4K BluRay: Which film will you buy first?
Discussion
So I got to thinking about how I would manage the 4K BluRay launch. I think an important factor is that killer film, that film that just seems to belong on that format. DVD had The Matrix, CD had Brothers in Arms, VHS had...porn (so I'm told)...BluRay had...ermmm...Casino Royale I guess?
Anyway, I wonder what it'll be on 4k BluRay? What are you excited to see, what do you think will be your first 4k film? Avengers 2? Jurassic World? Abyss?
I expect my first purchase will be Spectre, and the only film I plan to upgrade from BluRay is Intersellar.
Anyway, I wonder what it'll be on 4k BluRay? What are you excited to see, what do you think will be your first 4k film? Avengers 2? Jurassic World? Abyss?
I expect my first purchase will be Spectre, and the only film I plan to upgrade from BluRay is Intersellar.
I'm sort of late to getting back in the game and have only recently changed a few DVD's up to Bluray. Going media-less is something I need to prepare for - but solid, dependable storage and back-ups need to be fully investigated.
That said, there's too many to choose from to be the first 4K film. There's a lot of obvious contenders, but some left-field choice like Pi, Gone Girl and Heat would be somewhere near the top of my list. I'm looking forward to the audio improvement as much as the visuals - if not more.
That said, there's too many to choose from to be the first 4K film. There's a lot of obvious contenders, but some left-field choice like Pi, Gone Girl and Heat would be somewhere near the top of my list. I'm looking forward to the audio improvement as much as the visuals - if not more.
Edited by Frances The Mute on Tuesday 28th July 14:41
Type R Tom said:
I don't think it will, with decent broadband and cheap HD’s I can’t see the point of media anymore (8TB on ebuyer for £180 at the moment). As for the 4k film it will have to be Marvel or maybe Interstellar?
Looks like I’ll be buying LotRs, Matrix and Star Wars again!
Intersteller would be a good shout in 4K.Looks like I’ll be buying LotRs, Matrix and Star Wars again!
Other than the xbox which is totally seperate and I never watch anything on, literally cant remember the last time I used a disk!
Dont have a dvd player or blu ray player anywhere. I have a massive hard drive, apple tv's, chromecasts etc to stream everything in 1080p to any TV I want. Netflix comes in 4k for a few things and will probably beef up its library in the coming months.
AppleTV films and movies dont even need to be stored somewhere. They just stream off Apple's servers each time they are used so dont take up any space - even better!
Physical media is dead IMO; its a massive pain in the arse when everything is otherwise sitting digitally and available at the click of a button on any of 5-6 devices I have.
Dont have a dvd player or blu ray player anywhere. I have a massive hard drive, apple tv's, chromecasts etc to stream everything in 1080p to any TV I want. Netflix comes in 4k for a few things and will probably beef up its library in the coming months.
AppleTV films and movies dont even need to be stored somewhere. They just stream off Apple's servers each time they are used so dont take up any space - even better!
Physical media is dead IMO; its a massive pain in the arse when everything is otherwise sitting digitally and available at the click of a button on any of 5-6 devices I have.
Edited by p1stonhead on Tuesday 28th July 14:44
All well and good if you have cable or fibre broadband. There's still quite a bit of the UK that doesn't and in that instance the physical media is the most convenient manner of viewing HD content.
As for what I'd like to see in 4k HD at home, which I'd only really bother with if I got a projection set up and it was affordable, depends if the new Star Wars films are going to be any good or not....
As for what I'd like to see in 4k HD at home, which I'd only really bother with if I got a projection set up and it was affordable, depends if the new Star Wars films are going to be any good or not....
Lord of the Rings and the new Star Wars films is a good shout. No one has done a 4k scan of Terminator 2, in fact the current 2k scan isn't great (the current BluRay's could be improved) so you'd need to do that again, but I believe 4k scans of the others do exist (it's where the BluRay's came from). How much better they'd look than the BluRay would be interesting to see.
I'm a fan of physical media...I still buy most of my music on CD's!
I like the dependability (what if I want to watch...I don't know, Existenz and it's not on amazon prime when I want it?), reliability and quality. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still can't get lossless audio over the internet, and the video bit rate is way down on what BluRay gives you...streaming can adapt to new video formats faster than digital though, as you say the only way to get 4k at the moment is via streaming so the quality argument is debatable. I also like collecting a library of films!
Obviously you have to rip the music/films so you can have it where you want, but that's prety easy (and legal, at least for now) and actually I think it's more flexible and convenient than streaming. I can watch my rips on my phone on an aeroplane if I want, as far as I know films from apple or whatever are stuck on your apple TV and can't be moved? What if I want to watch my film round a friends house?
On the other hand I absolutly see the 'instant on' thing, just being able to browse for a film when you feel like it must be nice. Different people have different needs, but I'll be a bit sad when physical media does finally dissapear.
I'm a fan of physical media...I still buy most of my music on CD's!
I like the dependability (what if I want to watch...I don't know, Existenz and it's not on amazon prime when I want it?), reliability and quality. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still can't get lossless audio over the internet, and the video bit rate is way down on what BluRay gives you...streaming can adapt to new video formats faster than digital though, as you say the only way to get 4k at the moment is via streaming so the quality argument is debatable. I also like collecting a library of films!
Obviously you have to rip the music/films so you can have it where you want, but that's prety easy (and legal, at least for now) and actually I think it's more flexible and convenient than streaming. I can watch my rips on my phone on an aeroplane if I want, as far as I know films from apple or whatever are stuck on your apple TV and can't be moved? What if I want to watch my film round a friends house?
On the other hand I absolutly see the 'instant on' thing, just being able to browse for a film when you feel like it must be nice. Different people have different needs, but I'll be a bit sad when physical media does finally dissapear.
Edited by varsas on Tuesday 28th July 18:02
Frances The Mute said:
I'm looking forward to the audio improvement as much as the visuals - if not more.
What audio improvements are you expecting from 4K discs over current BluRays? Atmos is already available on (a limited number of) discs and DTS:X should start making an appearance on BluRay later this year too. AFAIK they aren't offering higher bitrate audio than now, so I'm not sure there will be any particular audio improvements.I have to say that I hope physical media does stay around for a while longer: I mostly watch films on my projector which shows up any lower bitrate/extra compression of 1080p sources (ie broadcast TV or Netflix, etc), plus the Atmos soundtrack will be based on a lossy version rather than BluRay/UHD lossless (again I have a decent sound set up to go with the projector, so I do benefit from the improved sound where available).
Given that UHD players should be available by the end of this year I'm not sure if Spectre would be available on disc that soon, but if so then I'd expect it to be one of the discs I would get.
I plan to get a UHD player even though my (eshift) 'faux' 4K projector doesn't have HDCP 2.2 capable inputs* as it is expected that there will be other side benefits from the better source (higher bitdepth so less banding for example), even if downscaled to 1080p.
- There are already devices appearing that will bypass that problem anyway, so I may well be able to feed my projector with 4K resolution anyway (which I'm told it does benefit from compared to just upscaling when fed 1080p).
I have a projector as well, so I'm also hoping the increased colour depth and HDR will bring some improvements, it'll mean my PJ can be pushed right up to it's limits, instead of being restricted by the source. For example most displays can accept full 4:4:4 colour at 1080p. This is more colour resolution than you get on a BluRay, and should match what we get on 4k BluRay.
Yes, you're right. I also doubt 'Spectre' will be a luanch title, hopefully it won't take too long to come out.
I have heard the same thing about e-shift projectors improving with a 4k source, and I think it makes sense.
Yes, you're right. I also doubt 'Spectre' will be a luanch title, hopefully it won't take too long to come out.
I have heard the same thing about e-shift projectors improving with a 4k source, and I think it makes sense.
Edited by varsas on Tuesday 28th July 18:59
OldSkoolRS said:
I have to say that I hope physical media does stay around for a while longer: I mostly watch films on my projector which shows up any lower bitrate/extra compression of 1080p sources (ie broadcast TV or Netflix, etc), plus the Atmos soundtrack will be based on a lossy version rather than BluRay/UHD lossless (again I have a decent sound set up to go with the projector, so I do benefit from the improved sound where available).
Same here. My projector is pretty ruthless with the output from my Virgin Media box or Netflix via my Apple TV. It is much better with films rented using the Apple TV, but Blu Ray is almost always noticeably better still.I'd be quite happy to give up physical media once uncompressed streaming comes around, but until then I'd definitely rather keep it.
The other positive for me at the moment is the existence of Lovefilm by Post. It costs £7 per month for three films at home and I get to watch all of the latest ones within a month of them coming out. I watch a lot of films, probably averaging 15 a month so that would cost me almost £70 a month if I rented them from Apple in HD. Of course, some of those I only really watch because they are effectively free on the Lovefilm service and I never would have paid Apple £4.50 for them!
Going back to the original question, if 4K Blu Ray does make a reasonable impact, I will probably do what I have done with Blu Ray - buy my top 100 or so films that I am likely to watch again and rent the rest. I'll only upgrade the Blu Rays where there is a good improvement to be had from the 1080p Blu Ray release, though, so it may be a good while before I can justify upgrading to a 4K player.
The other issue I'd have is that 4K projectors are likely to remain relatively unaffordable for some years to come, so I'd always be choosing between a 4K image at 55" or a 1080p one at 3-4 times that size. Of course 4K will be sharper, but the immersion that comes from watching a large screen is unbeatable for me.
Just a quick OT point Kingston12: I also rent from Lovefilm on the 3 disc deal, but it's more than £7 a month because of the downloadable content package as well. Is it possible to only have the physical disc rental alone? If so let me know how as I have no need for streamed versions. As you say on a large projection screen it is pretty ruthless with lesser quality sources.
OldSkoolRS said:
Just a quick OT point Kingston12: I also rent from Lovefilm on the 3 disc deal, but it's more than £7 a month because of the downloadable content package as well. Is it possible to only have the physical disc rental alone? If so let me know how as I have no need for streamed versions. As you say on a large projection screen it is pretty ruthless with lesser quality sources.
Sorry, I don't know to be honest. I have been a Lovefilm member for years before the Amazon takeover, and have always had the same package. In that time, it has come down from almost £20 a month to £7 now. After Amazon took it over, I was never told of a price change, just saw it coming through on my statement.I definitely had the streaming content at one point as well. Like you, I have never really used it but I did set it up on a previous Blu Ray player to test it. I have not done that on my current player so it must have been at least 3-4 years since I used it.
Looking at the site, it is now £7.99 per month for new members to sign up, but you only get the 2-disc deal. Still a good deal compared to anything else out there, but the 3-disc package allows you to watch a film every day if you want to.
Thanks Kingston12, I've had a dig around and came to the same conclusion as you have. I could drop the instant video part and only have 2 discs at a time. Actually that would probably work OK as even in winter I don't tend to watch more than 2 films a weekend. At a push I could possibly get a third disc back in time for mid week, if I sent the Friday night disc back on Saturday morning.
In the summer I seem to struggle to watch one a month, so I tend to rent DVDs which my son can watch on his laptop/Xbox, just to feel I'm getting some value out of it.
In the summer I seem to struggle to watch one a month, so I tend to rent DVDs which my son can watch on his laptop/Xbox, just to feel I'm getting some value out of it.
OldSkoolRS said:
Frances The Mute said:
I'm looking forward to the audio improvement as much as the visuals - if not more.
What audio improvements are you expecting from 4K discs over current BluRays? Atmos is already available on (a limited number of) discs and DTS:X should start making an appearance on BluRay later this year too. AFAIK they aren't offering higher bitrate audio than now, so I'm not sure there will be any particular audio improvements.A lot of emphasis is (justifiably) put on video performance but the audio is hugely important to me.
Frances The Mute said:
OldSkoolRS said:
Frances The Mute said:
I'm looking forward to the audio improvement as much as the visuals - if not more.
What audio improvements are you expecting from 4K discs over current BluRays? Atmos is already available on (a limited number of) discs and DTS:X should start making an appearance on BluRay later this year too. AFAIK they aren't offering higher bitrate audio than now, so I'm not sure there will be any particular audio improvements.A lot of emphasis is (justifiably) put on video performance but the audio is hugely important to me.
Edited by varsas on Thursday 30th July 13:29
TBH while I'm waiting to decide on which AVR/AVP to buy to give me Atmos/DTS:X I've bought an 8 year old Arcam AV8 processor that doesn't even do HD sound decoding. Guess what? I reckon it still sounds better than the POS Onkyo 818 I had previously that could decode HD. (In this case I'm hearing 'core' DTS at a higher bitrate than DVD around 1.5mbps).
I can use the analogue outputs of my Oppo BluRay player (which does the decoding instead of course) so I get HD sound via the AV8, but the difference isn't huge IMHO, though a lip sync problem means it's not a viable solution anyway. I'm running MK MP150 speakers, dual 15" sealed subs and an Arcam P7 power amp so it's not as if I'm using entry level gear either. I'm not expecting any major leaps in sound quality beyond what we already have available (IMHO it's more down to the mixing/mastering anyway and 'loudness wars' for music ruin many discs as well).
What did make a difference though was adding Dirac room eq to my system; much bigger difference than the change from DVD sound to HD sound.
(When comparing it needs to be the same sound track as sometimes the HD tracks are mixed differently, so I reckon some 'differences' are more to do with the mix).
I can use the analogue outputs of my Oppo BluRay player (which does the decoding instead of course) so I get HD sound via the AV8, but the difference isn't huge IMHO, though a lip sync problem means it's not a viable solution anyway. I'm running MK MP150 speakers, dual 15" sealed subs and an Arcam P7 power amp so it's not as if I'm using entry level gear either. I'm not expecting any major leaps in sound quality beyond what we already have available (IMHO it's more down to the mixing/mastering anyway and 'loudness wars' for music ruin many discs as well).
What did make a difference though was adding Dirac room eq to my system; much bigger difference than the change from DVD sound to HD sound.
(When comparing it needs to be the same sound track as sometimes the HD tracks are mixed differently, so I reckon some 'differences' are more to do with the mix).
Yes, I'd rather listen to DD/DTS core on a good amp than HD audio on an average one.
DVD can sound great, sadly most are encoded at 384 or 448 kb/s, which is low enough to make a difference. I have a Corrs DVD which has a 448kb/s DD track and a LPCM (just like a CD) stereo track, switching between them shows the LPCM track to be a bit clearer and sharper. However my 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' DVD has a DD track encoded at 640kb/s and that sounds fantastic.
My understanding is DVD's do get a 'softer' mix, more ameinable to downmixing to stereo, while Laserdiscs got the 'full fat' surround mix (they carry a stereo track as well) albeit at 'only' 384kb/s and sound fantastic. I've often wondered what BluRay's get. I wonder if it's a mix; with Skyfall, Oblivion and The Conjuring getting the cinema mix, while Avatar and Avengers Assemble get a softer, flater one (I'm aware I'm in the minority there, the audio on those discs just doesn't grab me). It would be interesting to know.
DVD can sound great, sadly most are encoded at 384 or 448 kb/s, which is low enough to make a difference. I have a Corrs DVD which has a 448kb/s DD track and a LPCM (just like a CD) stereo track, switching between them shows the LPCM track to be a bit clearer and sharper. However my 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' DVD has a DD track encoded at 640kb/s and that sounds fantastic.
My understanding is DVD's do get a 'softer' mix, more ameinable to downmixing to stereo, while Laserdiscs got the 'full fat' surround mix (they carry a stereo track as well) albeit at 'only' 384kb/s and sound fantastic. I've often wondered what BluRay's get. I wonder if it's a mix; with Skyfall, Oblivion and The Conjuring getting the cinema mix, while Avatar and Avengers Assemble get a softer, flater one (I'm aware I'm in the minority there, the audio on those discs just doesn't grab me). It would be interesting to know.
Edited by varsas on Thursday 30th July 19:15
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