Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday May 14 2015, @11:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the here-comes-the-next-upgrade dept.

Streaming hasn't completely killed the optical disc. The Blu-ray Disc Association has completed the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification. New Ultra HD Blu-ray discs will support 3840×2160 "4K" resolution at up to 60 FPS using H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding. It also supports the larger Rec. 2020 color gamut, which allows for colors of greater saturation to be reproduced. 10-bit per channel color depth is supported, increasing the number of possible colors to ~1.07 billion (10243) from ~16.8 million (2563).

The specification defines discs with capacities of 66 GB and 100 GB. This means that the 33 GB per layer, triple-layer technology of 100 GB BDXL discs will reach consumers.

Tom's Hardware notes:

With a new spec also comes new Ultra HD Blu-ray players, which is a bit of a concern. Fortunately, these new players will have backwards compatibility with Blu-ray discs. However, those who have been using a traditional Blu-ray player for some time will just have to replace it with a model that plays Ultra HD Blu-ray, and those who use the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One for Blu-ray content are stuck unless they want to add another space-hogging box to the living room.

Licensing for Ultra HD Blu-ray begins this summer, but just like 4K content and TVs, it will take some time to see wide adoption. The TVs are already here, but the amount of content needs to increase in order for users to justify the cost of purchasing new 4K devices.

[More After the Break]


ExtremeTech describes an optional "digital bridge" feature (read: DRM) that attempts to allow greater flexibility in how users can view the content:

The new digital bridge feature is designed to give customers more flexibility in how they consume content. In 2015, simply having the content on a disc isn't good enough — not when people are used to watching Netflix on a tablet, then transferring to a different device and picking up where they left off. The digital bridge devices contemplated by the draft documents available online don't appear to be systems that consumers could build themselves. Instead, you'll buy a UHD Blu-ray player from Samsung or Sony that offers this feature as standard. It goes without saying that the platform is heavily locked down.

The entire process of validating a disc for digital bridging and any charges associated with accessing the content will be handled via remote servers; DRM functions will not reside inside the digital bridge export function (DBEF). Digital bridging is going to be standard on all UHD discs but isn't mandatory for Blu-rays (conventional Blu-ray discs can support it or not as they choose).

ExtremeTech is more optimistic about the prospect of current-gen consoles supporting Ultra HD Blu-ray:

The hardware itself isn't really the problem. Even the Xbox 360 and PS3 could likely handle H.265 decoding with proper software optimization, and the eight-core Jaguar CPUs in both modern consoles are robust enough to do the job. The problem is the discs themselves. The multi-layer discs that UHD relies on likely aren't compatible with the Blu-ray players in either machine. Assuming that's true, it's the kind of feature both companies could add when they inevitably overhaul their platforms for a new process node and lower power consumption. It might even be possible to add H.265 decode support to the GPU hardware with AMD's help. Neither company has announced plans to roll out a new console variant as yet, but we'd be surprised if there weren't second-generation Xbox One's and PlayStations on store shelves by Christmas, 2016.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:16PM

    by wantkitteh (3362) on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:16PM (#183033) Homepage Journal

    Of course, because Google laying fibre in a few towns in Murica means the entire world can suddenly pull down 100GB in an hour... idiot. Besides, I like owning physical copies of things - people can't censor them after I've paid for them.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:29PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:29PM (#183040) Journal

    Also, Ultra HD Blu-ray will be a good way to get 4K rips for 4K torrents.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:46PM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:46PM (#183047) Homepage Journal

      Excellent point - without high quality source material, all those kickass rips wouldn't exist. Maybe you could scan a film print if you owned a cinema and had the time between shows, but with the print ID schemes in use these days, along with the shift to digital film distribution, not to mention the cost of print hire and physical degradation of the medium, it simply isn't practical. Digital rips are almost free by comparison, in terms of time, cost per film and startup cost.

      (I was a chief projectionist for a cinema)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @07:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @07:11PM (#183060)

        > Excellent point - without high quality source material, all those kickass rips wouldn't exist.

        You don't need physical media for a high quality rip. There are some really good netflix rips floating around. For example, Daredevil in 1080p [google.com] looks fantastic.