kdo May 14, 2015 Wow, so many valid comments, yet it seems that so very few of them are in full support of this new 4k format. As Ive said many times before, there is zero chance I will openly adopt this new medium, which despite all the talk saying its really just an upgrade to Blu-ray, its really not. You have to buy a new player, and you have to have a 4k television or projector. Interesting, but like Blu-ray itself, in some ways it actually seems like more of its own format than Betamax, VHS, Laserdisc and DVD were because all of those played in 480i and 576i, and you didnt have to buy a new television, surround sound system, HDMI cables, etc. Granted, if and when my beautiful plasma and current Blu-ray player wear out in about 10-15 years, and all thats available is 4k sets and players at that point, then I will buy one of each. But even then, its likely the only movies I would be purchasing, will be the ones I can pull out of discount dump bins, which is pretty much what I do now. But, Id have to make sure the transfer of whatever I was buying was worthwhile, considering the loads of shoddy releases weve already got on Blu, with poor transfers, mastering errors & glitches, digital manipulation, etc. Sorry, but most of the major studios taught me a BIG lesson with Blu-ray, that is: I simply cannot trust them. Sure, there have been some great releases on the format, but how many of them have truly been as outstanding as they should be? Also, what makes people think that this new format will have any less problems than Blu-ray did? Fact of the matter is that its not so much the format, its how the studios choose to handle it.



I can just see it now, the new 4k discs will come out and the average consumer will not care at all they will still be buying DVD, maybe some of them regular Blu-ray, as is pretty much the norm right now the only regular consumer who will be buying Ultra-HD, will be those who are forced to purchase it in combo packs of sorts, that come with a DVD or the regular Blu-ray as well, or who ignorantly think they can play it in a regular DVD or 1080 Blu-ray player. Also, where are all of these new UHD discs going to be marketed and sold, online only? Have any of the investors pushing this new UHD been into a brick and mortar store like Best Buy, Target or Walmart lately? The volumes of physical media being sold in-store now are like a fraction of what they used to be even more, the amount of Blu-rays available in stores are like less than 20% of the shelved volume. What, is UHD all of a sudden going to revive the dying physical media? Sure, there are still the discount dump bins, with seldom a quality title in them (or at least anything that has been released recently) is that where UHD plans to start its sales? It might be tough to make money selling new 4k disc for $5-$10 each. Whatever the case, Im just not seeing, at least for the majority of consumers, the angle on pushing this new 4k format. At this point, Im in the opinion that 4k is essentially for the rich, entitled and elite that small, miniscule fraction of the population that have endless amounts of liquid cash (and time) at their disposal, and living quarters large enough to house the giant screens necessary in order to notice the differences between 1080 and 4k. These are the people UHD will need to cater to if it plans on even having a remote chance of success. And in order to keep a format alive for that small of a customer base, it means things are going to need to be really, really expensive.



When Blu-ray and HD-DVD debuted, I predicted that neither of them would ever have the depth that DVD did, and I was right. I predicted that the amount of titles that would ever be available in HD would be a small portion of what was available on DVD, and I was right. I had a feeling that it would take years and years for the public to adopt these new physical high-def formats on a large scale (essentially due to a sluggish world economy that was vastly different than from what we had when DVD debuted), and I was right. I estimated that most people would move in the direction of streaming the majority of their media, and I was right. Now, Im certainly not always correct in my views, but Id probably be willing to wager that this new Ultra-HD will likely be a rehash of what Laserdisc was very expensive with a minute market share. Granted, I could be wrong, but I see very little evidence that most peoples mouths are watering, as they shake with anticipation, and just await the day they can line up to buy into a whole new physical home-video format they dont have money for especially considering a lot of them can just watch and stream their movies right to their computers, tablets, Ipads and even cell-phones these days



That aside, and from a technical standpoint, from what I gather, most films and media that have digital masters, have them at max 2k resolution. This means that for the majority of films, studios would have to sink loads of cash into not only rescanning film elements, but then applying the proper steps to make sure they were properly graded, color-corrected etc. This is not a cheap process. How many studios are going to take this chance to sell a couple thousand copies of a title worldwide? How many of these recently mastered in 4k releases have even sold in significant amounts on Blu-ray? And lastly, what difference does it make to scan at 4k, if the same old digital butchery is going to be applied to the transfers, to appease the younger, tech-adopting generations who dont understand that films of yesteryear often used inherently grainy filmstocks, photochemical processes and optical effects techniques?



All said and done, I am not opposed in the slightest to the new frontier of 4k UHD. As has always been the case, technology continually moves forward, and I have no problem with this, in fact, I welcome it. Just so long as the studios continue to make movies available on regular Blu-ray and DVD as well (which is what Ive bought into), I will be happy. As for the physical UHD format, I wish the studios and their investors the best, and all the luck in the world, in making their push successful. I think its a risky venture, but thats not really any of my business. At the very least, I will look forward to surfing the forum threads from time to time in the near future and seeing all of the same old complaints arise time and time again only now adapted for 4k instead of 1080



Hey, its 4k but the color-timing is wrong.

It looks like true 35mm film now, but the audio has dropouts.

This new 4k transfer is dazzlingly detailed, but this isnt how it looked in the theater.

Why did they alter the contrast on this new 4k version?

This doesnt look like true 4k, it looks like an upscaled Blu-ray!

The brightness levels are off on this new 4k transfer!

This particular 4k disc has mastering errors, and I cant get it to load in my player!

Why arent the bonus features from the initial Blu-ray included?!

"I just did a firmware update, and now I have 4K discs that I bought back in the early days of the format, that won't play!"

Ive had it with all these problems were seeing on 4k, Im going to wait for 8k when everything will finally be perfect.