First Ultra HD Channel Goes Live in Europe > Waste of bandwidth without content

Waste of bandwidth without content

Which is exactly what everyone said in 1998 when we were installing $20,000 plasma screens in rich people's houses.
Give it time, it has to start somewhere.
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Burrow owl...burrow owl...

It should start with Bluray 4K.

reply to skeechan
I agree. Hell we dont even have HD through our Cable Service Provider. It just another way for Cable Providers to make extra cash.
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Mr. Donut

reply to skeechan
Not a waste. It's all relative.
In time, the average connection to the home will be 1Gbs. Even a 500Mb/s line will have the over head. Heck, even a 200-300Mb/s line would be fine with room for other services.

Netflix delivers average movie 3-4Mb/s. Since most have 10-20Mb/s modems, its is still a 1/5 of the bandwidth (not talking caps here).

I look forward to when BR is dead, and it all comes down to subscription-streaming and 4K press-on screens! (stick'em on the wall, plug'em in, sync and go!)
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Splat

This is bandwidth no one has in the regular market. DBS and MSOs already compress video to the point it is nearly unwatchable.

If Best Buy wants to grab this channel on a 6' dish to demo TV's, cool, but this has ZERO practical application for anyone not trying to sell a TV.

Even then, stores looking to demo 4K would be better served with a Bluray 4K disc on a loop.

reply to Donut
I can't imagine going back to 480i, it's so grainy.

(Side note: Our HD content is free, OTA ATSC.)
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If you can't open it, you don't own it.

Nothing so awesomely "grainy" as over-compressed HD. And in my market, OTA HD looks like dog crap. It is like they degrade or over compress it on purpose so that you buy through the MSO or DBS provider (where they get paid for re-transmission).

reply to skeechan
Could a 2 hour 4K movie even fit on a blu-ray disc?

I have seen Sony's new 4K BR player for sale in the B&H Photo Catalog. Quad layer BRD (BDXL) holds 128GB. I would guess that Bluray 4K would use BDXL discs. 4K may not even be "Bluray" since it is just called 4K in the description (unlike "3D Bluray"). Without content though it is little more than an upscaler at this point.

»store.sony.com/p/BDP-S790/en/p/BDPS790

reply to Cabal

1-ADAM-12, see the man about an overpriced TV that has no content.

reply to skeechan
There were a handful of Blu-ray players from a few different companies (Sony, Oppo, Panasonic, etc) on display at CES with the ability to upscale to 4K but none of them had the capability to play 4K content off of disc.
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01011001

There isn't any content to be put onto disc. But disc is where 4K content should start.

reply to skeechan
I was told that most new digital movies are "4K". If this is the case then the product is there the only issue will be how it is distributed. The question I have is if sports or the porn industry will jump start the technology. I understand that 3D with the 4K system actually works so that is another potential area of interest. As far as those who oppose this technology my first guess is that Apple would be in the front (or back) as they have tried to kill BluRay in the past. Those who see the future as product via cable or DSL may be surprised. I want a quality picture, not some grainy, blocky, over compressed image full of artifacts. The price will come down and more people will buy it. This could make a major dent in the projector market as you can have a large high quality picture in a room with "normal" lighting.

reply to skeechan
4K Can use any BR disk size but if you put it in the way a movie is intended to be put on a BR disk it will only be 1080p no matter what the disk size is.

The only way 4K will ever be on BR is as a data disk. Which you could do even on a DVD if you wanted to.

Playing it off a BR player will become a problem as bit rate goes up.

reply to skeechan
The problem is that the 4K generation of TV's is also the generation where physical media goes into decline. Besides, it's a lot quicker to use some extra bandwidth on your existing system than wait for a new 4K Blu Ray standard, and then wait for others to manufacture the players and discs. It's more of a proof-of-concept at this point than a serious, commercial venture.

By the way, Blu Ray was a bit late to the HD party, too.

reply to dlewis23
HEVC (Hi Efficiency Video Codec) will solve the bitrate issue.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Effic···o_Coding

storage size . needs to catch up and big thing with 4k is you need a tv larger then 42 inchs to really notice it

reply to cableties
And that 4k stream will burn up a pitiful data cap in no time if doing it over the internet.

I expect tech to improve, Data caps however will likely get smaller and overage rates higher.(private jets are not cheap.)
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports