Nice to hear, looking forward to this technology...

I'm also looking forward to 4 GB Blu-ray without Quality Loss 🙂

I rarely watch Blu-ray films anymore but when I do it just blows away the competition at image quality. Some netflix vids like House of Cards looks very good on PS3(not so good on pc plugged on same tv for some reason). But most streaming services cant provide blu-ray quality yet sadly.

Most BRs are between 20MB/s and 40MB/s in their bitrate. My 75Mb/s fiber translates to about 7MB/s max. That's why we have compression. Netflix 1080p does not compare to a proper BR.

That actually didn't answer my question. I understand compression, i do, i understand the need for it to depend on peoples internet speed, i get that part. By why artificially cap it? Aka, why not have it CAPABLE to stream the max quality available, IF your internet can handle it? As i stated, netflix will lower and increase the quality depending on what the max quality can send to you at playing speed, HOWEVER, the max quality they can send is lower quality then blu-ray, and that makes no sense in an environment that will send you the best quality you can handle

The standard will encode videos under the High Efficiency Video Coding standard. 4K Blu-ray Discs will support both a higher dynamic range by increasing the color depth to 10-bit per color, and a greater color gamut by using the Rec. 2020 color space.The standard will use 4:4:4 chroma subsampling. The 4K-Blu-ray specification allows for three disc sizes, each with their own data rate: 50 GB with 82 Mbit/s, 66 GB with 108 Mbit/s, and 100 GB with 128 Mbit/s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Ultra_HD_Blu-ray I don't see streaming on a mass consumer level at the same quality as the physical disk any time in the near future.

Thanks for posting that, I missed it when I was looking at the article earlier. About friggin' time on getting rid of 4:2:0. I'm not sure why they wouldn't go for the 128GB BDXL as the maximum size.

@Perjantai/Aura89 why would i try to improve IQ for 1080p streaming (to the level of bd quality), when streaming of UHD content already looks as good (as a BD disc). no need to up quality for 1080p streams. and most 4K mastered BD i've seen, are about the same level of IQ as native UHD content (unless paused and compared side by side, you cant see the difference). {running ~ of 2-3 UHDs and 1-2 FHD sony's (55/65in) for the past 2y in my shop].

I'm also looking forward to 4 GB Blu-ray without Quality Loss 🙂

There's no such thing and there never will be.

There's no such thing and there never will be.

They need to start looking into it. 50 GB to 5 - 10 GB without Quality Loss.

This better be backwards compatible with VHS!

@Perjantai/Aura89 why would i try to improve IQ for 1080p streaming (to the level of bd quality), when streaming of UHD content already looks as good (as a BD disc). no need to up quality for 1080p streams. and most 4K mastered BD i've seen, are about the same level of IQ as native UHD content (unless paused and compared side by side, you cant see the difference). {running ~ of 2-3 UHDs and 1-2 FHD sony's (55/65in) for the past 2y in my shop].

You seem to be missing the point of the thread.... And i doubt that a 4K movie on netflix, looking at netflix's information, actually looks as good as a blu-ray 1080p. I mean, technically on a 4K tv, does it? possibly, but in reality, it would just look different, not worse or better. It's using 4K resolution which in itself will look different and likely perceived as good, but it's massively compressed. According to netflix, 4K will use up to 7GB/hour, which for a 2 hour movie would be 14Gb, which is about half the size, to more then half the size of a 1080p blu-ray movie, so you gotta ask yourself, how much did they compress that 4K movie? and how much quality did they lose? Maybe you're fine with it, and that's cool, doesn't mean everyone else has to be, doesn't mean just because you don't see it, others don't, i don't even know how big the TV you are using is, or how far you are away, which all factor in. As i stated before, and it'll be the last time i do since it's a simple question that you replied to in such a way that makes no sense, why have such a large compression on streaming on netflix when netflix sends you the best quality video it can based on your internet? There's no reason for it. Wh artificially lower the image quality if their system should be doing that based on the customers internet in the first place? Why not allow someone with a 1Gb/s internet speed stream from netflix at the highest quality they can with little to no loss (reasonably)? Only reason i can think of is simply because Netflix doesn't want to blow up their servers, which isn't a good enough reason for ME and many others to give up image quality for the convenience their company, which is the entire point of having PHYSICAL DISCS so that we don't have to. To get rid of physical discs is to go backwards, because we'll have say the max image quality we can have, taken away from us, and what's the point of that?

and most 4K mastered BD i've seen, are about the same level of IQ as native UHD content (unless paused and compared side by side, you cant see the difference).

Huh? I don't understand what you are saying. Blu-Ray discs labeled "mastered in 4K" are mostly pointless, it simply means the movie was filmed in 4K (many are and don't use the gimmick of "mastered in 4K" on their label) but it's still, like all the rest, down-scaled to blu-ray 1080p. But that, compared to their native 4K, do not look the same. There's 4 times the lack of quality difference as to the whole pause and not being able to see the difference, maybe, but that for one doesn't change the fact that there is a difference of 4 times, and it would likely depend on your TV, specifically, the size. If you are watching 4K on 50-55 or even a 60 inch, yeah, 85 inch? no, you will see the difference.

This better be backwards compatible with VHS!

Nope. Betamax

The compression involved probably has several purposes. One individual using the bandwidth, best quality possible, does not utilize much in respect to the overall ISPs traffic. Averaging the overall quality based on net congestion would be the main reason. How irritating would it be if the quality kept noticeably shifting? The averaging helps alleviate that by guaranteeing the best consistency. That was why Netflix was willing to pay for better throughput. We all know that result.

So this new standard sounds great, but where am I supposed to get a disc from? The last video rental store in my City just went out of business, and Red Box left the whole country. I'm not buying the discs, that's way too expensive and I don't have any interest in holding onto the disc after I am done watching it.

Finally! People can stop calling 2160p "4K" and just call it UHD.

Finally! People can stop calling 2160p "4K" and just call it UHD.

yeah, 4k is confusing. It can be 2DCI 4K" or "4K UHDTV".

Finally! People can stop calling 2160p "4K" and just call it UHD.

But hasn't that always been an option?

But hasn't that always been an option?

Not when some idiot teevee manufacturers were/are calling their teevee's "4K" because they suck at math. This mentally challenged nomenclature meant the general public began to do the same. What made it worse is that some teevee manufacturers even named their teevee's QHD/UHD and 4K in different countries, even if it was the exact same model. Dummies - but no more and we've moved on, except some dummy content producers and broadcasters still use this "I can't add up to ten even though I have five digits on each hand" viewpoint. By the way, if anyone wants to buy my teevee? it's a 2K plasma, y'know, the one that has a resolution of 1920x1080...makes my head explode, especially when even a phone from the 1990's comes with a calculator.

What does 570 / 870 / 1570 mean? Since when did the "K" in the resolution start referring to the second number? It was always a rounded number referring to the first. It is all about maintaining the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (16x9). Just because one does not understand the casual naming convention does not make manufacturers idiots. The standard for Ultra Blu-Ray does not define the set's resolution. It defines the resolution provided by the media on the disc. The one has nothing to do with the other.

Not when some idiot teevee manufacturers were/are calling their teevee's "4K" because they suck at math.

What i mean is, i sell TV's for a living (well, not only TVs ofcourse) and not one 2160p HDTV has not been labeled UHD on the box, sometimes they put UHD and 4K, but what i'm trying to get at is i don't think by any means UHD is a new naming it's always been there? Though i live in the US i can't account for other countries i suppose

What does 570 / 870 / 1570 mean? Since when did the "K" in the resolution start referring to the second number? It was always a rounded number referring to the first. It is all about maintaining the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (16x9). Just because one does not understand the casual naming convention does not make manufacturers idiots. The standard for Ultra Blu-Ray does not define the set's resolution. It defines the resolution provided by the media on the disc. The one has nothing to do with the other.

The chappie above will be able to answer the 570/870/1570 better than I. The "K" is actually "nK" with the "n" being a multiple of 1,024 horizontal pixels, hence: "4K" should mean 4,096 and the only reason it doesn't is because panel manufacturers of LCD panels (not the teevee box shifters) had a production line for 1,920x1,080 and could easily double this to 3,840x2,160 by putting 4 panels together, and still maintain the 1.78:1 ratio.

That actually didn't answer my question. I understand compression, i do, i understand the need for it to depend on peoples internet speed, i get that part. By why artificially cap it? Aka, why not have it CAPABLE to stream the max quality available, IF your internet can handle it?

Because on-the-fly encoding from a source for streaming is just not efficient (hardware) cost-wise. If one user requires at least six threads to stream (one for encoding video, one for encoding audio, one for muxing, and x2 to compensate for connection speed changes), then handling tens of thousands of concurrent users alone may require using an encoding farm, instead of simply streaming pre-encoded files (like YouTube). IIRC even on Twitch.tv the (availability of) stream quality option relies on the broadcasters. If a broadcaster doesn't provide the stream with multiple quality, then Twitch.tv player usually just give out Source quality, without the option to go for lower ones for those with slower connections. And even that for each quality setting there's a fixed preset of a/v bitrate and quantization settings...it's not dynamic.

As i stated, netflix will lower and increase the quality depending on what the max quality can send to you at playing speed, HOWEVER, the max quality they can send is lower quality then blu-ray, and that makes no sense in an environment that will send you the best quality you can handle

No, it doesn't make sense from the consumer POV, but sending out streams which encoding settings dynamically change in real-time won't make sense for Netflix either. Usually they're just streaming out whatever digital copy the studios gave them, which may explain why the highest quality stream isn't really that high quality. I'm pretty sure the digital copy the studios gave them wouldn't exceed / transcoded from a master copy that is usually the encoding source for the Blu-Ray distribution...hence the lower quality 'high quality' streams on Netflix.