Next-gen 4K Blu-ray discs

[Tommi Hares]

http://www.techradar.com/news/home-...y-manufacturer-before-official-reveal-1180491

 

[L. Langer]

We've known that it's been coming for years. They had 100GB disc designs as far back as 5-6 years ago but the encoding tech just wasn't there.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Someone demoed a 400GB disc around . . . 4-5 years ago. I remember because I told someone at a job I had 2 jobs ago, and they made the joke "SCRATCH awww my data . . . "

That was before I was doing anything with R3D files or other high res files, so back then, the idea of losing 400GB because of one scratch was so horrifying that it went completely around the bend and was hilarious.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Not sure why they need 100GB discs, but whatever... That says to me that 4K BluRay will continue to use current MPEG4, H.264/AVC-1 compression. And it also seems that those tri-layer discs are going to be a bitch to copy. Yeah, that's probably their biggest motivation right there.

 

[Phil Holland]

Not sure why they need 100GB discs, but whatever... That says to me that 4K BluRay will continue to use current MPEG4, H.264/AVC-1 compression. And it also seems that those tri-layer discs are going to be a bitch to copy. Yeah, that's probably their biggest motivation right there.

60fps @ 4K.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

60fps @ 4K.

Uh... Yep, I guess I should've thought that through a bit more instead of only considering it from a 24fps perspective.

Here's another way to look at it:

HDMI 2.0 supports 60fps UHD @ 8bpc. meh.

4K REDRAY encode at full quality is ~36Mbps @ 24fps or about 90Mbps @ 60fps. H.265 is not quite as efficient, but file sizes are comparable at lower bit depth and compressed color space. Even if we take into account 100Mbps for UHD resolution @ 60fps, I think we're within the target range. Edit> FWIW, it seems 100Mbps is their optimal bit rate for 4K BluRay disc and the discs should hold a bit over 100GB with the increased layer density -- I'm being told by another source that they're 35GB/ layer, or 33.8GB real-world capacity.

100Mb/s * 3600s/hr = 360000Mb/hr
/ 8192Mb/GB = 43.94GB/hr

OK... Yeah, so I guess I didn't think that one through to start... Looks like 4K @ 60fps will need 100GB discs to fit a 2Hr+ feature. I suppose I was looking at it from a 24fps perspective. OTOH, at 100Mbps quality, 2.5 hours would fit on a current 50GB disc just fine... Edit again> It would fit on that 50GB fine, but not with the 32 channels of uncompressed audio. OK. 100GB discs it is...

 

[Petri Teittinen]

Three-layer discs may be a bitch to copy but they'll be a bitch to manufacture, too. I remember the early days of Blu-ray and how terrible BD50 yields were for quite a while. And if they really wanted to, they could fit a 2-hour 4K movie on a current BD50 for sure and not skimp on image quality. Sure, they'd have to plop extras on a second disc...

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I sort of wonder if they should be bigger then 100 GB, I remember I was looking forward to the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on Blu-ray thinking that with 50 GB disks surely they could fit 1 movie per disc and not have you swapping halfway through the film but it was still split in half onto 2 discs each.

 

[Phil Holland]

OK. 100GB discs it is...

lol. Make it so.

I'm actually really excited to see how digital distribution and physical distribution get handled in the somewhat soon-ish future. Memory cards and thumb drives being a somewhat viable option for certain types of projects, especially shorter ones.

I'm pretty into the .RED codec and I certainly would like to deliver that content in a variety of ways to REDRAY supported players.

 

[Les Dittert]

60 frames per second is not necessarily double data. This is because the frames are actually changing much less frame to frame and the compression takes advantage of this. Just saying.
I seem to be getting great results with about 30 Mb UHD h264. I don't see any need for 100GB disks.