Redray 4K player with Odemax -Could this be the better than Bluray we have all been lloking for? - Page 2

New player ,new software and new display.

Art

Keep your fingers crossed it doesn't stay that way.

Art

I'm hoping my Sony1000ES will suffice as the display, at least for a few yrs.

Really? If you would like I can send you a cell phone picture! They are right across the street form one of the Technicolor facilities.

http://www.redstudio.com/home

Believe me, RED will push any content they have ownership in to their player market. And as they are in the production business, they can offer incentives to producers for working at RED, one of them being the distribution of the producers work.

Hollywood still runs on golf course handshake deals. Always has.

I do agree though that 4K for the home is a ways off.
Edited by Glimmie - 12/10/12 at 2:40pm

Thanks for correcting me .I take that as very good news which I think would mean more content, worthwhile content, and more quickly than I could have hoped. I am already feeling better about my Redray preorder and I felt good before.
Edited by mark haflich - 12/10/12 at 10:06pm

No one here wrote about only 'dailies' use.

Its very hard keeping everything straight in a curved world.

Folks need to stay out of GLIMMIE's grill, this is his wheelhouse!

Mark, you preordered? WOW social security check must have got a bump...

It's really unlikely that the 1.7% for 2013 is going to do it for anyone though!

Its money I saved by never buying any Oppos, just a couple of $100 3D Panasonic Bluray players for our house and theater. The set top box is free. That's it for sources for me.

I would think the studeos would protect the commercial theaters just as they do know, by not releasing on optical disc format (today Bluray) until after first runs commercially Hell, the smaller theaters can't get the first releases yntil the large commercials have had their run. Now, rreleases through Odemax would certainly be DCI I would think.

Sorry. I would hope it would be even before bluray release since the contentowner could charge even more. Right now one can get DCI content sometime after first run in theaters.provided one has a DCI theater, knows the right people, and is prepared to buy a hefty but not back breaking limited runlicense fee.. I have heard some bitches abbout the fee but its really no more than a decent seat at an NBA game, nothing like first couple of rows

The reason this Redray release will be such a showstopper, in my opinion, is the same reason Netflix has 30+ million streaming customers. Convenience. 4K content will not wait on the flat panel industry to produce as its lost on flat panel owners under 80" at 8ft (or whatever the visual acuity charts say), 4K will really only ever be appreciated by those with HUGE screens (regardless of what the TV salesman tells you about the 42" 4K). Disc based media has been on the way out for a long time (since Netflix created a viable streaming business model that many have since tried to duplicate with mixed success), whether its to smaller media (SD cards, etc) or streaming remains to be seen, but the fact that Red Inc. has developed a compression scheme that doesn't quintupple the amount of required bandwidth bodes well for the streaming camp.

Either way, I was just trying to say that I'm happy for them and respect what they're doing...its a hostile world out there in the AV industry and they've got brass ones for starting something of this magnitude (bet me they don't get offers of merger or acquisition from Sony in the next 12 months; then Sony could buy themselves some time to milk the BD market a little longer while dragging out the process of releasing 4K to the masses)

There are no 4K masses and I doubt there will be for quite some time and even then.

You think the AV industry is hostile, the crowd here on the $20K forum isn't always candy kisses. You have to wear kevlar ass protectors or risk having someone bite it. Its no fun having to get a full series of rabies shots.
Edited by mark haflich - 12/11/12 at 1:30pm

Rec.709 colorspace? Hmmm...I'm hoping for something wider. I'm very happy about 10 or 12 bit, as the 8 bit limitation is very noticable...but panels and projectors will need to reproduce accurately unlike many today. But back to colorspace, Rec. 709 just looks so "old" when compared to other options out there.

The main issue of content is the films mastered to this date. Most have been in 2k only. There has been the odd title over the years that received the 4k treatment, but as one studio exec said, "the choice is on a title by title basis, with the majority being 2k". I'm sure a 4k mastering done today is very different than one done 5 years ago, and the new 4k content will be a slow roll out with titles the studios will bank on consumers buying again in order to invest in starting fresh with the title.

That's a good point. The color space list on the spec sheet is 709 but the output is listed as 4K DCI. And 4K DCI I think would have to be the DCI color space.

Do the Red cameras allow capture with the DCI color space. I would expect mach content captured in 4K to be at DCI color space with conversion to 709 for 4HD or Ultra HD as they call it. I just don't know. mMaybe Glimmie cam help.

Also Odemax coupled with the stand alone Redray server or built into the coming Red projectors is designed to feed small commercial theaters who presumably will be displaying DCI content on DCI projectors.
Edited by mark haflich - 12/11/12 at 9:52pm

The RedRay player can show wider colorspace than the spec sheet shows. The spec sheet only shows the limit of the HDMI specs and the limit of 4K TVs. The player also has pass through for DCP.
The Red Laser projectors are not limited by HDMI colorspace because the RedRay palyer is incorporated in the projector. Also, Laser projectors have much larger colorspace than lamp based projector.

yes, right. I forgot about that HDMI limitation.

The obvious question is that it would be incorporated in the coming projectors but what about buying it now as a stand alone.Obviously, if you are not planning on using it with a Red projector would the HDMI spec limit. you If you plan to use it with a Red projector, than buying it now would mean you will be in essence buying it again with the projector and it would make little sense to buy it now.. I know it has other uses rthan as a projector feed but that is what i am exploring here. As a4K projector feed.

How does HDMI exactly limit the gamut to Rec 709 or 601? Is there anything stopping someone from putting YCbCr with DCI gamut on a file or disc and transmit it via HDMI into a projector with a DCI gamut and it will look correct?

I would think the xyY values for the primaries wouldn't be limted by the HDMI spec but the bit lengths might be. Wouldn"t the bandwidth of the HDMI chips being som sortof limting factor?
Edited by mark haflich - 12/12/12 at 1:42pm

Besides movies shot in 4K, there are an increasing amount of 35mm (&65.5/70mm) that have been scanned in at 4K (even though, in actuality, they aren't quite 4K), plus almost all films were shot on 35mm film which makes them all candidates for 4K scanning...studios see this as "fire insurance" against aging and scratching the filmstock. Plus I'm sure they'll save a ton by storing the films on HDDs then they can rent out the salt mines as a honeymoon destination. Link below to 35mm to 4K scanning on reduser.net.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?6782-John-Lowry-on-4k-vs-35mm

Quite a few legacy blockbusters have been re-transferred and re-mastered to 4K for the reasons you noted. However they always go back to film in addition to the data file archive. And incidentally that data archive is usually LTO tape, not disc. Hard Disks have a poor reputation as archive devices. They often seize after years of sitting unpowered. Nothing says you can't store this data in a secure cloud or dedicated archive disk farm. But that costs money. Now how long is LTO tape going to be around in it's current capacity. Even if the format lasts tens of years, at some point you have to cut off backwards compatibility to move ahead. So now what happens with the LTO archive? Moving files to newer storage technology every few years is not something the studios want to do. Nor do they want to be in the data farm business.

Film still has a PROVEN life span of at least 100 years. We had issues in the early 1960s with Eastman color print stock but that has long since been resolved. And archives are most often YCM separations further ensuring against fade.

Glimmie. Thanks. i personaly feel in general, if money can be made with only reasonable risk of failure, content will be offered. Sort of build it and they will come.
Edited by mark haflich - 12/13/12 at 12:52pm

Yes, the physical interface has no limits on color space or data formatting provided the max word size and transfer rate is not exceeded. And there are other tricks you can do. Want more bit depth, then spread the data across two frames. Want higher data rate, then truncate the data and pack two words into one data frame period. More bit depth and higher data rate? Can't have your cake and eat it too.

Standards are another story. If you want your product to have interoperability in the market, you must adhere to the standards you wish to support. But nothing says RED or anybody can't use the physical HDMI interface and come up with their own protocol.

If someone was determined, you could write a software driver that uses HDMI as a high speed point to point network link between two computers for file transfer. But Ethernet has that pretty well covered these days

You can't shake he hands of anyone if you don't play at the same golf course . The home video group, which is responsible for licensing products for delivery to that market, has its own P&L and management group, completely separate from the production division. Yes, they go to the same parties and such . But otherwise, they could not be more distinct businesses. Red has no advantage at all in getting content over anyone else. They face huge hurdles in getting their copy protection blessed, and rights for content. You need to have huge amount of money to get anything. Just look at how much money Netflix and Amazon have spent to fill their libraries. Red simply does not have the capital to go there.

My sense is that the content they will get, other than some token ones, will be independently produced by guys who are smaller than RED. And this may be an avenue for them to make a few more dollars. In that circle, the compatibility with Red cameras and such will be an advantage.
This, we agree on .

Well just to add, the content Netflix and Amazon get is already licensed as home video material. To get the studios to release a 4K version is going to be much, much, more difficult due to the reason you noted, mainly copy protection concerns.

I think RED does have a marketing edge on anyone who works at their studio, but right now that's not major production companies and hence not A title material.

I also think RED does have deep pockets - how deep? Remember it's the Oklay sunglasses guy.

Just speculation at this point, but I don't think Odemax will operate the way other streaming services like Netflix and Amazon operate. The way this have been hinted at is that Odemax will not use a lot of money to buy rights to titles.

They will provide a Internet distribution platform, or as they call it; Channels, where everybody that produce 4K material they want to distribute to HT owners or Small Independent cinemas, can sign up their own channel.

So a major studio can have their own channel with material thy want to distribute, as will other independent rights owners and independent film makers with their productions.

Odemax will host the 4K .RED encoded material with REDCrypt™ digital media encryption for the producers, which can only be played back through a RedRay player.
Odemax will take care of payment to the producers and other administrative services and promotion through their website + of course the network for sending the material to the RedRay player owner that buy the movie.

So it becomes more like the way Cable or Satellite companies operate. You surf through the different channels an find a movie you want to download to your RedRay player/projector and pay for it before you get to download it.

In this way the content owners will have more control over their material with less accounting and keeping track of all kind of territorial licensing and such.
As long as they have provided the material for Odemax to sell for them, they can basically lean back and receive the fees from what is being sold.
Only extra work would be actively promoting their own material if their movie titles is not well known.

The largest hurdle for Odemax is to get the major studios interested in this form of distribution. It will also not limit the Studios to sell the rights to the same titles to other Home Media distributors like Amazon or Netflix or a future 4K BD.

Maybe I explain this clumsily, but I believe this distribution platform has a lot of advantages for film producers compared to other distribution channels.
Edited by coolscan - 12/13/12 at 3:16pm