4K and all that

Batdog

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Hi All

I am finding myself increasingly curious about what 4K devices we are likely to see coming in the near future...........rather like many others I am loathe to upgrade now knowing that 4K 'may' be just around the corner plus other possible improvements like LED or laser light sources.

It is 4K that I find most intriguing though, 3 years ago when I bought my HD350 I thought it was razor sharp and that home video just couldn't get much better, but over the past year or so I've started to find the picture kind of soft looking. Adding a Darblet had a big impact and I was happy with it set at HD45%, but gradually I've become tolerant to it at higher settings.....last night I watched The Avengers at Gaming 60% and liked what I saw......yet still I am increasingly curious as to what 4K will bring.

I think the only thing that really concerns me is that we may end up with 4K-lite. I am hearing that they may deliver 4K movies via our existing 50GB Blu-Rays using a new codec....and this worries me. The move to 1080p saw seen us with 2 new video codecs, a brand new technology with 6x the capacity of DVD and capable of many times the bitrate. I can't help but think that if 4K relies on 50GB Blu-Ray as a delivery medium then we are going to get 4K for 4K's sake.

Certainly one of the weaknesses of Blu-Ray (or so I used to read a lot) is that it is still based around 8 bit colour. I would have thought that going beyond Blu-Ray1080p is about more than just simple resolution, that 10 or 12 bit colour was an obvious requirement and that this amongst other things would necessitate more capacity and higher bitrates. I remember reading years back about 8 layer Blu-Rays, surely 4 layers and 100GB could be made a reality in this day and age?

Obviously not much is yet known so all of this may become a reality, I just can't help worrying that 4K is the only headline that will concern people and that in actual fact we'll miss out on a whole load of other poential improvements.

I'm also hoping that they don't think they can get away with charging £1k for 4K players once they appear like they tried with the early Blu-Ray players!
 
You can be sure that the first players won't be cheap, though whether they increase the chroma resolution from a quarter of the native resolution as is the case with 1080 BluRays now is not so definite. Or if they increase the bit depth.

I'm hoping they don't suddenly appear next year at very low prices otherwise my decision to buy another 1080p projector might be a little rash, but at least it wasn't too expensive and some value will remain I guess. :)

I remember when I got my Isco lens I was puzzled to find that even though I couldn't see the pixels of my previously zoomed image, that the higher pixel density of using a lens was 'better'. Somehow it still makes the image appear more 'solid' so I'm expecting zoomed 4K (surely a lens wouldn't be needed on top, but who knows??) to look even better, especially with a true 4K source.

That's probably more the crux of the matter in that we will need to have a good supply of discs to watch and my guess is that (at least initially) the prices will be extortionate. :( Of course over time they will fall and hopefully places like Lovefilm and Blockbuster will offer on line rental of 4K discs as they do now for BluRay (at no extra cost over DVD as now).
 
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4k media is some time off yet imo. 4k pj's are already here and more on the way. Having seen what 4k upscaling can do I can't wait until 4k pj's come down to more sensible price levels.
 
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