping with 4K, we would get Passive 1080p 3D capability... Active simply means we won't be buying..

Um, that totally depends on the TV you buy. Some 4K sets have passive 3D others have active 3D.

I wanna buy a 4K TV after moving to my new house.

Wait until all 4K TV's at least have HDMI 2.0 connections and are fully HDCP 2.2 compliant. That could help eliminate the guess work of which TV to get. And you might want to wait another year anyway since it seems HDMI 3.0 (or whatever they'll call it) will be announced by then.

My in-laws just got a 4K TV this weekend. They were just in the market for a new display and weren't seeking out 4K specifically, so the lack of 4K content and in-flux standardization didn't really factor in for them. (I'm sure they weren't aware of any of that anyway.) It was kind of neat to fire up the Amazon Instant Video app directly on the TV and watch Orphan Black in 4K! It's not night and day compared to BD, but I'm sure the fact that it was streaming played a big part in that, and I can't speak to their Internet connection, choice of router, and all that.

If it was actually streamed in 4K then there is are variable quality factors regarding router, internet speed, or anything regarding the transport. You either get the full streaming 4K or you don't get anything (which means downrezzed to 1080p or worse).

Streaming 4k vs. BD is pretty much a wash. I would give the edge to streaming, but only on those scenes where the extra detail in 4k is noticeable (scenes with lots of tiny detail like city skylines, crowds of people or lots of small objects close together). The lower relative bit rate of streaming offsets most of the benefits of higher resolution. That said, 4k streaming looks much better than 1080p streaming.

We have a logo:

They should have just called it UltraHD and dropped the blu-ray part altogether.

Yeah, unless the discs have a standard 1080p encode included (playable on all existing BD players), including Blu-ray in the logo is dumb, IMO.

They should have just shortened it to Ultra-Blu or something. It feels like a name and logo decided on by a committee that couldn't agree on the choice and went with the safest alternative possible.

I understand why they wanted to keep Blu-ray in the name, most consumers associate that with advanced HD quality.

I guess they want to try and piggy-back on the Blu-Ray name and make it feel less like a new format. Will also come in handy when Ultra HD BD players are compatible with standard BD - so people will know it's in the same family (although some may think their current BD player can play 4K - so there's that).

Still DOA. I don't see myself buying an 80"+ TV to notice the upgrade in quality, not to mention having to buy a new player... and I certainly have no desire to re-buy my movies yet again.

Funny enough, it sounds a lot like "HD DVD" - a name that mislead people into thinking the familiar DVD logo meant they could still play them in a regular DVD player.

I was thinking the same thing.

I also have zero interest in this format...at least for the foreseeable future.

I could see myself buying new releases on this format if they were shot and mastered in 4k, but I can't think of too many catalog releases I'd shell out the dough for.

Wasn't the last remaster of Lawrence of Arabia done in 4K? That would be one I'd definitely get.

Based on the poor sales of catalog titles and the slow release I'd be willing to bet not many titles would even be released on the new format.

It's very possible this format sees very few catalog releases. There are many catalog releases on Blu-ray today that barely look better than DVD, much less 4K resolution.

Sure, but a lot of that's due to studios rehashing awful masters from 15+ years ago. No one's really sitting on ancient, low-quality 4K masters, so at least in theory, lackluster looking catalog titles shouldn't be a problem.

The biggest hurdle with 4K is a fundamental lack of content. There might have to be a lot of catalog titles simply because there's so little else. Very, very few films go through the entire post-production process in 4K. Even some of the most lavishly budgeted movies on the planet might shoot in, say, 5K with a RED Epic, but the visual effects and DI will still be 2K. (For instance, The Hobbit trilogy and The Avengers were finished in 2K.) A lot of the "remastered in 4K!" films you see on Blu-ray were scanned at 4K but actually finished in 2K as well. The "funny" thing too is that oversampling produces the best results, so the best looking 4K masters will be the ones scanned at 6K or 8K.

You're going to see a lot of upscaled content on Ultra HD Blu-ray. Admittedly, the format has other advantages beyond resolution (colorspace, HDR, more efficient compression), and 2K does have a slightly higher resolution than Blu-ray anyway.

Another crazy thing is that there's not a single television on the market (correct?) that can take advantage of all the bells and whistles of Ultra HD Blu-ray.

So, we found a deal on a UltraHD tv. An LG model for only $999, 60". We've just got the Bluray player and videogame systems hooked up so far, but it still looks nice. Not in any rush for new content, still have a ton of DVDs that I have no plans to upgrade, most look ok upconverted so far.

Huh? What's the point of the format if 4K TVs can't handle it? I'm confused.

I will say, I assumed adoption of 4K TVs would be a hurdle, but the prices dropped much more quickly for those than they did for 1080i/1080p TVs, and I guess that practically anyone looking for a new TV within the next few years will just default to a 4K TV.

I wonder if it could be beneficial to play UHDBDs () on a 1080p TV. The idea is that you could have both the luma and the chroma resolution at 1920x1080 instead of just luma at 1920x1080 and chroma at 960x540. It would be like having 4:4:4 HD.

As for the name, "Ultra HD" seems redundant. Ultra should be considered the next step up from high, so that part of the name should be "Ultra Definition." Call it "Ultra Definition Disc," with a manageable UDD abbreviation.

None of the current UHDTVs on the market meet Rec. 2020 spec. Most don't have HDMI 2.0 and even less are HDCP 2.2 compliant.

You'll have to wait for newer sets (like the upcoming ones with Dolby Vision) to even begin taking advantage of the color space benefits of UHDBD. And the HDCP issue is a big one because copy protected discs will playback at no more than 1080p resolution if your equipment is not HDCP 2.2 compliant.

Oh fer fuck's sake

Good thing I'm not buying a new TV anytime soon.

Same here. Maybe in the next 3-4 years. But I have a Sharp 65" in my theater room that I don't use nearly enough. I have a lot of time for all of this hoopla to play itself off. My preliminary guess is that still will fail fairly soon after takeoff. I don't want it to, I love seeing 4k in all its glory, but we'll see little to zero support from just about all of the studios on this.

Ditto.