4K Blu-ray discs arriving in 2015 to try fight streaming media

[Rassilon]

So then I might as well buy the cheaper digital copy off of Amazon or wherever they would sell one. Why buy a Blu-ray movie just to get a digital download that more than likely has DRM on top of it as well.

No one on the planet sells DRM free digital copies of a movie worth its weight in sand. And amazon copies come with physical copies. And you're not buying the blu ray for the digital copy, you're buying it for whatever reasons you want it. I personally do it for the behind the scenes and to support the makers.

[DallenRex]

It's honestly embarrassing how common pirating is and how many people are totally okay with it. Your "better," "cheaper," or "easier" options aren't any more legitimate than the option you have every time you go to the grocery store, of just walking out the door with your stuff without paying. If everyone were to break the laws you break, it would bring all the companies, which you rely on for entertainment, to their knees. (Not directed at anyone in particular in the forum, just my thoughts.) I know this doesn't have much to do with the forum topic, but it has a lot to do with the posts here.

[TheProfosist]

Off topic question, but, what do you do with the discs after you have ripped them? Put them in a CD binder or do you have a show piece for all of them?

 

So then I might as well buy the cheaper digital copy off of Amazon or wherever they would sell one. Why buy a Blu-ray movie just to get a digital download that more than likely has DRM on top of it as well.

Mine all all on my shelf

Likely because they wouldnt do as good of a job encoding it as I would and id have to deal with their stupid DRM and other limitations with their format.

[geforceftw]

Anyone still uses physical discs? lol

Yup. All the time. I prefer physical copies of games and movies.

[TheProfosist]

Yup. All the time. I prefer physical copies of games and movies.

movies, yes

games, no

[geforceftw]

movies, yes

games, no

dat collectors edition though. I really only get physical collector's editions and generally most of my games are digial now.

[TheProfosist]

dat collectors edition though. I really only get physical collector's editions and generally most of my games are digial now.

Same mostly for meh Anime's.

[Murdoch]

It can theoretically compress roughly ~50% the size of H.264 while keeping teh same quality. As I said before though you have to remember that its still 4x the pixels as 1080p so it will still take at least 2x as much as a 1080p stream encoded with H.264. I dont think were going to see decent quality wide spread 4K streaming for quite some time. The fact that a good portion of people cant stream 1080p doesnt help and the fact that not every even has 1080p currently. HD is just about everywhere now at ~720p which applies to most laptop, cheap HDTV's of a few years ago and lower end smartphones and tablets.

 

It is however pretty amazing you can get 4x the pixels for only double the bit-rate. I agree btw, I don't think 4K will become widespread any time soon. Potentially it could even go the same way as '3D' and mostly be ignored. What's for definite though is that h.265 will have widespread adoption, TVs, PCs, Phones, Tablets etc will all support it, which will make streaming to them much less bandwidth intensive (or improve PQ). And that's where streaming triumphs, it can support multiple resolutions across multiple devices. I don't think the general consumer has any desire for "yet another higher resolution" physical format.

 

On the subject of bandwidth, a 16mb/s bit-rate encode will generally give you [almost impossible to tell the difference from] Blu-Ray quality 1080p video, that equates to 2MB/s download. If you double that to 4MB/s you could potentially stream 4K video. I have a 70mb connection and can download at 6-7MB/s. 95% of the UK will have access to that type of connection within 2-3 years, most already do.

 

Netflix streamed House of Cards @4K using h.265 and a Bit-rate of 15mb/s, which is less than half of what's needed to get decent picture quality at 4K. The same applies to digital downloads too, they are all heavily bit-starved. I don't see lack of bandwidth on the consumer side as being the main issue, I think streaming services chasing "higher resolution" while sacrificing bit-rate is the biggest "bandwidth" related problem.

[JEW UNIT NY]

I don't understand why others prefer streaming content. Blu-rays come with the DVD and digital if you buy new. Can someone explain it to me?

[TroubleKlef]

Very cool to see this.

 

Until general worldwide internet speeds get better AND government regulation of ISPs begin, physical format will always have a place.

 

Data caps are such a pain in the ass.

[Poohy14]

YES!!! soo excited for this since I still buy Blu Rays and also have a reason to get a 4k tv now since I only use a tv for movies

[jbr]

Anyone still uses physical discs? lol

 

Blu-rays look better then any digital download kiddo.

 

Streaming movies is great for tablets, not so great for a large TV.

[martinrox1568]

4k lel

We DONT have TV's monitor or 4K content yet, why would they release 4K discs. 4K discs with 1080p content onthem?

omg. I'm tired of people complaining. "we don't have 4k yet" You realize that content needs to come first, and then the format right. People in format threads are complaining about the lack of 4k monitors and people in monitor threads are complaining about the lack of 4k content. 

[TRIGUND]

RED RAY 

[cubercaleb]

Agreed. People are picky about certain things, but then just "don't give a shit". It's funny that many who complain about discs and think streaming is better, are probably some of the same that complain that you no longer "own" your games and that online DRM is "shitty".

 

I agree with all of your other statements, although I will say something about this one. While I personally hate buying music and movies online due to drm the main reason i buy physical media is for the higher quality. Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, etc. only offer 320kbps mp3 music and h.264 "hd" 1080p movies. On top of that those services are restricted to devices they support, and nothing else. YOu can't really take the files and throw them on a NAS server as easily. If I want lossless quality files I have to purchase physical media, which kind of sucks but at the same time there are always good deals on amazon and Prime helps a lot with shipping costs. 

 

While all these things apply to music and movies they do not apply to games simply because with a game it does not matter if your buy it physically or digitally, because the quality will be the same. The only difference is buying digitally can save you some money and storage space. Physical games can scratch, they require loud dvd readers, and they also suffer from long load times. Simply put, buying digitally gives a conviencene advantage without taking away from the quality of the product. When Amazon offers digital FLAC music for every single album on their store and allows me to do what I want with the files I will reconsider my position.

[-TesseracT-]

Forgot sound quality, also much better on blu.

[-TesseracT-]

Off topic question, but, what do you do with the discs after you have ripped them? Put them in a CD binder or do you have a show piece for all of them?

So then I might as well buy the cheaper digital copy off of Amazon or wherever they would sell one. Why buy a Blu-ray movie just to get a digital download that more than likely has DRM on top of it as well.

I sell them. Saves lots of money.

[razor767]

I wonder how competitive the prices are going to be with streaming services. 

[antutd12]

why bring a new physical format out when digital media is obviously going to win this battle and most people don't have 4k screens anyway seems a waste of time to me

[antutd12]

I wonder how competitive the prices are going to be with streaming services. 

are there any 4k streaming services yet?

[Misanthrope]

I don't get this "try to fight digital media" attitude: optical media is far from useless: their cost to data ratio and reliability still makes them quite relevant for long term storage, after all we're now producing several orders of magnitude of higher quality media, data centers and such and even users could benefit more for better long sterm oriented technology being implemented instead of a desperate "let's try to hold on to mountain people and third world countries even though they will eventually get decent infrastructure and won't need us anyway" strategy

[dalekphalm]

why bring a new physical format out when digital media is obviously going to win this battle and most people don't have 4k screens anyway seems a waste of time to me

There are a bunch of reasons. All of which have been mentioned already. The biggest one is quality. Streaming will be unable to match the sheer quality of Blu-Ray discs for many more years. Just look at 1080p streaming. That's been a thing for what, 5 to 10 years now, and Blu-Ray is still superior in quality, for those of us who care and can see the difference - which I most assuredly can.

 

Plus, HD Audio. It is simply amazing. No streams that I'm aware of use TrueHD or DTS-HD MA, as that would increase the bitrate far too much. Many people worldwide can't stream low bitrate 1080p still - let alone 4K or anything with HD Audio. The worldwide Internet infrastructure is NOT READY for physical media to die. If physical media died tomorrow, then so would high quality movies. Even in 1st world nations like Canada, most Canadians have pretty fucking shitty internet, unless you're in one of the dozen or two cities that happen to have FTTN or true Fiber.

[razor767]

are there any 4k streaming services yet?

 

As far as I know, Netflix has a limited amount of content available in 4K in the UK. 

[dalekphalm]

are there any 4k streaming services yet?

 

 

As far as I know, Netflix has a limited amount of connect available in the UK. 

Netflix and YouTube are it at the moment that I'm aware of. There are likely the odd obscure service, but those are it for the mainstream services.

[jbr]

Because of it's DRM system. It's literally impossible to watch Blu-ray movies on my computer unless you have paid for software to go along with the Blu-ray drive.

 

 

 

There is software that disables the protections, disables the trailers and other crap.  AnyDVD for example.

 

Blu-ray player software is free.