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I will sit out the first round of new equipment, as I always do, and let the early adopters fund the second round (thanks in advance to you early adopters). I am looking forward to seeing some UHD content with HDR and WCG (wide color gamut) content on a capable display device. I don't think I will re-acquire nearly as many titles on UHD BR as I did going from DVD to BR. The benefit in gaining 6x the resolution from DVD to BR was very, very apparent (especially having grown up with crappy NTSC broadcast TV and VHS). I realize that UHD BR will offer 4x the resolution, but that alone is not enough to get me to rip and replace my substantial BR collection. Now, given the right title, the HDR and WCG might persuade me to repurchase some titles, but I think those will be few and far between. Some of my all time favorites, however, will get me to take the plunge: Blade Runner; The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; Patton. Anything shot on quality 35mm or 65/70mm Todd AO should benefit nicely from a fresh 4K scan. Might even pick up Ben-Hur again...

There are some titles I'll definitely replacing my Blu-rays once the UHD Blu-rays are out:
- Time Bandits
- Labyrinth
- Frogs
- Space Jam
- Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Milo Burke wrote:

There are some titles I'll definitely replacing my Blu-rays once the UHD Blu-rays are out:
- Time Bandits
- Labyrinth
- Frogs
- Space Jam
- Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

And here I was pondering picking up the somewhat recent Criterion release of Time Bandits on Blu-ray. I am pretty sure it was only a 2K scan, though.

Mom. Dad. Don't touch it; it's evil.

Been far too long since I've seen that movie.

kamikaziechameleon wrote:

geekl33tgamer wrote:

Honestly, most of this thread is just junk. It's basically kamikaziechameleon asking an incredibly vague question, then disagreeing or ignoring a lot of what's being said. Well, whatever - You've said time and time again that no GPU's exist with HDMI 2.0 so it's a problem. This is why I'm posting to correct you.

There's several sporting HDMI 2.0: GTX 960, 970, 980, 980Ti, Titan X.

The HDMI 2.0 info can get tricky...

There are the "required" specs and the optional non required specs and it is
far from clear exactly what you are getting when buying something
with HDMI 2.0.
I believe I've read that the Nvidia HDMI 2.0 cards do not have ALL the
specs covered, just some.

Unfortunately you really have to dig to find out if what you are looking for
is fully supported in the product(s) (video card,display,BD player)
you are buying if it may be an optional non required spec.

I'm in no hurry to go 4K for my desktop computers.

As far as 4K TVs go I'm waiting for a couple of things to happen. I'm primarily waiting for Ultra HD Blu-ray and Rec. 2020 to appear on the market and then wait for a response from the TV manufacturers. The second thing I am waiting for is a next gen Mac mini (HTPC) with a beefier GPU to supply 4K retina. If things work out I'll probably get a 4K TV in late 2016.

kamikaziechameleon wrote:

5K is serious over kill IMHO.

Not for computers. 5K is quad 2560x1440. I'd love to have that resolution in a 27" display. Retina 2560x1440 is sweet.

Not for computers. 5K is quad 2560x1440. I'd love to have that resolution in a 27" display. Retina 2560x1440 is sweet.

But you can that at 60Hz or games at 60+fps?

whm1974 wrote:

Not for computers. 5K is quad 2560x1440. I'd love to have that resolution in a 27" display. Retina 2560x1440 is sweet.

But you can that at 60Hz or games at 60+fps?

Both the iMac 5K and the Dell UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD 5K Monitor run at 60Hz. For gaming I would stick with a 27" G-SYNC/FreeSync 2560x1440 display. If 5K sticks around I assume it will eventually get higher refresh rates.

For home theater, even my 1080p projector (110") appears to be "too much". There is enough resolution to see the film grain on older movies, so 4K would simply produce more accurate film grain. Granted more recent digital releases and rendered movies can produce 4K+ resolution, I fail to see the need. Here is why:

After the first 5 minutes of watching and wow factor, your brain gets tired and you no longer process that resolution. Pause the movie, sure, you see it again, but continue on, and it holds no true value to the experience IMHO.

The biggest jump was going from standard old crappy resolution on VHS/Laser Disk up to Blue Ray and that holds tremendous value, but beyond Blue Ray there really is too much info for our eyes and brain to process, even on large size screens.

I am not a Luddite, but I have gotten practical in my old age.

Of another note, I have some Harry Potter DVDs where on a smaller screen they look great, but on the new projector it is large enough to reveal all of the compression artifacts that my image processor cannot deal with. They are THAT bad. "Normal" compression artifacts it cleans right up (revealed by A/B comparisons) but some transfers are simply terrible and more resolution means that you will need to upgrade a lot of your collection or it is distracting.

Again, I am more excited by both HDR and wide color gamut (WCG) and less by the increased resolution. I, too, find that the current 1920x1080 resolution of Blu-ray combined with native 24p (23.976, blah blah) makes for a more than adequate home viewing experience. Hell, we have today a disc that fits in your hand and is essentially the equivalent (or better) of a 35 mm release print! That's saying something about how far home video/theater technology has come! Granted, 4K TVs are the future, and more and more content will be delivered in 4K resolution, so we're going to have it foisted upon us, like it or not. I'll take/accept the added resolution, but in this format "war" it's not the added resolution that will sell me - it's the HDR and WCG once those standards settle down and the TV/panel manufacturers master the process and make it affordable. I should point out, however, that my living room size limits me to about a 48" screen, max. If I had a 120" screen, then I could see the benefit/argument of going 4K.

Months ago, I heard physical distribution of UHD Blu-Ray was coming before Christmas. Which might imply WCG HDR TVs might start showing up soon.

I admit, I haven't been crawling over HT tech sites. But is this starting to happen? Are we seeing anything yet?

I know that Samsung's top lineup and Sony's top lineup have Quantum Dot tech that supports WCG and HDR. Vizio just released a reference series that supports WCG and the Dolby Vision HDR standard. I am not sure what Samsung and Sony support on the HDR side. So...it's begun, but it's still very much an "early adopter, bleeding edge" market.

Looks like there are competing formats for HDR. Ugh.

From what I can tell, there will be one or two models of UHD Blu-ray players technically available somewhere in the world before Christmas, but not at reasonable prices, and not wherever you might be shopping on Friday.

There are a select few UHD Blu-rays slated for release early next year, and the first titles are not exactly awe-inspiring cinematic accomplishments.

Lastly, it looks like there's now a website up to sell the average consumer on the benefits of UHD Blu-ray: http://www.uhdbdinnumbers.com/ Nifty.

Once it finishes loading, that's actually a pretty neat site. The average consumer has no real understanding of nor appreciation for the complex mathematics and technologies that go into producing a "moving picture". I think you have to be somewhat of a videophile to appreciate these new standards. Most people are going to just hear the "4K!!!!" part, as it's easier to wrap one's mind around the concept of more pixels, than, say, "oh, this covers X% of Rec 2020 color space, blah blah blah". Next year should be an exciting time for us videophiles, as a lot of stuff should shake out and settle down. I think more TVs will feature panels that support HDR and WCG, players will drop in price, and content should be more widely available. For classic stuff, I wonder if studios will have to contract for a rescan of the film elements, or will the existing HD masters (e.g., a 4K digital intermediate) be able to be digitally manipulated to support HDR/WCG?

My current TV is only 50", and I sit awfully close to it. Bright scenes are as crisp as 1080p gets, but colors are off, particularly in dim scenes, and the ghosting drives me crazy. It was a cheap TV, and it taught me what to look for in my next TV.

I can't wait to get a UHD Blu-ray player and a 60" UHD TV (with WCG and HDR) for $1,000, and a handful of UHD Blu-ray discs for $10 each (even if new releases cost more). I wonder how many months it will be until it's a reality.

Any opinions on what Redbox is going to do when UHD Blu-rays are out? Refuse to carry them for a year or two? Offer three versions of the same movie with reduced selection? Have special UHD locations? Drop either Blu-ray or DVD to make room for a new format?

Milo Burke wrote:

Any opinions on what Redbox is going to do when UHD Blu-rays are out? Refuse to carry them for a year or two? Offer three versions of the same movie with reduced selection? Have special UHD locations? Drop either Blu-ray or DVD to make room for a new format?

It's an interesting quandary for them. If it was me, I think I'd make a handful of titles available (the latest releases, if at all possible) in all three formats and then watch to see what the response is like. I'm sure they have good data to help them decide if or when to drop one of the existing formats; it may not be the same everywhere. (In Early Adopter territory it may make sense to drop DVDs, elsewhere they may just wait to adopt UHD). But the real question is: how quickly is significant UHD media even going to be available? I imagine this is a quandary they're happy hasn't really arrived yet.

Maybe they're happy the quandary hasn't arrived yet. But 1080p is the best I can currently watch, and Netflix has tons of that. When UHD Blu-rays hit, Netflix is still going to have only minimal 4k content. At the point Redbox starts to carry UHD, I could see my rentals growing from 6/year to 24/year.

Then again, videophiles make up a small percentage of consumers. And I wouldn't be surprised if most videophiles were all about building their personal libraries of high-res movies, based on the Blu-ray forums. So maybe a thrifty videophile like myself that would become a good customer of Redbox UHD movies is a rarity.

Milo Burke wrote:

My current TV is only 50", and I sit awfully close to it. Bright scenes are as crisp as 1080p gets, but colors are off, particularly in dim scenes, and the ghosting drives me crazy. It was a cheap TV, and it taught me what to look for in my next TV.

I can't wait to get a UHD Blu-ray player and a 60" UHD TV (with WCG and HDR) for $1,000, and a handful of UHD Blu-ray discs for $10 each (even if new releases cost more). I wonder how many months it will be until it's a reality.

You can get a 50" Samsung JS7000 (their lowest tier in the SUHD lineup) for about $799 on Amazon right now. It features the "nano-crystal" technology that is used for WCG, but I am not sure it includes their "Peak Illuminator" technology, which I believe is required for HDR content. If you want it all right now, the Samsung JS8000 and JS9000 series are the way to go...but you're still paying that early-adopter premium to some degree. I need to hit up a local showroom that actually has these units on the floor...but leave my wallet at home.

Please correct me if I'm wrong - I'm not an expert on these things.

But it looks like each brand is developing their own gimmick for WCG and HDR. Which scares me for two reasons: first, if they're all competing, how do we know each will function with the data actually provided by a UHD Blu-ray player? And second, normally when a manufacturer develops exclusive "features" that are always on, like blur reduction sharpening or whatever, it's a mess that you always want turned off.

There's no way that I want to buy into TVs that generically boost the saturation of every scene, or generically boost the contrast of every scene. Yikes.

Has anyone researched this enough to discover how the current models handle these things? Or are we still waiting for proper, simple, non-proprietary WCG and HDR features to roll out on TVs?


Fortunately, I heard that the markup for UHD Blu-ray players, although probably 50-100% to start, will not be nearly as bad as early-gen Blu-ray players over DVD players. And I expect that having had 2160p TVs on the market for some time will get us lower prices sooner when proper WCG HDR TVs finally hit the market.

The UHD Alliance has posted the specs required for devices/distribution/content to receiver their UHD "UltraHD Premium" certification. See here for more specifics and a breakdown of what is required for each category: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 ... Experience

I think this is, overall, a good thing. This will be a quick/easy way for a consumer to know that a player and/or display device meets all the checkboxes. This of course makes me glad I didn't jump on a 4K set last year, as all but the top end Sony and Samsung models only meet the image resolution requirement.

CES 2016 should be good. LG is showing off their own Super UHD (surprised Samsung, which already had/has a SUHD line) displays, and Vizio should have more on their Reference Series (which are implementing Dolby Vision's HDR scheme). I'm hoping 2016 is the year more of these specs (HDR and WCG) make it into mid range sets.

My next purchase will OLED TV - i was highly impress by the demo, the colour reproduction and blacks are just not possible on LED TVs.

Mine will be as well but im going to wait until the real UHD Rec.2020 sets are out. Probably see the first of them pretty soon.

Looks like I misspoke, as Vizio is absent from CES. What I see so far that I like: LG's 2016 OLED panels acknowledge and address some of the issues with the 2015 panels. Good to see a manufacturer address consumer complaints rather than burying their head in the sand. Hisense/Sharp is bringing HDR (or some form of it) to the masses with their mid-range lineups. Multiple vendors are going to have UHDA certified UHD Blu-ray players soon, and Samsung's is pre-order priced at "only" $399, so those should drop relatively quickly. Samsung and Sony's top lineup should have all models UHDA premium certified, but these are going to be way more expensive that what Sharp/Hisense are brining to the table.

Yeah, LG's sets are pretty cool. And not because of their thinness and small bezels. It's really cool to see something built for UHD Blu-ray. Or at least much closer to it that we've seen before.

Apparently the 2016 LG sets are 25% brighter than the 2015 sets. That should help with contrast. And it looks like the LG G6 covers 99% of the DCI-P3 color space. That's cool because that's what cinema projectors are based off of, but now that I've seen a a graph, I'm noticing how much that still falls short of the Rec. 2020 color space.

http://i.imgur.com/v3Thvnr.jpg

This isn't based off anything other than a skepticism that companies are willing to deliver more than expected, but I fear we won't be seeing Rec. 2020 TVs for a long time. If Ultra HD Premium requires only 90% of P3 to get the fancy logo sticker, are companies likely to build significantly beyond that?

I know this is going to sound crazy, but I wish someone would make a "premium" set in the 40-48" range or an HDR/WCG OLED in the same range. My home is cut up into pretty small rooms, and 48" is about the largest I can go. But it seems that 55" is about the smallest you can go and get into sets that have high-end features. Hopefully some of the Sharp/Hisense mid range sets will eventually meet these specifications.

Why the size limitation, Pagey? There literally isn't room on the wall? Or the screen subjectively feels too big for the environment?

I'm sure you've heard the arguments that 4K is useless, blahblahblah, because everybody sits 10-12 feet away from their mid-sized TVs. Well, they have a point. But first, I want double overage for the subtleties like angled lines and other things perceivable at a pixel size so small you can't make out the individual dots. And second, I sit way closer to my 50" TV than most anyone I've met. I've got the couch pulled up close and surround sound wrapped around.

So while I believe the argument against 4K is appropriate for most, I'm ready for it at home for my viewing distance, and 8K would be a nice plus for that double overage at some point in the future.

I think some people prefer big TVs and some people prefer small TVs based on how they appear on the wall when you walk into the room. I don't care a whole lot myself, but I want the TV to subjectively cover a large percentage of my vision when I am sitting in front of it, like going to a movie theater. And if I can't afford a bigger TV, I sit closer. And at the point a good looking screen subjectively fills enough of your vision in your home, a cheap but well selected and integrated surround system can absolutely provide a better experience than the theater.

In other news, I've read that when the new Dell Ultrasharp OLED has a black background, the blacks are so deep it looks like the monitor is off.

Milo Burke wrote:

Why the size limitation, Pagey? There literally isn't room on the wall? Or the screen subjectively feels too big for the environment?

It's the size of the room. Our house is a 2 storey that was originally 2 full floors up stairs but only like a "single wide" downstairs. I believe it is called "cantilevered" or something like that. Anyway, we built on and extended the bottom part out to match the width of the top. As a result of the initial design and the fact that the house is not even 1800 sq. ft., the rooms are smaller, chopped up squares. For the layout of the current living room, the widest TV I can get on a stand is about 45" across (not diagonal). The wall behind the TV had 2 windows before, so we just opened that window space as an opening into the addition. So I can't really wall mount. I'd have to change the layout of the entire living room, and one corner is occupied by an EPA-certified wood burning stove, which adds another complication. So, yeah, I'm just stuck with an inherent design limitation. Granted, I fully acknowledge that this is entirely a first-world problem. Hell, about 2 billion people woke up today and didn't give a single though to WCG and HDR...they thought "what am I going to feed my family today?"