Playstation 4k

[Mark Baluk]

This is like saying DVD's are 1080P HD... because you can copy 1080 HD files onto them, then play back those files using a decoder. That'd also make ZIP and JAZZ drives 1080 HD players too(!).

Media storage =/= playback spec. Blu-Ray is not 4K. I had previously thought it was too. Easy mistake to make but 4K delivery is still very much being fleshed out.

However, just to note, you can author a 1080p BluRay disc up to 4.7 gb, and burn that onto a DVDr and play back on a blu ray player (but not a dvd player)

Right?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

H.265 is what people are going to be using for mainstream video delivery starting late this year and into next year. This especially pertains to UHD/4K as well. File sizes are several times smaller than current H.264 compressed files. From what I've seen of H.265 samples, it's better than H.264/X.264 in terms of quality, but isn't going to match up with the abilities of REDRAY. REDRAY has less visual artifacting and is intended out of the gate to support broader color spaces. H.265 can do this is as well, but that's not what the market implementations are aiming for. REDRAY is going to have a large advantage for overall image quality at similar file sizes compared to H.265. Unfortunately it seems it's going to come at a premium in terms of the hardware costs. And possibly in terms of content pricing as well. Hopefully all will be made a lot more clear this next week at NAB.

Sony, LG and Samsung all have 4K players built into their larger 4K/UHD TV's. But these are nothing more than a common PC. Sony and LG are both using Dell systems based around i5 CPUs, 8GB RAM and an AMD 79xx series GPU. Samsung is using a similar deal, actually it seems to be the guts out of one of their higher-end notebooks -- mobile i7, 8GB and it seems to be an nvidia GPU, possibly the 680M.

PlayStation showing at CES was very vague. Intentionally so I would guess, to keep it shrouded in mystery and hype until the launch later this year. Microsoft is being equally secretive about the upcoming XBOX. Roku, Boxee and Google will all have UHD capable media players available within a year. Netfilx will be streaming H.265 based UHD content via a premium service by the end of 2014, sooner if they can. It will operate on those aforementioned media players, as well as the PlayStation4, various UHD TV's that can be upgraded to support it...

REDRAY is going to need to provide some form of value to attract customers. Be it superior content availability, superior image quality, or whatever. But the $1400 price tag isn't going to fly when 4K streamed directly to a home screen via existing services is going to happen in the next 8 to 14 months for under $400 for the box to do it...

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The BIG picture

The BIG picture

H.265 is what people are going to be using for mainstream video delivery starting late this year and into next year. (snip)
REDRAY is going to need to provide some form of value to attract customers. Be it superior content availability, superior image quality, or whatever. But the $1400 price tag isn't going to fly when 4K streamed directly to a home screen via existing services is going to happen in the next 8 to 14 months for under $400 for the box to do it...

The move to H.265 holds great promise, though I fear the major players will just use it to cut bit rates rather then making better pictures at current bit rates.

IMO the RedRay value proposition is primarily about better image quality. One could argue that on a large UHD/4K panel, or when projected, the compression artifacts that slip by the average viewer on a 50" panel viewed from 9 feet away will register. Who wants to pay big bucks just to see compression nasties? Based on early reports the more complex .RED codec is roughly 3 times more efficient in terms of quality to bit rate ratio. If that estimate is accurate, then matching 10mb/s .RED IQ would require 30mb/s in H.265 (and roughly 120mb/s in H.264). As a reference 1080 Blu-Ray's top out at 20mb/s and 4K DCP's at 250mb/s.

Last I checked the average broadband connection in the US is less than 2mb/s downstream. Using that as a reference, a RedRay download of a 2 hour feature encoded at 10mb/s would take 10 hours, the H.265 30 hours, H.264 5 days. Many of the early adopters of UHD/4K tech will have far faster connections, some even able to buffer for less than a minute before streaming the movie.

I've made a number of assumptions and estimates in this post, so its hardly gospel, but I do think its important to start looking at the bigger picture (pun intended)

Cheers - #19

 

[Mike P.]

I don't think the end-user will give a crap just as long as it's "4k"... so 4k h265 at 10-20mbit; whatever that looks like, the enduser and service providers will be happy with as it'd be a noticeable jump in quality... especially if that costs half the price (e.g. players are $400 instead of $1500). Look at broadcast "3-5mbit 1080 HD" as an example; the image looks like crap compared to a 35mbit BluRay, but everyone is content and I doubt joe/jane six pack would pay more for his/her movies to be delivered to even BD quality.

Conversely, Netflix looks more than adequate on a 55" at roughly 6ft+ viewing distance... Still not Blu-Ray quality though.

 

[Will Steer]

Have a theory on this. I believe it is because powerful hardware is required for the decoding of the footage. At the moment I believe only the actual redray player hardware will play pack Red's new format? Maybe PCs will be able to as well, but I but it'll require quite a bit of CPU grunt.

I'm only basing this on the chatter around H265 though, which seems to suggest that that codec will be twice as efficient bitrate-wise as H264, but will also need that much more processing power. Although I believe H264 only uses a single core for encode/decode anyway. :/

EDIT: ooops, missed the last page-and-a-bit, my post is a bit irrelevant...

 

[Stacey Spears]

Current H.265 is limited to 10-bit 4:2:0. The standard for 10-bit 4:2:2 was completed about a week or so ago and we should see it by the end of the year. H.265, in tests, outperforms JPEG2000 wavelet. Not a single company submitted wavelet IP this time around. It was submitted, and then punted, from H.264 during its development. Current tests show H.265 about 30% more efficient than H.264 on some clips and 1.5-2x more complex at decoding. There are lots of optional tools around parallelism that really should have been mandatory. They were not because of concerns around cost to build the HW.

It will probably be a couple of years before we see really high quality H.265 encoders. The early encoders are really slow. Main Concept just released an alpha SDK with H.265 encode. They were never top dog in H.264, so I don't expect much from their H.265 implementation.

One could try HM, which is the reference encoder. Similar to JM for H.264.

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

However, just to note, you can author a 1080p BluRay disc up to 4.7 gb, and burn that onto a DVDr and play back on a blu ray player (but not a dvd player)

Right?

Yep.

 

[Eric Santiago]

However, just to note, you can author a 1080p BluRay disc up to 4.7 gb, and burn that onto a DVDr and play back on a blu ray player (but not a dvd player)

Right?

Quality is brutal.
Its out range of actual decent BD specs.

 

[Mark Baluk]

Quality is brutal.
Its out range of actual decent BD specs.

How so? If I created the 4.7gb file in Encore and burn one to a BDR and one to a DVDR, why would their be difference in image?

 

[Eric Santiago]

How so? If I created the 4.7gb file in Encore and burn one to a BDR and one to a DVDR, why would their be difference in image?

From my experience using Toast 11, using a DVD for BD files creates a low res type format (sorry no where near Toast to explain the format type and exact specs).

Great if your doing simple one-offs or test files for a client.

Edit: Google the Toast BD to DVD option and found that Toast wont do VC-1 or MPEG2 encoding. It will only do AVC.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Current H.265 is limited to 10-bit 4:2:0. The standard for 10-bit 4:2:2 was completed about a week or so ago and we should see it by the end of the year. H.265, in tests, outperforms JPEG2000 wavelet. (snip)
It will probably be a couple of years before we see really high quality H.265 encoders. (snip)

Thanks for the notes Stacey, hope to see you at NAB.

One of the key issues in developing/deploying a codec for UHD/4K is the widespread belief that physical media is a dead man walking, so the bit rate has to be viable for real world IP distribution. I've done a little consulting and the general consensus was that in the near term it's about scheduled downloading to a local server/drive with immediate streaming still a ways off. While I expect several of the bigger MSOs to offer a couple of UHD channels by the end of 2014, the economics of tying up more bandwidth per channel offering is anathema.

Cheers - #19

 

[Mark Baluk]

From my experience using Toast 11, using a DVD for BD files creates a low res type format (sorry no where near Toast to explain the format type and exact specs).

Great if your doing simple one-offs or test files for a client.

Edit: Google the Toast BD to DVD option and found that Toast wont do VC-1 or MPEG2 encoding. It will only do AVC.

Ok, so that's not really what I was talking about then.