Costco's New UHD sets.

[Kalulu Ngilo]

So we got these sets at work in the last few days.Would anyone be willing to show off their content? The retail demo appears in .TS form.






here are the video formats requirements


Thanks

 

[Kalulu Ngilo]

Forget about it. The set will not play 2160p content from USB thumb drive despite having usb 3.0 ports. Looks like hdmi only is the only way out. Resolution error, seems 1080p is the max resolution supported via USB.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

They will play from the USB3.0 port if the drive/ files are formatted properly. However, I don't know what that format specifically is or how we could produce it at this point. Samsung will be selling hard drive based "Movie Packs" in the coming months for these TV's. They will be a 2.5" external HDD that connects via USB and offers a collection of films in 4K. Initial pricing I saw put them close to $300 for a hard drive pack and they included 10 movies or so.

The external HDD or movie pack device may be keyed in some way too.

 

[Zeb B]

They will play from the USB3.0 port if the drive/ files are formatted properly. However, I don't know what that format specifically is or how we could produce it at this point. Samsung will be selling hard drive based "Movie Packs" in the coming months for these TV's. They will be a 2.5" external HDD that connects via USB and offers a collection of films in 4K. Initial pricing I saw put them close to $300 for a hard drive pack and they included 10 movies or so.

The external HDD or movie pack device may be keyed in some way too.

RedBox 2.0

 

[Kalulu Ngilo]

They will play from the USB3.0 port if the drive/ files are formatted properly. However, I don't know what that format specifically is or how we could produce it at this point. Samsung will be selling hard drive based "Movie Packs" in the coming months for these TV's. They will be a 2.5" external HDD that connects via USB and offers a collection of films in 4K. Initial pricing I saw put them close to $300 for a hard drive pack and they included 10 movies or so.

The external HDD or movie pack device may be keyed in some way too.

The specs on the videos i tried at work today matched the ones in the photo screenshot above. It was a "resolution not supported" error for 2160p mp4 straight from youtube.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

RedBox 2.0

Funny you should say that. I have often wondered if the REDRAY play should actually be a "load your branded USB3 thumb drive in the kiosk" instead of progressive streaming / download.

RedBox's revenues are not too shabby. There is still a love, outside LA and NYC for a "physical" piece of media. Reloading your "RED Joy Stick" in a REDbox would be ... GREEN anyway

http://www.deadline.com/tag/redbox/

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Physical media's last hurrah?

Physical media's last hurrah?

Imagine you have a few 128GB USB3 thumb drives on your keychain.

As you enter the grocery store you insert the drive into a kiosk up front and select content to download while you shop. (You could also manage this via a Netflix style "playlist" interface in advance and simply enter a PIN to trigger the process).

At checkout you pay for the downloaded content right along with your groceries, one transaction.

Once payment is verified your USB stick is "unlocked" for removal from the download kiosk on your way out.

Upon arrival home the user just plugs it into a USB3 port and a small LED lights up orange, after all the data is downloaded it turns green so you know its ready for reuse.

This strikes me a potentially viable because it doesn't require much consumer education - its a USB stick instead of a 5" optical disc and content access would be via a DVR style UI.

Some details/issues:

This concept assumes the grocery store (or Walmart, etc) would be able to utilize existing hardware infrastructure (ethernet/WiFi) for communication between the kiosk and the point of sale devices.

The Kiosk could be pre-loaded with a couple hundred TBs of content, new material could be added by FedExing SSD drives (should support plug and play downloading by store personnel) or via a dedicated fat pipe. With proper encryption the files in the kiosk would be useless to thieves as the content would have to be verified in order to play back. Yes, the kiosks would require periodic attention from a technician, but one person should be able to keep up with more than 100 kiosks in a regional territory so the cost per site should be manageable.

It also assumes that upon arriving home, the user would insert the USB stick into their RedRay player (eventually, right into a USB3 port on the display I'd guess). Programming a "download any new material" default should be simple enough to avoid any user interaction being required for the download process. Multiple USB3 ports would allow attachment of external drives for greater capacity.

To defray the cost of the USB3 sticks I would suggest selling them for retail price as a package with $100 worth of downloads. This means that you only take on the overhead of creating accounts for people with demonstrated ability to afford your service. The USB3 stick feels "free" to the consumer since they got the content they paid for and the vendor avoids eating the cost. If the consumer loses it there's no issue with the vendor, those downloads will still be honored, the consumer just has to buy another USB3 stick for transit. I also see a great opportunity for studios to load content on USB3 sticks and sell them directly like DVD's if the cost of the flash media drops enough and there's a proven market to access.

Content would need to have headers/metadata to support a DVR type playlist UI, something many people have experience with. Assuming the playback device, like a RedRay, was a member of the "internet of things" then DRM strategies that required "validation" at the time of playback matched to a digital watermark, etc might help get the studios on board.

I wonder if a JPEG2000 based DCP variant (in rec 709 sadly) could be standardized for this usage? (With an updated encryption scheme suitable for public use in place of the unwieldy theatrical "key" protocol the studios demanded to approve DCI specs for first run distro.) Obviously .RED is a far smaller file (9/18/36mb/s) vs 250mb/s for DCI so if an industrial strength encoding platform was widely available the math gets even better in terms of storage space costs.

If the monopoly bandwidth vendors continue to push up rates, then the business model gets a whole lot easier. Selling an "end around" service on quality alone might never get enough market share to pencil out. Offer better AND cheaper - now you've got a chance.

Cheers - #19

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I often wonder why the USB drive for distribution has not come to be. Makes perfect sense for a service like RedBox -- no bulky disks to manage, just a bin full of USB thumb drives. They never run out of the movie you want.

This could be a great approach to push RedRay. Although the price has to come way down on RedRay for it to make a splash in the consumer market.