Sony to launch 4k Blu-ray titles timed with their 4k TVs

Title is a bit misleading (as are the articles).. they're not 4K Blu-rays. The Blu-ray specification doesn't support any resolution higher than 1920x1080. They're mastered in 4K resolution. Which is pretty meaningless, because most Blu-rays are mastered at higher than 1080p these days. So many movies are shot digitally at 4-5K resolutions anyway.. that's already the "master" resolution to begin with. This is nothing more than a marketing gimmick to sell overpriced discs that have no visible difference between them and regular Blu-rays.

And Sony wasn't the first, actually. LG announced their 4K TV yesterday.

This is all moot, IMO. There's no content for these TVs, and the prices right now are prohibitively expensive. The few sets that actually have announced prices are upwards of $10,000, five times as much as a 1080p TV of the same size. The really big ones they're showing off? You don't wanna know.

So I guess 3D is dead, then? I don't see any reference to these TVs supporting 3D content. I thought that was the big thing now. And here I was about to buy a rather large 3D television. Silly me.
 
I mentioned it as "Blu-ray titles" as it was stated in the Sony press release, but yeah though they are mastered in 4k they are not Blu-rays with higher than the current resolution.

With the exception of modern movies shot in the last decade, lot of older movie releases are still being released on Blu-ray which were mastered only in 2k, though they could have done it in 4k like the recent Taxi Driver release. BTTF is one of those which still needs the 4k treatment.

Prices for these TVs are indeed ridiculous and it will be couple of years before actual Ultra HD Blu-rays with resolution of 3840 × 2160 starts rolling out.
 
Meh, It's pointless anyway, IMO. When you sit ten feet away from the TV, you don't need a 400dpi retina display. 1080p is already too fine to make out individual pixels at normal viewing distance. My current TV (the one I'm looking to replace) already renders sharper images than I can actually see most of the time, especially with my contacts in.

It'll definitely be a boon with the larger TVs, to be sure. A screen twice the size with the same pixel density as my existing TV, that's a good thing. But not when it costs more than my house. They're making a really big deal out of something that won't be even remotely commonplace for another five years at least.
 
There's a chart out there (i've posted it before) that shows how close you have to be to discern a resolution on a tv.

As i recall, in my case, in order to be able to differentiate 1080p from 720p on a 61" set, you need to be sitting within 11 feet of the screen. Being able to tell 1440p from 1080p was like 6-7'. I can' only imagine how close i'd have to be to see the detail in 2160p (4k).

The reason you're seeing these things in such huge sizes is that's the size you need to be in order to actually see the detail.
 
The problem is that they're so damned expensive at that size. Hell, the normal-sized ones cost about the same as a small car.

Yeah, it'll come down, I'm just saying it's a bit silly to be making such a big marketing push for it right now when no one can actually buy the thing.
 
Yeah, but this is how consumer electronics work. These are basically prototype models. Anyone remember when LEDs came out? They were in the $20,000 range, too. Now they're more affordable.

I'd say in about..hmm...5-ish years, we'll be seeing consumer level 4k stuff. It will be the next "revolution" in home video, requiring further upgrades. You'll need a new media player, a new TV, maybe a new receiver if they use a different transfer protocol other than HDMI. This is how they engineer forced obsolescence.

It'll be timed in a way that also makes more sense for the next generation of home media. The problem with 3D is that it came hot on the heels of the massive switchover to HDTV. That switchover was a godsend for the consumer electronics industry, because it came at exactly the same time that blu-ray was really taking off, so it meant across-the-board massive upgrades. But the problem is that it happened before 3D really hit, which meant everyone already HAD a new TV by the time the 3DTVs were coming out. Why would you upgrade just for 3D, ya know?

4K will be different, I'd bet. Not only is it timed better, but it also coincides with a lot of the remastering/blu-ray transfer efforts, much of which have been done in 4k anyway. The implication of that is that the studios can crank out 4K discs (or whatever the media format is by then) without having to spend boatloads remastering them. They're already at 4k. Or at least, that's my understanding.
 
Don't know if it'll catch on that fast or at all to be honest.

To be able to see the difference you have to have a giant set (in excess of 7 feet) or sit way too close to it.

Sitting 15 feet from a 55" set, you'll be hard pressed to see the difference between a 4k and 1080p.
 
I don't understand the utility of owning a 4k tv when there doesn't exist any 4k content to watch on it. I have no need for content above 1080p unless I decide to start projecting movies on an entire side of my house. Furthermore, I am very much in disagreement with resolution being the sole metric by which we quantify image quality. As far as I'm concerned, way too many blu ray discs are just waxy DNR laden messes, I still have yet to find an hd transfer of T2 that I'm comfortable buying. After the studios tighten the screws and truly take advantage of the image quality that current equipment is capable of, then I say they are ready to move up the resolution ladder.
 
cboath said:
Don't know if it'll catch on that fast or at all to be honest.

To be able to see the difference you have to have a giant set (in excess of 7 feet) or sit way too close to it.

Sitting 15 feet from a 55" set, you'll be hard pressed to see the difference between a 4k and 1080p.
Click to expand...

who sits 15 feet away from their tv?!
 
berger said:
who sits 15 feet away from their tv?!
Click to expand...
15 feet actually isn't that far. Perception is a little wacky when it comes to that for some reason. Chances are you sit further back than you think you do.

I used to think I sat about 8-9 feet from my TV, but when I actually pulled out the tape measure, it's actually 11-12 feet. And that's in a small apartment, with the couch up against the opposite wall from where the TV is, and the TV's only about 16" away from that wall.
 
Solo4114 said:
4K will be different, I'd bet. Not only is it timed better, but it also coincides with a lot of the remastering/blu-ray transfer efforts, much of which have been done in 4k anyway. The implication of that is that the studios can crank out 4K discs (or whatever the media format is by then) without having to spend boatloads remastering them. They're already at 4k. Or at least, that's my understanding.
Click to expand...

True, but how many films are going to be PROPERLY remastered at 4k? Think about how many sub-par blu-ray releases we're getting right now. I can see a lot of Warner catalog titles and new big-budget films looking amazing, but everything else? I'm not sure how many time I want to double dip, especially if a lot of 4k films end up being upscaled blu-ray transfers that were upscales of dvd transfers...
 
Well, that's why you research the transfer on the front end. I've been doing that on blu-ray.com. It's been pretty helpful and I've managed to avoid a lot of crappy remasters (e.g. the previous Terminator release before the recently remastered one).
 
berger said:
who sits 15 feet away from their tv?!
Click to expand...

People who have living rooms bigger than 12x15. Mine's 20x18. My Parent's is 17x25 (or 30 depending on how you measure).

Closest I think i've ever sat to a TV was in an apartment in college. Living room was 12 feet wide. TV one wall, couch the other. Put me 9-10 feet from the screen. Common in apartments, not so much in houses.
 
I have a 55" TV and I think I sit around...12 feet away? And that's a relatively small media room, at that. Even so, the 55" -- while plenty big -- still can't blow things up quite as big as I might like. Like, if I'm playing a game on my X360 and there's fine print on the HUD. I can read it, but it'd be easier on a 65". If I had that, a 4K display might not be such an awful investment.
 
I think you would need a significantly large set to really even warrant the need of 4k, which to me is even a stretch to say because 1080p looks beautiful on a huge TV as it is.

It might be like the suggestion that having Blu-ray is pointless if you have a 24" monitor and shouldn't even bother unless you are going to at least a 42" screen.

There's a big difference between DVD and Blu-ray resolution, but i'm wondering just how much more detail and color depth we'll notice (to our eyes, not technical measuring devices) in the movies we watch in the 4k format.

It will definitely serve and enthusiasts market. There's still a lot of people who still don't even have Blu-ray or an HDTV that are happy with SD DVD.
 
niennumb1 said:
I think you would need a significantly large set to really even warrant the need of 4k, which to me is even a stretch to say because 1080p looks beautiful on a huge TV as it is.

It might be like the suggestion that having Blu-ray is pointless if you have a 24" monitor and shouldn't even bother unless you are going to at least a 42" screen.

There's a big difference between DVD and Blu-ray resolution, but i'm wondering just how much more detail and color depth we'll notice (to our eyes, not technical measuring devices) in the movies we watch in the 4k format.

It will definitely serve and enthusiasts market. There's still a lot of people who still don't even have Blu-ray or an HDTV that are happy with SD DVD.
Click to expand...

I actually think the resolution difference is noticeable. The edges of images become finer, background detail is clearer (depending on the lenses used), and you can discern texture much more easily.

I think the real issues will be price and the timing of the consumer-level rollout. If you figure that most folks bought HDTVs at 1080p some time during the last six years, that'll probably mean that they'll start looknig around for new sets in another, what, four years? Maybe less, depending on the age of their older set and its size.

I JUST bought this year, so I've got some time left on my set. For me, the 4K stuff will be pointless unless a player can downscale it effectively or they release a blu-ray 1080p version of whatever.

But for someone who bought and early 1080p back around 2007 or so? Three or four years from now they might say "Well, what the hell. Let's get the 4K thing."


Plus, the ability for the human eye to discern the difference between 1080p and 4K isn't the point. It's what people BELIEVE they can see and whether they BELIEVE they're buying a better product.
 
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