Optimized for 4K Ultra HD TVs! Well so they claim…
If there is one company who will be at the front of the pack when 4K content becomes a reality for consumers, it will be Sony. The company have the means and resources due to their ownership of a film studio, post production houses and mastering facilities, not to mention their consumer electronics experience, to make sure they have a complete 4K eco system in place. So, it's a little surprising that Sony have announced a line of Blu-ray releases which at face value, seem like a marketing initiative rather than offering anything new. We have to say our curiosity was certainly piqued by their latest announcement.
Sony have recently announced two waves of BD releases with the tag line, <i>Mastered in 4K</i>. But this is usually the case for most new releases out of Hollywood where the Blu-ray, such as Universals Schindler's List is encoded to disc from a 4K scanned master, but done so at the BDA specifications of Rec.709 for colour & 8 bit video. Blu-ray discs have to meet the BDA standard to carry the BD badge and be called Blu-ray. As far as we are aware there has been no change in the BDA specification to allow wider colour gamuts or higher than 8bit video. Yet part of the message coming from Sony is that wider colour gamut appears to be one of the features of these new remastered discs. Intriguing stuff.
AVForums members will remember that with DVD Sony did something similar called <i>Superbit</i> where they released DVDs with a claimed higher bit rate for better quality images. These fell by the wayside not long after the release of Blu-ray but they did have fans amongst the home cinema community. It would appear that the <i>Mastered in 4K</i> Blu-rays are in line with the old superbit idea, but we have a few questions for Sony on this one.
As they cannot break the BDA specifications for Blu-ray discs, and Sony were founding partners of the BDA, how are they offering wider colour gamuts on these discs? The press information released so far indicates that the discs are for owners of the Triluminos & 4K TVs to tide them over until native 4K content is available. Yet the discs will also play on normal BD specified equipment, which indicates they are sticking to the BDA spec. So, are they encoding these discs with meta data so they speak to the new Triluminos sets to unlock a wider gamut that fits? That might be technically possible but it also adds yet more questions to what the new discs are supposed to achieve. Some information suggests using x.v.Colour encoding, but as far as we know, that also doesn't fit with the BDA specs. And, the x.v.Colour specifications are Rec.709 colour and D65 white - the same as Blu-ray. The x.v.Colour format does allow some encoding of wider saturation according to some white papers, so this also might make some sense in what Sony is proposing, but it is all rather confusing at this stage, given the limited information Sony has released so far.
So, the cynics out there may say it is purely a marketing drive by Sony with these Blu-ray discs and when you hear comments of the 4K TVs retrieving the extra detail of the 4K mastered disc, at this point we would tend to side with the cynic in us - at the moment anyway. We are all ears Sony and open to a briefing on the technical merits of these releases.
The first wave of discs <i>Mastered in 4K</i> will include Taxi Driver, The Other Guy and Ghostbusters, along with 12 other titles. We also understand that these releases have been confirmed for the UK later this year.
If there is one company who will be at the front of the pack when 4K content becomes a reality for consumers, it will be Sony. The company have the means and resources due to their ownership of a film studio, post production houses and mastering facilities, not to mention their consumer electronics experience, to make sure they have a complete 4K eco system in place. So, it's a little surprising that Sony have announced a line of Blu-ray releases which at face value, seem like a marketing initiative rather than offering anything new. We have to say our curiosity was certainly piqued by their latest announcement.
Sony have recently announced two waves of BD releases with the tag line, <i>Mastered in 4K</i>. But this is usually the case for most new releases out of Hollywood where the Blu-ray, such as Universals Schindler's List is encoded to disc from a 4K scanned master, but done so at the BDA specifications of Rec.709 for colour & 8 bit video. Blu-ray discs have to meet the BDA standard to carry the BD badge and be called Blu-ray. As far as we are aware there has been no change in the BDA specification to allow wider colour gamuts or higher than 8bit video. Yet part of the message coming from Sony is that wider colour gamut appears to be one of the features of these new remastered discs. Intriguing stuff.
AVForums members will remember that with DVD Sony did something similar called <i>Superbit</i> where they released DVDs with a claimed higher bit rate for better quality images. These fell by the wayside not long after the release of Blu-ray but they did have fans amongst the home cinema community. It would appear that the <i>Mastered in 4K</i> Blu-rays are in line with the old superbit idea, but we have a few questions for Sony on this one.
As they cannot break the BDA specifications for Blu-ray discs, and Sony were founding partners of the BDA, how are they offering wider colour gamuts on these discs? The press information released so far indicates that the discs are for owners of the Triluminos & 4K TVs to tide them over until native 4K content is available. Yet the discs will also play on normal BD specified equipment, which indicates they are sticking to the BDA spec. So, are they encoding these discs with meta data so they speak to the new Triluminos sets to unlock a wider gamut that fits? That might be technically possible but it also adds yet more questions to what the new discs are supposed to achieve. Some information suggests using x.v.Colour encoding, but as far as we know, that also doesn't fit with the BDA specs. And, the x.v.Colour specifications are Rec.709 colour and D65 white - the same as Blu-ray. The x.v.Colour format does allow some encoding of wider saturation according to some white papers, so this also might make some sense in what Sony is proposing, but it is all rather confusing at this stage, given the limited information Sony has released so far.
So, the cynics out there may say it is purely a marketing drive by Sony with these Blu-ray discs and when you hear comments of the 4K TVs retrieving the extra detail of the 4K mastered disc, at this point we would tend to side with the cynic in us - at the moment anyway. We are all ears Sony and open to a briefing on the technical merits of these releases.
The first wave of discs <i>Mastered in 4K</i> will include Taxi Driver, The Other Guy and Ghostbusters, along with 12 other titles. We also understand that these releases have been confirmed for the UK later this year.
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