Move out of the way Blu-Ray, and make room for 4K Blu-Ray! Or as we now have found out today from the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA), is now being call Ultra HD Blu-Ray. This new title makes sense as it goes along with the naming of 4K HD being Ultra HD. While I think having this new format is a great upgrade (and probably the biggest update to Blu-Ray since.. well Blu-Ray), I have a feeling this new format will have a hard time catching on with the majority of of users who already have a Blu-Ray player. Most people have stated that they even have a hard time telling the difference between current standard of 1080p HD and 4K (which I would completely disagree with those people), and most users are concerned they will have to upgrade their Blu-Ray player in order to view Ultra HD Blu-Ray's. But nonetheless, this new format introduces some new features and already has some major backing from high-end studios.
Read more for details on Ultra HD Blu-Ray...
Here are the current standards for Ultra HD Blu-Ray. (Keep in mind that these may change as this not yet finalized by the BDA)
- Ultra HD Blu-Ray players will be backwards compatible. It will be able to play your current collection of Blu-Ray 3D, Blu-Ray and DVD discs
- This new format will use the newest codec in video compression; HVEC (h.265), which is the next generation up from our current standard MPEG-4 AVC (h.264)
- Seeing as 4K video will require a lot more disc space, there will be 2 options of UHD-BD. 66GB (Duel Layered) and 100GB (Triple Layered)
- Will allow high frame rates (up to 60fps. Probably due to Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy being shot in 48fps)
- Will allow 10 bit color
- Wider color gambit (up to Rec.2020 or BT.2020)
- High Dynamic Range
The question on most peoples mind is, "Will I have to buy a new player?" Yes. These new upgrades require new hardware that cannot be fixed with a simple software update. But I feel the bigger question is, will this catch on? I personally hope so as physical media will always provide a higher quality option than streaming media. But there's the biggest competition right there... Streaming. With the convenience and low cost of streaming services, its hard for most people to convince themselves that paying more money to upgrade to the next best thing is worth it. It will be even more difficult now that services like Netflix and Amazon Prime will be rolling out 4K HD streaming soon. So its seems like the the BDA needs to find a major selling point with UHD-BD in order to convince people this is worth the upgrade. But it may not be too hard with the major studios backing this new format. Studios like Disney, Warner Bros. Fox and Sony are already behind it the product and are already working on bringing some of their popular titles to the format. It also helps that all these studios are have been mastering their films in 4K for the past few years now. So there should be no problem with lack of 4K content. And a lot of major corporations are also behind UHD-BD. For example Panasonic showed off their UHD-BD player prototype at CES 2015 earlier today. So we already have some major backing that might help push the sales of this new format.
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