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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Any word about ODEMAX from NAB 2013?

Blair S. Paulsen said:
FWIW the mass market is heading for an H.265 environment for both UHD and HD. In the short term the primary benefit will, hopefully, be better HD IQ within current bandwidth delivery envelopes. As a point of reference, H.265 is promoted as roughly 4 times more efficient than H.264.

IAC, the RedRay/.RED/Odemax play is promoted as being able to achieve another four fold improvement in IQ per bit over H.265. How? More complex encoding methodology that embeds more information and requires more processing horsepower to decode, i.e., RedRay hardware. The crux of the argument for the greater costs associated with the RedRay based ecosystem is to attain quality levels, at real world bit rates, that fulfill the promise of UHD/4K.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

That certainly explains how the .RED codec/Red player/Red Projector is a perfect match for movie theaters, and for the discerning eye, the home theater. The more we learn about how this works, the more exciting I personally become over the possibilities.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
FWIW the mass market is heading for an H.265 environment for both UHD and HD. In the short term the primary benefit will, hopefully, be better HD IQ within current bandwidth delivery envelopes. As a point of reference, H.265 is promoted as roughly 4 times more efficient than H.264.

IAC, the RedRay/.RED/Odemax play is promoted as being able to achieve another four fold improvement in IQ per bit over H.265. How? More complex encoding methodology that embeds more information and requires more processing horsepower to decode, i.e., RedRay hardware. The crux of the argument for the greater costs associated with the RedRay based ecosystem is to attain quality levels, at real world bit rates, that fulfill the promise of UHD/4K.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

I don't know where you read that H.265 will be 4 times more efficient than H.264, I'm sure all the literature I've read states 50-60% if their lucky. And where does .RED claim to be another 4 fold improvement over H.265? The more this 4K distribution to the home goes on I'm realising it's years away for for the mass market, biggest hurdle is bandwidth, World average is 2.9 megabits per second, good luck trying to squeeze 4k down that pipe.
 
The actual efficiency improvements of H.265 vs H.264 or MPEG-2 are dependent on a nascent technology optimization environment still coalescing. Moreover, the metrics used for assigning a numerical value to such improvements are either PSNR quotients, which are very limited, or perceptual testing. Human subjects filling out evaluation forms may be the most meaningful way of measuring real world comparatives but assigning scores requires creating scales, choosing terminology, etc that quickly devolves into soft numbers at best.

For the sake of discussion we have to make some assumptions that won't be testable for several months or more. H.265 is a recently developed codec that engineers, not just marketing folk, tout as being significantly better than H.264. Great, we need that, not just for UHD/4K but for better 1080HD IQ at current bit rates. The other potentially significant upside of the H.265/HEVC program would be a move throughout the pipeline away from the kludge fest we have now. Even if H.265 is only 30-50% more efficient than H.264 or MPEG-2, if the infrastructure standardizes on it, allowing the end viewer to see essentially the same IQ as the contracted deliverable that would be HUGE.

On this very forum people who work in the back end of the distribution pipeline tell horror stories of up to 4 generations of re-encoding of already compressed assets prior to viewing by the public to accommodate insertion of network bugs, placement on playout servers with fixed codec types/rates, MPEG-2 to H.264 back to MPEG-2 just for satellite back hauls, etc. At the moment, the delivered picture quality on typical US cable and satellite MSO's is horrendous.

IMO, the guys at RED were faced with a very real risk that UHD/4K would land with a thud due to degradation in distribution that yielded IQ virtually indistinguishable from HD. They had no realistic way to accelerate worldwide bandwidth increases so any UHD/4K scheme that required 100mb/s to "blow away" HD was a pipe dream. H.265, even if a four fold improvement per bit was reality - which remains to be proven to say the least - would be unlikely to provoke the "wow" response required to make all this worth the effort. So, they pulled the only lever they could put their hands on - build a hardware piece for decoding (RedRay) that would allow the use of far more complex math in the codec so they could deliver decent UHD/4K within real world bandwidth limitations.

As others have noted, the cost of the RedRay hardware is problematic and the mass scale cost savings associated with H.265 decoding chip manufacturing will make deployment far easier to ROI. I just hope we don't end up looking at UHD/4K imagery that looks roughly as horrendous as the MPEG-2 crap DirectTV charges me for now :-(

Cheers - #19
 
A very excellent post. One must speculate why the current delay in releasing the Redray for sale. I would assume its related to image quality from the software. The cost of the hardware itself now sits as a barrier to home theater use. I suspect that Odemax if it wants to get its foot into the commercial theater door may have to give away Red ray players to the commercial theaters it is targeting and then recoup the cost through content fees much the way cell phones are subsidized. If Red actually some day relesses a commercial theater projector with a built in redray server, I expect the costs will be substantial buy below the new Sony 515 (if that is the new model) which will come in at say $75K. There are a lot of theaters in small towns which have not yet converted to digital because of the costs. Red will have ti provide some sort of financing. Red could become a major studio and produce block buster releases. It now has the studio but bl;ock buster production would require a major cash infusion. Red could go public. The present owner would make a bundle and receive long term lucrative contracts of employment as well. Red clearly does not want to be just a camera company. Their cameras are great but to be great they cost more than start up guys can afford. Suppose you want to get into the indy business. How much cash would be required to do it and produce a financial winner. You better have quite a bit if experience and then just rent equipment and get a baker for production costs. Good luck. Back to Red. How many cameras can it sell . How many sensor upgrades can it sell. 4k to 5K this year. Then 5k to 6K next year. Then 6K to 8K the year after. The heard of cows can only stand so much milking before the heard runs dry. Rred must diversify and that will take a lot of cash.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
The actual efficiency improvements of H.265 vs H.264 or MPEG-2 are dependent on a nascent technology optimization environment still coalescing. Moreover, the metrics used for assigning a numerical value to such improvements are either PSNR quotients, which are very limited, or perceptual testing. Human subjects filling out evaluation forms may be the most meaningful way of measuring real world comparatives but assigning scores requires creating scales, choosing terminology, etc that quickly devolves into soft numbers at best.

For the sake of discussion we have to make some assumptions that won't be testable for several months or more. H.265 is a recently developed codec that engineers, not just marketing folk, tout as being significantly better than H.264. Great, we need that, not just for UHD/4K but for better 1080HD IQ at current bit rates. The other potentially significant upside of the H.265/HEVC program would be a move throughout the pipeline away from the kludge fest we have now. Even if H.265 is only 30-50% more efficient than H.264 or MPEG-2, if the infrastructure standardizes on it, allowing the end viewer to see essentially the same IQ as the contracted deliverable that would be HUGE.

On this very forum people who work in the back end of the distribution pipeline tell horror stories of up to 4 generations of re-encoding of already compressed assets prior to viewing by the public to accommodate insertion of network bugs, placement on playout servers with fixed codec types/rates, MPEG-2 to H.264 back to MPEG-2 just for satellite back hauls, etc. At the moment, the delivered picture quality on typical US cable and satellite MSO's is horrendous.

IMO, the guys at RED were faced with a very real risk that UHD/4K would land with a thud due to degradation in distribution that yielded IQ virtually indistinguishable from HD. They had no realistic way to accelerate worldwide bandwidth increases so any UHD/4K scheme that required 100mb/s to "blow away" HD was a pipe dream. H.265, even if a four fold improvement per bit was reality - which remains to be proven to say the least - would be unlikely to provoke the "wow" response required to make all this worth the effort. So, they pulled the only lever they could put their hands on - build a hardware piece for decoding (RedRay) that would allow the use of far more complex math in the codec so they could deliver decent UHD/4K within real world bandwidth limitations.

As others have noted, the cost of the RedRay hardware is problematic and the mass scale cost savings associated with H.265 decoding chip manufacturing will make deployment far easier to ROI. I just hope we don't end up looking at UHD/4K imagery that looks roughly as horrendous as the MPEG-2 crap DirectTV charges me for now :-(

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...


On the nose. Deserves to be quoted in its entirety for everyone to read again.


If anyone wants to see horrendous, crappy compressed 4K, Sony has it for you. Stop by your local big-box retailer and look at the Sony 4K demo loops playing on their new 4K panels. H.265 isn't going to help with any quality there, it's just going to let them push the same crap through a smaller pipe. RED made the right decision, and really their only possible choice for quality, by proceeding with REDRAY. The real trick for them is to get it out there for the people who care about 4K and image quality and eventually push it onto the masses. The buy-in price is steep for a consumer playback device. OTOH, Blu-Ray arrived on the market at $999 for the first player. Subsequent players over the following months ranged from $700 to $2000, depending on the manufacturer and features. Of course, Blu-Ray players are now under $45 for basic units and under $80 for 3D capable ones. Sony's top model with 4K upscaling is $250.

While I'm all pre-ordered to receive my first REDRAY at the early adopter price, I hope RED has their sights set on adjusting prices toward mass consumption as adoption numbers grow. Sony's 4K player will arrive with a $599 MSRP here in the USA. It's H.265 based with an internal HDD. You get the player for "free" with the 84". LOL..

ROKU 4 will have 4K output ability, not sure about input and streaming yet. XBOX One and PS4 are both 4K capable. Word is that the PS4 will do everything the $599 Sony 4K player will do... Once again enticing people to buy PlayStation hardware that can be subsidized by game sales. As many people bought into PS3 hardware as it was, and still is, one of the best Blu-Ray player options out there, plus the games and everything else.
 
In theory, there is no reason that RED needs to have any content generation capacity to be a distribution/exhibition vendor. A RedRay based, internet delivered, digitally projected alternative to DCP infrastructure has the potential to offer better image quality at lower cost which might actually help smaller exhibitors crack their nut. As Mark notes, a financing scheme functionally similar to the Virtual Print Fee program might be a key leverage point to achieve meaningful market penetration.

IAC, the larger issue is likely the entrenched players in the existing DCI based ecosystem resisting RED's entry into their turf. Moreover, RED is a curse word at some of the world's biggest studios so I would expect them to block RED's entry into the distribution value chain vigorously. Interesting times.

Cheers - #19
 
I started writing a very long post but decided it might cause too much controversy. So I will leave a lot unsaid. What has Red actually shown a Redray doing at shows? Obviously, the industry can playback uncompressed 4K from a storage device now. was the Redray actually doing more than that at shows. Was the content loaded compressed and decompressed by the Redray? I don't know. What was the quality of the playback since in my opinion it can only be charged on a large screen of say 10 ft width. To me, the promise of the Redray involved mostly software. The ability to store greatly compressed 4K and uncompress it and still have almost the same image quality as the 4K before compression. The compression software is the key, not hardware which already exists. The promise involves a compression program which would allowed the compressed data to be transmitted by a 3rd party over the internet using existing bandwidth capabilities. The administrative functoins would be the job of the third part. Establishing a store for ordering content from various providers and delivering for a fee to the end user. The key is the development of Red of a working compression program to allow the content to be transmitted to the Redray and the Redray containing the decompression after storage program. The key is to end up with high quality after compression, transmission, storage, and decompression. If the quality of the end result isn't there. the whole exercise would be futile. Many let's call them theorists here doubt it can be done giving bandwidth and data cap limitations of the internet. So where are we. ted tells the press at shows, there it is working on display panels. exactly what was working. ThenRed through Ted announces that certain unspecified software development had to be outsourced and their work product is (now was) due at the end of April. Red has no control as to when they would actually deliver it. Of course we do not know what it is? My fear is that Red couldn't developed a good enogh compression and decompression scheme and went to sa third party to deveop it. My guess is that they can't either, develop something that can be transmitted over existing data capabilities and then decompressed and still have IQ meeting the true promise of 4k as can be shot using Red's wonderful cameras. I hope I am wrong about all this but I suspect there are many out there who might feel my fears involve considerable truth as to their reality. Is there a solution. Distribution by physical delivery of a card or drive perhaps involving a Red compression but not one that would be so extreme as to enable internet distribution but substantial storage on Redray internal memory and then decompression inside the Redray and playback. Cards etc could be returned and the card or drive cost credited. This would seem doable. Not as easy as internet but technologically doable right now where the other way just might not. I hope everyone takes my thoughts the right way. They are not Red bashing, I am sure the folks ar Red thought they could develop a compression scheme that would end up with data coming out of the Redray that would deliver the true promise of 4K footage.
 
What we think we know

What we think we know

I had the opportunity to attend the 4K Shorts Fest screened at the LA Independent theater in late 2012 (IIRC). The selections were shown in 4K, RedRay feeding a Barco 4K DLP. I have heard conflicting data rate reports - 10, 20 or 40mb/s have all been mentioned.

The picture quality was on a par with 250mb/s DCI 4K (2D) presentations I have seen at other venues. Hard to eliminate the variable of the just released Barco projector, likely with a brand new lamp. Would love to do proper testing with various sources - DPX image sequences, DCPs, .RED, HEVC, etc - on at least 2 different cinema grade projectors, one DLP and one SXRD (LCOS). Split screens, repeated sequential showings of the same short scenes, intentionally selected to challenge specific image metrics (color precision, codec performance on fast movement, low key interiors, etc).

Cheers - #19
 
So the demo really didn't prove anything. How the content was put in the Redray memory, to what degree it was compressed, how it was uncompressed etc. Does Red have the software developed that will compress it so it can be distributed over the existing internet with its existing data limitations for most people and then can the Redray uncompress it so that uncompressed it is a high quality feed. My fear is that Red couldn't develop the software themselves, out sourced it, and the third party couldn't do it either.
 
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Sony has already lowered nits price to $399 for those purchasing one of its new 4K panels. The above linked player is $299 but it doesn't mention HDMI connectivity which a consumer player must have. Interesting in it seems to be like the Sony with content being initially loaded and a content service starting in the fall. It does say streaming while Sony is silent. Red's wouldn't do streaming. sony has a leg uo owning so much content. Red is looking like a very tough road ahead.
 
Mark, all of the capabilities that you feel for some reason the Red Ray player can't do have already been demonstrated in their prototype/pre-production models. Unless of course you are suggesting that Red's people have been not telling the truth about it's capabilities and the bit rates that were being used during some of the demonstrations. The market will undoubtably be filled with options from many providers but it will remain to be seen which ones will succeed and which will fail. There will also likely be more than one viable option to suit various needs and wants of consumers. I don't think all of the services need to aim for the mass market, nor should they. From reading some of your posts, I doubt you drive a base level civic. Not that there's anything wrong with that but I don't think you would be happy with one. I see the Red Ray/Odemax service as more the Mercedes/ Audi kind of product. With likely the best quality, most efficient service, Red and Odemax will hopefully satisfy the needs of the higher end consumer. The other aspect to this is the pending Crimson projector systems which will, if it lives up to their announced specs, open up a huge market for high quality theatrical releases to movie houses world wide.
With respect to the software versus hardware thing, when it comes to moving property digitally around the world and exposing it to piracy with only a hackable software program, I for one would stick with Red's offering before I would give it away to pirate hackers the day it's released. The hardware option is as much about security as it is about the PQ. We are getting very close to beta launch so there will be los of opportunity to criticize actual specs and performance once it's launched rather than engaging in so much negative speculation. Nobody has a service up and running yet so there's nothing to really compare anything to at this stage.

Larry
 
I am not suggesting anything. Nor am I being negative. We you say we, are you part of Red or speaking for them? I would love to see what they hoped to do. They have been very non specific as to exactly what they have shown prototype Redrays doing. There it is feeding 4K to a display. WE know nothing more. Red does not have the library of content Sony has available to it. The demand for Indy titles to view at home is certainly not large. The mass market, Joe iTunes doesn't care much about high quality audio and video. Will Joe buy a 4K display? If it is cheap enough and advertising makes him think he needs it or must have it. Will I as a consumer buy a Redray say at the preorder price" Not until I see it being significantly drastically better than the under now $400 competition and that content that I want to watch and pay a fee for becomes available. The truth be it family wise, content will most likely be the deciding factor. Buying a $300 and $400 player is not much of a gamble especially if there is reasondably priced content they want to watch. I expected Red and Odemax to show me a lot more 3 months ago, and 3 months later they have showed me nothing and this and out sourcing software which hasn't been delivered does indeed raise suspicions in my mind. I am not accusing of Red malice. But they are so closed mouth about what they showed, who knows. If they didn't say we compressed and played back using out still under development software at what rates etc they used, why should we assume they did?. Having some knowledge and some here have much more than me in this area, I have my doubts whether the chain of compression, transmission over the internet with professional quality 4K out can be done. I do know a lot about projectors and I have long said Red's claim of bringing to market a 4K laser lit projector with a built in Redray for around $10K was bogus no matter if ignorance of what was involved they thought it possible. How could Ted say with a straight face at NAB a commercial projector was 4 to 6 months off? Red could bring a commercial; projector to market and Red to its credit didn't constrain itself price wise but not within 6 months given regulatory barriers if nothing more. Reds claim of a consumer $10K projector was nothing than industry and consumer disruptive. Now its all back burnered. Can I trust what Red says? Or can I make positive assumptions when it doesn't say anything? Hopefully Red will deliver and the Redray PQ will be better than great sex.
 
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I share your frustration with the delay in release and the silence from both Red and Odemax. I just think that for the most part it's all been said up one side and down the other by now. Lets just give them a chance to deliver now. It's not like there's a bunch of other choices that requires us to pull the trigger on one product or the other. I hope that they truly deliver, I suspect you do too or you wouldn't be checking in to the Red site daily. Regarding the "we" in my previous post, I didn't mean to imply that I had anything to do with either Red or Odemax, it was meant as a collective we as in we should all be getting information soon as I believe they are about to take the next step.

Larry
 
I have felt that before but deep down when they said they employed a 3rd party programmer and they had no guarantee they would deliver on time, I became very pessimistic that solutions didn't presently exist that would lead to further delays. Let's hope you are right.
 
And now for something completely different. Meanwhile I've been doing a little preliminary research on the possibility of doing a 4K edge blended CRT projectors. The Barco 909 Reality can resolve 3200 by 2560. That's more than enough to blend a full 4K image. It's just the blend system and is there something that can work at that resolution to feed the projectors? 2.35-1 is 4096 by 1742 so each projector would only need to be setup for about 2400 by 1742 well under the resolution of each projector and even less for quad HD. Holy grail of home theatre if you ask me.

Larry
 
Larry. You need to start a new thread somewhere else to discuss this. I have been involved years ago with several CRT blends but don't remember the specs of the blend devices. It was a bitch only because we were using used projectors and it was difficult to get the gray scales to exactly match on both projectors. Anyhow, I suggest you go to AV Science forum and go to the threads under CRT projectors. There is a good search function and you may need to search the archives. Look for the name Blendzilla, the name of one of the devices or something like that.
 
Consumers and commercial theaters are going to go ga ga over content like that. :) The Red community should find it very useful though but why can't you just use the internet?. Most view podcasts on small screens I would think and there would be little benefit in pod casting in 4K. I am asking, not telling. Why do you want to use Odemax for this?
 
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