SONY 4K disc based player?

[L. Langer]

I dunno. How long does it take to download 100GB for average people? Even if you have a fairly fast 25Mbps internet connection, that's going to take at least 8 hours to download... and that doesn't take into account bandwidth caps, dropped packets, and other people using the connection simultaneously.


Small correction: DirecTV's HD channels are all MPEG-4, last time I checked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV#2004_to_the_present

Dish still uses MPEG2 for HD and SD but has h.264 only "zones". DirecTV uses only h.264 for HD content and MPEG2 is still used for SD channels - the same also holds true with cable providers - because there are a lot of DirecTV subscribers with older SD equipment in fly-over country and low-income areas where HDTV penetration is minimal and they have an older satellite that broadcasts pretty much nothing but SD MPEG2. Quite a few companies are still "advancing" MPEG2 encoding tech for cable/satellite, so it's not going away anytime soon.

 

[L. Langer]

And Sony just announced their 4K Video Download Service called "Video Unlimited 4K" with 70 titles available at launch with more coming soon. Two hour movie size is claimed to be around 40GB, which is a good sign that a 4K Blu-Ray format is not too far off.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Who said anything about 100GB? Highest level of .RED encoding is 36Mbps, most everything looks fine at 18Mbps...

I can think of a ton of stuff that does not look fine even at 10:1. And I bet none of the consumer media will be 10-bit, either.

When you stomp hard enough on something that starts out as 4K, I'm not sure if there's enough left to still call it 4K except by a vague technical description. Is that new Nokia Lumina phone really 4K? At one point is this just a number and not really an indication of picture quality?

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Feel free to correct me if my math or assumptions are off, but here goes.

If a 2 hour feature on Sony's service is 40GB, that's roughly a 45mb/s data rate. Average broadband in the US (downstream) is roughly 8mb/s, so it would take 5 to 6 times real time to download, which would be 10-12 hours per movie.

.RED media encoded at 18mb/s would download in just over 2x real time, so a 2 hour movie in roughly 4:20.

4K cage match: 45mb/s H.264 vs 18mb/s .RED vs 250mb/s DCP vs 9,000mb/s DPX, same source material, Barco 4K DLP, 60' Stewart, 1.5 screen heights away - bring it on ;-)

Cheers - #19

 

[L. Langer]

Blair, they have localized server nodes to distribute the downloads and speed increases in the local ISP infrastructure to handle stuff like that. So you can temporarily get a jacked up download at 12x the speed or whatever rate they dole out. My ISP calls it "Speed Boost" and others have similar names for it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I can think of a ton of stuff that does not look fine even at 10:1. And I bet none of the consumer media will be 10-bit, either.

When you stomp hard enough on something that starts out as 4K, I'm not sure if there's enough left to still call it 4K except by a vague technical description. Is that new Nokia Lumina phone really 4K? At one point is this just a number and not really an indication of picture quality?

You really need to play with this stuff for yourself. REDRAY encodes are all > 10bit, unless you start with a < 10 bit source. I see in most of your posts regarding REDRAY, you're consistently in doubt, even denial. REDRAY is the real deal.

Blair, they have localized server nodes to distribute the downloads and speed increases in the local ISP infrastructure to handle stuff like that. So you can temporarily get a jacked up download at 12x the speed or whatever rate they dole out. My ISP calls it "Speed Boost" and others have similar names for it.

Only works where that last mile segment actually supports it. Where I'm at, the best download speed I can get is about 7Mbps. That's it. That's all the technology supports. On the bright side of things, the networks are not usually overloaded, so I rarely see downgrades in speed, but there's nothing the ISP can do to boost us over the 7 megs... There are a couple 25Mbps+ wireless options in the area, but they come with other compromises, namely line of sight requirements, price and relatively slow upload speeds.

I personally don't see long download speeds for a high-quality movie that you download to own being a real problem. These were the same concerns many had over iTunes movie purchases when that service was getting ready to launch. USA national averages for download speed have increased significantly in the past 6+ years since iTunes movie downloads went live.

I'm not sure what's worse... Waiting a day for Netflix to mail me a disc or waiting 12 to 24 hours to download the movie for keeps... Modern first world problems, hehe.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Using Jeff's residential service as the reference case he would be able to download 18mb/s .RED content at roughly 2.6x real time. Certainly not the instant gratification of Netflix streaming, but not that different than programming a DVR to record shows for later viewing. In terms of the interface, it could be a lot like Netflix where you browse and select, the only difference being that you wouldn't be able to watch your selection until several hours later (or as a practical matter for most of us, the next evening).

Sign me up.

Cheers - #19