AVS Forum banner

UHD Blu-ray Disc in BDXL Drive Test Request

128K views 699 replies 113 participants last post by  Wryker 
#1 ·
Is there anyone out there with UHD blu-ray disc in hand and a BDXL drive? I just want to know what happens when you insert it in the drive, will it be recognized or not? I know for a fact that BDXL drives can read up to 3 layers blu-ray discs.


Please move to the right section if necessary
 
#6 ·
From what we know about the format, the initial discs will most likely be BD-50s because those require no retooling of production lines and they work in all existing BD-ROM drives, making players very easy and inexpensive to manufacture. The whole point of having triple and quad-layer discs was to allow UHD-3D in the future (and allow for epic films and episodic content like TV shows or mini-series to use a single disc), which will consume significantly more space and require higher bitrates than 2D UHD video. So, until we know for sure that we have a triple or quad-layer UHD-BD in our hands, there's really no point in getting antsy.
 
#7 ·
From what we know about the format, the initial discs will most likely be BD-50s...
I hadn't heard that, but it makes sense as there's no reason to use BDXL unless the size of the movie and extras exceed the disc. The last few Blu-ray movies I have bought had the extras on a separate disc, leaving on the main feature on a disc to itself with room to spare.

I preordered The Martian on Amazon, so I'll find out on March 1...
 
#10 · (Edited)
AFAIK, the increased efficiency of HEVC counteracts the increased resolution of 4k and I understand that 10 bit can also achieve offsetting efficiencies, so a UHD movie will likely not be much different from a Bluray movie in terms of space requirement. Many Bluray movies currently don't even take up 40GB on a 50GB disc and some even fit in 25GB.

Compression is such a configurable thing though, that it will be possible to keep a movie within the 50GB limit by filtering detail judiciously so that the consumer probably won't be aware. Remember Avatar was supposed to occupy the whole disc for quality purposes and then they released Avatar Extended also on a single disc but claimed the quality was virtually indistinguishable?

There is more to a Bluray than just the data area on the disc and its encryption: official discs include tracks that can't be read by standard BDROM drives IIRC which allow the industry to verify that a disc is official and protected. I expect this is going to be used and enhanced with UHD and I don't anticipate it will be easily broken this time. I would not expect a BDXL drive to be able to act as a UHD Bluray reader as I believe the industry have learned from their mistake and will not allow UHD on an open platform.

IMO, physical disc formats are in the autumn of their life. Apart from cost, Sony have demonstrated that UHD files on a USB drive can be successfully played in a TV without all the headaches of HDMI or the redundancy of an additional external player: the challenge will be to develop cheap 64GB ROM flashdrives or equivalent that rival the cost of pressing discs (or close enough with other compensations). If more consumers had high bandwidth internet, streaming would be a possibility.

My best guess is that UHD will migrate to solid state storage for the videophile whilst the average consumer will be happy with reduced bitrate streamed 4k or lower using advanced compression or downloaded to solid state storage on the TV and optical discs will be gradually removed from the market. There doesn't seem to be much point in having external players when a TV already has an internal player (apart from legacy support).
 
#12 ·
I did some experiments with h.265 (one of my job titles is blu-ray disc compression/authoring)

a 90 minute 1080p movie at 85Mbps with dolby digital+ stream at the minimum setting comes out at 55 GB.
That's leaving out additional 4k resolution and anything that HDR and 10-bit color adds.

In my opinion, I don't believe any commercially made UHD discs will be pressed with existing HD Blu-Ray equipment.
 
#13 ·
I actually misquoted. The correct number should have been 82 and not 85 and that's "up-to", meaning not likely the actual bitrate used in many instances as it will be VBR encoding for most media and encoding efficiency will improve over time, resulting in lower bitrates as time goes by. Triple-layer discs will support up to 108 and quad-layer discs will go to 128.
 
#17 ·
Can the BDXL drives read 33GB layer discs? I thought the UHD BD layers were supposed to be 33GB instead for the current 25GB?

With my last BD rom purchase I specifically didn't get a BDXL drive because of the extra cost. If these UHD BDs can be read by a BDXL drive I guess I will end up needing to purchase one.
 
#18 · (Edited)
BDXL drives can read BDXL discs, which includes 3 and 4 layer discs with up to 33GB per layer. LG makes an external USB 3.0/2.0 BDXL burner with 12x BD-ROM read speeds (432 Mbps data transfer rate), far exceeding the 128 Mbps maximum bitrate specified for Ultra HD Blu-Ray. Even at 4x read speed, the data transfer rate is sufficient at 144 Mbps. So, hardware-wise, most current BDXL drives are more than capable. The issue is lack of AACS 2.0 support. Without that, you won't be able to play the content.

It's possible that the BDA could choose to license Ultra HD Blu-Ray playback capabilities out to PC software developers like PowerDVD. If so, I suspect that all it would take is updated firmware/drivers for the BDXL drive to go along with the playback software. But, I would be surprised if we see that anytime soon.
 
#24 ·
Well, the UHD-BD replicators - those designed for triple/quad-layer discs - have only been available for a few months now, so it's not unexpected given that the spec was finalized only a few months before the new replicators were available. More to the point, UHD-BD licenses for content production and such just came out a few weeks ago and don't take effect until the day the format goes wide, so there's no big rush of replication orders for the format beyond what's already being done for the Hollywood studios. If the BDA went stupid and hadn't put BD-50 at the low-end of the format spec, UHD-BD wouldn't be out until 2017 at the earliest and things might be worse off due to the economics of disc replication driving many companies into receivership or takeover by the big fish. As it is, many smaller replicators just contract their BD jobs out to Sony DADC instead of doing it themselves.
 
#25 ·
One thing I forgot to clarify for the purposes of discussion was that BD-50 and BD-66 are both considered Dual-Layer discs, despite the difference in layer size for both formats and BD-66 is apparently the odd-man out for the time being. The triple-layer discs are BD-100 and quad-layer discs are BD-128, though there is no spec for BD-128 ROM discs at this time. So, triple-layer discs are actually as high as the UHD-BD-ROM format goes at this time. The 128GB discs are recordable/rewritable discs that might seem a bit familiar to you. Here's a little nugget buried in the official BDA white paper from last year: The liner density of a 66GB ROM disc and a 100GB ROM disc are the same as that of a 100GB BD-XL disc. Just something to think about. ;)
 
#27 ·
If we're just concerned with reading that data that's one thing, but there needs to be a software solution in place (i.e. PowerDVD) to actually view the movie, if that's the final intent. Not sure when and if they'll roll that out and I'm sure the PC requirements will be pretty robust (CPU/GPU).

Food for thought.
 
#28 ·
Not sure why. It's only 2D 4K. Built in GPUs have no problem with that.
 
#34 ·
4th and 5th generation Intel HD GPUs can decode HEVC on the GPU thanks to driver updates, as the QuickSync ASIC does not have the functions for HEVC decoding. Skylake uses GPU and QuickSync functions for 10-bit HEVC. Kaby Lake will use QuickSync for HEVC and likely VP9 as well. Right now, VP9 is only partially supported on 4th/5th/6th generation Intel HD graphics.
 
#36 ·
Yesterday I received The Martian BD/UHD combo back. I do have a LG W16NS40 BDXL burner, along with AnyDVD HD. I use this combo for backing up many of my own BD discs.

When I insert the UHD, I have no luck getting the W10 PC to recognize anything in the drive. It just cranks away on it, and nothing ever shows up in the file explorer. The BD behaves as expected.
 
#38 ·
One thing i don`t understand is how are users going to be able to backup their new UHD movies with the Digital Bridge "copy" function if the current drives are not able to read the discs? Will there be new firmwares released for the BDXL drives in order to read the UHD discs?
 
#39 ·
You don't need a PC to do that. In theory, a standalone Ultra HD Blu-Ray player would have this feature built-in. The "copy" would be stored either on the player's internal hard drive, or an SCSA-approved external hard drive, using Vidity-branded encryption. So, your options for full quality playback of the copy would be limited to the player or another Vidity-compatible playback device (e.g. another Ultra HD Blu-Ray player, TV, or future set top box) that has been authorized to play back content from that drive/account.

Playback on PC's, laptops, tablets, and phones would require use the "Export" function and apps designed specifically for playback of Vidity-encrypted content. You won't be playing these copies back using open source multimedia software like Kodi or Plex. The only way that happens is if someone cracks the encryption and distributes the software to do it. So, we'll have to wait and see what kind of UI and features these app developers give us. Most likely we'll get multiple options from studios and digital retailers like Vudu (Walmart), Flixster (Warner Brothers), CinemaNow (Best Buy), etc., though the Digital Bridge-compatible apps may go by different names than the current Ultraviolet-compatible ones do. Hopefully, at least one app will be released that is on par with K-scape's software, but at a more affordable price.

Afaik, this is all just on paper at the moment. Support for "Copy and Export" (a.k.a. Digital Bridge) is optional on both players and discs. The first generation player from Samsung (UBD-K8500) does not support it and there is no mention of support for the feature on the back covers of any of the Ultra HD Blu-Ray discs I have seen thus far. Industry rumors suggest that we might not see this feature for a couple years.
 
#45 · (Edited)
I combed through the technical information regarding the UHD-BD format and nothing says that the discs shouldn't be able to be read on BD-XL drives. The file system is the same, the physical disc specs are the same, and there are no "updates" separating UHD-BD from it's brothers other than the HEVC codec. I can only think that these discs are encrypted in some way or the media simply reports itself to the OS as something it doesn't recognize and therefore does not know how to deal with, but I can't find anything new regarding that in the whitepaper. I suspect we'll get some sort of updates in the next three weeks in regards to UHD-BD support and products as the licenses for the format take effect on March 1st.
 
#52 ·
Well, I got my hands on the copy protection info for the new format - none of which was mentioned in the format data that I and everyone else previously read - and it looks like that is why the discs can't be read in the BDXL drives. There are main three copy protection systems employed in the new format. First, we have Ultra HD AACS, which is just the latest version of AACS that we're all familiar with, and it goes online to verify keys and such. Second, we have Ultra-HD BD-ROM Mark, which is a unique mark that must be present in all manufactured discs and prevents counterfeiting/copying of movies. Third is Ultra HD BD+, which is obviously the updated version of BD+ that is used in HD Blu-Ray. Any drive intended to play Ultra HD BD-ROM Movies must support UHD AACS and UHD BD-ROM Mark, which no current drives have. Any drive intended to be used to read UHD media must support UHD BD-ROM Mark to recognize the discs and the BD-XL drives don't have that in their firmware at this point, but it could theoretically be added via firmware update. LG is the only company that has applied for a license to manufacture UHD drives, so we'll have to wait and see what happens. Since LG also made the majority of BD-XL drives, it stands to reason that they might put out firmware updates for them, but we'll have to just bide our time until we find out one way or another. If they won't, I'll be upset, cause I spent $100 or so on their snazzy external BD-XL burner with USB 3.0.
 
#53 ·
I'm suprised you hadn't heard about AACS 2.0 or whatever the official name ended up being. It's been mentioned in most discussions on this topic around the web, ever since documents showing a rough draft of some of its "features" was leaked after the hacks against Sony. Btw, use of the online key retrieval feature is not mandatory for discs. Players must support the feature in case a disc requires it but, according to a few execs on the BDA council, the feature is not being implemented on any commercial discs released in the near future. They say it may be used with certain pre-release discs that are given to reviewers and the like. My guess is that it's there as a fall back option for studios in case hackers come up with a way to break the encryption using the key that's on the disc. Studios would then stop putting the key on new discs and require online authentication to play each new disc on each and every player you attempt to play it on. Once the disc has been authorized to play in a specific player, the disc could then be played again in that same player without having to go online again. So, it's a one-time deal per disc per player.

The UHD BD-ROM Mark you mentioned just sounds like an updated version of Cinavia.
 
#56 ·
My interest is the burning of UHD BR using edited video from a Sony AX 100 4K camera.

I use Cyberlink Power Director 14 for editing and store the edited material on a HD or as a 264 or 265 file on a 25Gb BR disc.

My hope is to see PD 15 being capable of doing this, namely creating UHD BR discs, that are recognized by the Samsung or other UHD players. My hope is that this can be done using 25 GB discs, similar idea to AVCHD using 4.7 GB DVD blanks yet storing HD videos.

Any thoughts?

Eugene
 
#62 ·
You should have no problem getting discs to be recognized by the player, but there isn't any consumer production software that lines up with the format yet. If you keep the output of your editing as a file, it will be playable so long as that file is within the specs of the onboard video decoder and software installed on the player. That being said, you will have to look at the specs for whatever player you buy to see if it handles the format that you use. The Samsung UHD-BD player will play MKVs, MP4s, and TS files that use HEVC. I can't say anything more than that as I have neither the equipment nor any files to do any testing.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top