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Still, I have to say this all moved faster than I thought it would. I marvel to think that it was just a "few" years ago we, as kids (I'm 38 now), had 3 local VHF broadcast stations. It was huge when dad put up a taller antenna and we got Fox 17 (UHF) out of Nashville! Fox had the best cartoons, of course. We consumed our movies on VHS. We were bound to the broadcasters' schedules and "slaves" to the TV Guide. DVD came along and was a revelation in appearance and convenience. I skipped the HD format war and only got into Blu-ray a couple of years ago. Watching a Blu-ray now is basically like having a 35mm release print in your home! To me, the time from Blu-ray at 1920x1080 to 4K UHD seems rather short compared to the time between all the other changes.

The best change is video streaming. After watching Hulu and Netflix during the last few years there is no way I'm going back to watching TV. Yes I do have a TV but I only use for Blu-Rays and hooking up computers that I'm working on to it.

I didn't think to mention streaming, as I have not tried any 4K streaming due to the lack of a 4K display. For once in my life, I have the bandwidth for it, too. Our little ISP (local telephone coop) recently upgraded everyone on fiber to 50 Mbit as the minimum! I'm not sure how much of the bells/whistles is baked into streaming services. Obviously the resolution is there, but what about HDR and WCG? I honestly have no idea. They can pry my physical media from my cold, dead hands.

4K is just a bulls**t standard invented by TV manufacturers to help prop up their sagging sales. Planned obsolescence and all that jazz. I honestly don't care about 4K at all, and I'll probably only upgrade if/when my current TV breaks.

They can pry my physical media from my cold, dead hands.

Well while I do a few boxes of dvds and some Blu-Rays, I live in a SRO apartment so I don't have space for a whole lot of stuff.

Takeshi7 wrote:

4K is just a bulls**t standard invented by TV manufacturers to help prop up their sagging sales. Planned obsolescence and all that jazz. I honestly don't care about 4K at all, and I'll probably only upgrade if/when my current TV breaks.

You mean about 4x the current picture definition (when the content arrives) is a bullcrap standard? It's not like anyone's actually forcing you to get 4K.

I'm really looking forward to watching some content with the new standards. But I don't think we'll truly be there until:
- TV, receiver, player, and discs are all reasonably priced
- Netflix et al. can get their act together and stream content with no visual artifacts (even if they do so at an increased charge)
- ISPs actually bring some marked progress

I think 4k resolution with high dynamic range and wide color gamut will be a thing to behold.

I'm really looking forward to watching some content with the new standards. But I don't think we'll truly be there until:
- TV, receiver, player, and discs are all reasonably priced
- Netflix et al. can get their act together and stream content with no visual artifacts (even if they do so at an increased charge)
- ISPs actually bring some marked progress

Speaking of Netflix, what are the hardware requirements for watching 4K video on a computer?

Netflix Instant is $8/m. Would you guys pay $3/m extra for "Netflix Premium" to get a higher bandwidth stream?

I know I would.

morphine wrote:

Takeshi7 wrote:

4K is just a bulls**t standard invented by TV manufacturers to help prop up their sagging sales. Planned obsolescence and all that jazz. I honestly don't care about 4K at all, and I'll probably only upgrade if/when my current TV breaks.

You mean about 4x the current picture definition (when the content arrives) is a bullcrap standard? It's not like anyone's actually forcing you to get 4K.

Yes, it's just another excuse to sell you a new TV, a new HTPC, a new 4K Blu-Ray player, etc. 4x the current picture definition doesn't really increase the perceived quality much at all. I'd be more excited for games that are indistinguishable from reality at 640*480, than I am about scaling up the resolution to 4K and making all of the graphical imperfections even more obvious.

I will pickup a few titles that have been mastered or remastered at 4K. Bladerunner, for example.

Takeshi7 wrote:

Yes, it's just another excuse to sell you a new TV, a new HTPC, a new 4K Blu-Ray player, etc. 4x the current picture definition doesn't really increase the perceived quality much at all. I'd be more excited for games that are indistinguishable from reality at 640*480, than I am about scaling up the resolution to 4K and making all of the graphical imperfections even more obvious.

For games to look photorealistic at 640x480 they'd basically have to be internally rendered at a much, much higher resolution then displayed at 640x480, which sort of defeats the purpose IMO. That's why a 640x480 video can still look totally real despite the low resolution, because it is capturing reality (which basically has a nearly infinite resolution for all intents and purposes, atoms/molecules are pretty small)

Takeshi7 wrote:

4K is just a bulls**t standard invented by TV manufacturers to help prop up their sagging sales. Planned obsolescence and all that jazz. I honestly don't care about 4K at all, and I'll probably only upgrade if/when my current TV breaks.

I probably won't be upgrading any time soon either, but hopefully "4K" leads to other improvements aside from just getting more pixels (which is hard to see at the distance/size most people watch their TV at). Wider color gamuts, High dynamic range, higher framerates, etc. Of course we will need the actual content available for that stuff to matter though, and that doesn't seem to be coming any time soon.

Takeshi7 wrote:

morphine wrote:

Takeshi7 wrote:

4K is just a bulls**t standard invented by TV manufacturers to help prop up their sagging sales. Planned obsolescence and all that jazz. I honestly don't care about 4K at all, and I'll probably only upgrade if/when my current TV breaks.

You mean about 4x the current picture definition (when the content arrives) is a bullcrap standard? It's not like anyone's actually forcing you to get 4K.

Yes, it's just another excuse to sell you a new TV, a new HTPC, a new 4K Blu-Ray player, etc. 4x the current picture definition doesn't really increase the perceived quality much at all. I'd be more excited for games that are indistinguishable from reality at 640*480, than I am about scaling up the resolution to 4K and making all of the graphical imperfections even more obvious.

Wait, what? No perceived quality improvement? 640x480? Man, this is not personal, but I think you gotta be blind if you don't notice the difference to 4K with native-at-4K material.

I mean, do you still use a phone with a 300x200 display or something really old like that?

The real 4K UHDTV standard is 10 or 12bit Rec.2020 color and it will be released with UHD Blu Ray in a few months.

The real 4K UHDTV standard is 10 or 12bit Rec.2020 color and it will be released with UHD Blu Ray in a few months.

But how fast will people buy real UHD TVs and content? Something tells me that it will be a long while before real UHD becomes commonplace.

whm1974 wrote:

The real 4K UHDTV standard is 10 or 12bit Rec.2020 color and it will be released with UHD Blu Ray in a few months.

But how fast will people buy real UHD TVs and content? Something tells me that it will be a long while before real UHD becomes commonplace.

Its the first ITU standard change for TV in a long time and its for digital cinema too.

BlackDove wrote:

The real 4K UHDTV standard is 10 or 12bit Rec.2020 color and it will be released with UHD Blu Ray in a few months.

If they market that as UHD as well, then two things may happen:

1) Consumers won't notice / care when buying a new TV/Blu-Ray/STB etc because it's the "same", or
2) Confusion ensues if the "new" standard won't work with what he have now, because of point 1

The industry really don't help themselves sometimes.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

BlackDove wrote:

The real 4K UHDTV standard is 10 or 12bit Rec.2020 color and it will be released with UHD Blu Ray in a few months.

If they market that as UHD as well, then two things may happen:

1) Consumers won't notice / care when buying a new TV/Blu-Ray/STB etc because it's the "same", or
2) Confusion ensues if the "new" standard won't work with what he have now, because of point 1

The industry really don't help themselves sometimes.

Indeed. They really should call it "Deep Blu"

The industry really don't help themselves sometimes.

So, is it going to a few years at least for everything to sort out? This is why I don't buy the latest technolgy when it first comes out.

Pagey wrote:

I didn't think to mention streaming, as I have not tried any 4K streaming due to the lack of a 4K display. For once in my life, I have the bandwidth for it, too. Our little ISP (local telephone coop) recently upgraded everyone on fiber to 50 Mbit as the minimum! I'm not sure how much of the bells/whistles is baked into streaming services. Obviously the resolution is there, but what about HDR and WCG? I honestly have no idea. They can pry my physical media from my cold, dead hands.

I'm not interested in 4K streaming given how generally horrible colors are at 1080p streaming given the more available bandwidth. Ontop of that the surround sound support of streaming is generally horrible. If you value quality streaming currently is about DVD quality, better res but worse color similar to inferior sound. I know it will work itself out eventually but the color banding has not gotten any less horrible since the advent of streaming video while resolution has increased amazingly. Similarly sound has been such a hit or miss disaster for whatever reason.

I need to test some 1080p streaming now that I'm on 50 Mbit fiber. Admittedly, I never use it for a variety of reasons: 1.) the kids/wife use it pretty much exclusively, so I leave it alone; 2.) I came to force myself to limit streaming long ago, believing that my ISP would follow suit with others and implement caps (they did not and have not, btw); 3.) I prefer physical media because, in theory, if I have a display and playback device, I'm good, Internet be damned.

But I am genuinely curious now how well 1080p Netflix looks on my fiber connection. I don't have a surround system, so I can't test that. I'm 2.0 into and old school JVC amp and JVC towers with 10" subs.

Got some serious hands on the other day with my first 4K monitor at a lan party. It was a 27" 4K IPS panel. It indeed looked phenomenal compared to my 2K 30" dell. I honestly was looking for more of a 40" so I could sit back from the display more, but it seems no one will be making that soon... Maybe when the receivers get updated we'll see some interesting options develop for me in that area. I'm so over trying to get my 2K to work with the frustrating AMD audio drivers... so annoying. I miss my Nvidia drivers!

At any rate I was sold soon as I saw that monitor and it was only running dota 2, not even the most graphically complex game. I really love high res for isometric games even more than for an FPS. 4K is just clean and sharp and has a huge impact on text, images, and games. Movies it really requires better quality camera equipment than most films were shot in to matter on the average display size you'd see floating around... thought I plan on being above average in that area. :^P

The history of this thread is really entertaining to me, watching the discussion as the tech we are talking about slowly drips out for us to use and comment on. Have any of you ever watched an E sport in engine before? I don't mean streamed video I mean rendered game content like with a DOTA spectator mode. Its pretty amazing and with 4K streaming limitations that currently exist its an interesting work around for bandwidth to watch a 1 min delayed e-sport match in game engine rendered for you rather than streamed... yeah

I don't watch more than maybe a dozen matches a year of starcraft or dota, but the dota system for watching is so darn good, easy, fluid and looks great with some fun camera options. Never thought I'd say it but it makes E-sports really interesting! The way you can view the match is pretty awesome!

Pagey wrote:

I need to test some 1080p streaming now that I'm on 50 Mbit fiber. Admittedly, I never use it for a variety of reasons: 1.) the kids/wife use it pretty much exclusively, so I leave it alone; 2.) I came to force myself to limit streaming long ago, believing that my ISP would follow suit with others and implement caps (they did not and have not, btw); 3.) I prefer physical media because, in theory, if I have a display and playback device, I'm good, Internet be damned.

But I am genuinely curious now how well 1080p Netflix looks on my fiber connection. I don't have a surround system, so I can't test that. I'm 2.0 into and old school JVC amp and JVC towers with 10" subs.

Color banding is not a issue of your connection its an issue with their codecs or compression tech. The audio I'm not sure I have 50 mb down load bandwidth so its pretty fast but I can't seem to get better color rendition in netflix even if I up the res quality. Super apparent in blacks and gray scale but generally any high contrast michael bay movie looks bad. I have a great plasma set that can handle blu ray amazingly but netflix color is poor. Then for audio I have an issue with surround sound not working properly in many netflix streams when it should. Either its simply not streaming surround sometimes as it will notify me or when it is I don't hear it about 50 % of the time. My setup is a solid $1,200 dollar polk 7.1 system on a cheap pioneer receiver but the receiver works for everything else...

kamikaziechameleon wrote:

but generally any michael bay movie is bad.

FTFY.

It begins! http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/ ... sc-player/

Pagey wrote:

It begins! http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/ ... sc-player/

Got all excited for a moment, then put on my sad face when what I see if a standalone unit. They better be making these to go inside towers at some point.

This is exciting. The first step towards widespread adoption.

The curved player is amusing. I thought it looked a bit funny in the picture.


The packaging idea isn't bad. I remember hearing commentary on one of the reasons there still isn't very widespread adoption of Blu-ray in many households. The thought is that the average consumer doesn't want to spend extra and just isn't willing to bite for technology that doesn't fit with what they already have. Why buy Blu-rays if you don't have a Blu-ray player? Why buy a Blu-ray player if you don't have Blu-rays?

The proposed solution is that they should stop selling standard DVDs on their own. Sell every movie as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack for $1 more than they would charge otherwise and don't provide any other options. Fewer SKU's, less shelf space, less warehouse space, etc. The consumer absorbs the extra $1 cost because it is everywhere. Then, when they suddenly have a growing collection of Blu-rays purchased just because they wanted their DVDs, buying a player for $80 isn't so bad. Adoption problem solved.

I fear the new 4k Blu-ray players will have slow adoption too. Whoever said it above, you're right, we do need a further marketing term to show this is more than just resolution, and more than the 4k TV some already have and the content Netflix can stream.


When the prices for compliant players and TVs get closer to parity, I'll definitely be upgrading. And I can't wait. I bought the cheapest 1080p TV I could find based on my criteria, and my criteria at the time didn't include an understanding of ghosting or low-brightness over-saturation. Yikes. It kills me each and every movie, but I'm too thrifty (by necessity) to plunk down for a nicer 1080p or early 4k TV before the dust settles regarding standards and prices. Hence my excitement that this is all starting to happen.

I picked up a Dell P2815Q on the cheap. Reviews say it's terrible (which is probably why I was able to get it as cheap as I did), but I intend to use it only for video in which case the display lag and 30Hz at UHD resolutions shouldn't be too much of a drawback.

Of course the problem now is... There's no 4k content to watch! Sure Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and those Oceans / Forests documentaries are cool and very pretty in 4k, but there's little else out there that interests me.

While you're waiting for more 4K video content, just start watching four 1080p movies at the same time, all at native res. Multi-tasking FTW!

Westbrook348 wrote:

While you're waiting for more 4K video content, just start watching four 1080p movies at the same time, all at native res. Multi-tasking FTW!

I do that already with all three Lord of the Rings movies to save time watching them. And I've got Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the fourth corner, 'cuz what other decent TV shows have been made since 1993?

And I've got Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the fourth corner, 'cuz what other decent TV shows have been made since 1993?

House MD
Supernatural
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Hannibal
Body of Proof
Stargate SG-1
Stargate Alantas

And many others...