No Plans for New 4K Disc Format - Sony

Well it's starting to look like the 4K set owners today will be in the same predicament as the early 'HDTV' adopters in the late 90's/early 2000's who bought HDTV's with component only inputs and ran SDTV/upscaled DVD's into their sets. Considering ISP's are just SALIVATING on implementing download caps and charging $$$/gb, this will just slow 4K adoption and prolong it as a niche product. Yes, there's H.265, but it's only a 30-40% reduction in bitrates for an equivalent quality.

They don't want a physical format because they lose control of the value they place on their content. The studios thought people would be willing to pay $30 for HD content, but six years in we see catalog BD titles routinely selling for well under $10. The used disc market will also go away so your only source for content will be a provider that gives a cut to the stuio system. Also if you decide you no longer want something there is no way of recouping any of the money you put into your library.

To all those people claiming BD was full of anti-use DRM you haven't seen anything yet. Here comes the old Circuit City DIVX model minus the disc.... the providers want to get paid everytime you press play.

That doesn't surprise me. Between family and friends, I know at least a dozen people that don't even have a Blu-ray player.

Which just goes to show how much the 'median' consumer cares about quality. Does the industry really believe that 4K is going to be a hot product? Again the CE makers have forgotten that most people just replaced their primary TVs in the last 5 years. Most consumers try to keep their sets for at least 10 years or more. 4K will succeed... as just another bullet on a feature card in 5 years. You know just like 3D.

Personally I can't wait until 4K movies are everywhere. No more stupid streaming. Just let me download the whole thing and play it back in full quality and full HD audio with no danger of connection hiccups!! I frankly HATE streaming. Let me download it first, I'm NOT that impatient!

I could not agree more with this post.

The studios are all counting the days till we all have to pay every time we watch something. I wish more people would quit streaming and go back to buying discs. Streaming is a joke for quality and the studios are hoping convenience will beat out quality. If discs die off we are all going to regret it.
Make sure if a friend or family member is not buying discs you give them one for every birthday/Christmas, so they can see the difference.

I agree, I'm not a streaming fan

I bet Blu-ray has costed Sony a bundle or two. Money they probably will never recuperate or make a profit.

In hindsight, they should really have left HD discs to Toshiba and had one less financial headache to deal with.
Latest surveys I have seen is that people still like to own their content on a physical disc. That's why even CDs are still going strong and the good old LP market is growing.

This launch of Blu-rays with 4K logo "which will look better than regular Blu-rays up-converted on 4K displays" is just some desperate marketing rubbish.

Sony claims they will launch a network distribution system for 4K in the summer.

Red has already the Redray 4K player and the Odemax download network distribution system ready for launch.

If Sony is smart they should just sign up for that and solve their problem of delivering 4K to their display devices. One less system for them to build and manage.

Time for Sony to learn that they should not try to push everybody into their own manufactured system. They have failed every time they have tried. Only exception has been the CD which was co-developed with Phillips.

Unfortunately, at today's speeds, you could go to the store and pick up a 4K ray with all the bells and whistles faster than you could download a 2 hour movie, with no expiration date.

IME Vudu HDX on a sufficiently fast line (around 7-8 megabits) is very close to blu-ray in video quality. Only lacking the HD audio to be truly competitive. For me it's a 30-40 minute round trip to get a disc. I only have Redbox for rentals and they're frequently out of blu-rays of the movies I want to watch.

So many times lately convenience is winning out for sure. 7 pm, raining, nothing on TV, kids want to watch something or maybe my wife and I are able to watch a R rated movie for a change. Sure is a LOT easier and MANY times more convenient to fire up the PS3 or Apple TV and pay the $5-$6 than it is to try and find something at a Redbox.

I've been impressed every time I've rented from Vudu.

Yeah you and 5 people. The reason streaming is popular because it's instantaneous. With the current speeds you would have to wait for a day or more, depending if there will be advances in in compression technics by then, or way faster download speeds then we have to day, and let's not forget data caps. 4k would only make sense on a physical format, in the near future and not even Sony paving the road for that.

Nonsense, there can be both streaming and disc ownership, I've been doing that for about a year, and very happy with that arrangement. Streaming is very good for TV shows, or catch things before it is released on disc, especially if I don't wanna buy it blind. Netflix has been slow to get new releases to me on BDs so I rent quiet a bit on Vudu or AIV for titles I just don't wanna wait on. YMMV.

Same here, for most of the time, Bourne Legacy was the only exception so far, it looked worse then some DVD's.

I'm not sure if or when real 4K will be available or even if I'm going to move to it. I would need a new projector as well as a set. A couple have mentioned the greed level of the studios and how they would love nothing more than to charge you each time you watch a movie, well Microsoft is trying it's best to help the studios. I don't know if this has been posted (couldn't find a search entry that returned it) but here's what they are looking at doing.

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/microsoft-patent-uses-kinect-to-detect-tv-audience-limit-content-2012115/

Aren't these blus already transferred from a 4k master like many blus already. There just labeling this way now with new box art. What a scam. It's like when DVD's were marketed as "all new HD transfer!"
Edited by Semp1 - 1/11/13 at 11:31am

The physical disc will eventual go the way of the video and cassette tape. Big computer companies like Apple is slowly encouraging others like sony pc line to go driveless, However the storage and ISP download restrictions will hamper ultra hd for a while yet with 1tb movies its not a reality atm. My eyes will now turn to the PS4, six years ago the PS3 brought Blu ray to the market, than gimmicked the 3D rage. Who knows the PS4 might go driveless like their computers. Besides with only 5 titles to choose from which are not really 4k i can't justify spending $20,000 on a tally or even Westinghouse absurd $300,000 price tag.
Edited by mr.marts - 1/10/13 at 8:05pm

Why not just say NO to 4k. Don't buy any 4k TV even if the Vizio's look good and are cheap. If the industry want's to go to the next step in TV technology, 3D and 4k should have been bundled together. Give 1080p/blu-ray some time to age. In about 2016 they can release a new super high disc format, 4k displays with true DCI specs (4096 x 2400, 12bit color) and 3D.
The industry seems to be full of idiots. Throwing technology at people at a rapid pace trying to increase sales is a bad idea. TV's are not like phones. People tend to hold on to there TV purchases a few years before they decide to upgrade to something 'better'.

The point I am trying to make is that we are most likely not going to have an ownership option or at least a tangible disc ownership option with 4K. I have no problems if people want to stream but if the physical disc market goes away consumers are relenquishing all control to the content and service providers.

Why is Apple doing that? Hmmm let's see.... oh that's right they have their own content distribution store. Apple has never embraced BD because they wanted to corner the HD market so if you wanted HD you had to get it through them. Thankfully BD was successful enough that Apple couldn't play that card. They are hoping to play that card again with 4K. And in reality unless you have an extremely large projection system and sit relatively close based on screen size, the 4K benefits are minimal.

You nailed it with the used market -- Sony has long been trying to eliminate the used video game market. They are so anti-consumer, that is why I wanted HD-DVD to win during the format wars.

While VUDU HDX looked very close to Blu ray quality on my 65 inch Plasma, it is much easier to pick out the difference on my 110 inch screen. I know projectors aren't what the average consumer has but I am buying more Blu Rays now then ever because I want the best experience possible in my HT room.

They need to change the color of 4K disc sleeves to some other color then blue. Maybe a silver or gold color.

I don't think Blu-ray is the loser you are making it out to be.

Sounds to me like someone has an axe to grind with Sony. I don't get why they should have left the HD disc to Toshiba part. You make it out as if Sony stomped on poor little Toshiba. Fact is that Blu-ray is more than just Sony. Toshiba decided to go it alone. Toshiba like Sony is just another large multinational corporation. They are in business for the same reason... profits.

I don't want to dig up all the points from the format war, but the fact is the right system won. The 50GB disc and higher bandwidth made lossless audio standard on the HD disc and it also allowed the format to grow giving us a Full HD 3D disc. Toshiba's system was too tied to the old DVD standard and it was pretty much maxed out when released.

As far as Red, have they signed up any real major content providers for content? I am sorry but most indie film are low budget and they aren't the type that cry out for 4K viewing.

Every company wants their proprietary system to become the standard, but it's why so many fail because it is hard to make it become the standard. DVD and Blu-ray were successful because it was developed across many companies so they all are getting some portion of the licensing revenue.

I know some of you have been thinking this but is a "disc" the only way to go. I mean it has it's limits it's been around a long time let's get away from the optical drive. What about other alternatives. Like a flash drive or stick with a reader. The content providers will probably not agree disc is old school we can do better come one engineers use your smarts to design a new format but stay away from optical. On one hand it 's probably cheaper to just make and compress the hell out of an image to make it fit . Either way please no optical disk. Let's move forward with something.

lol, maybe a gold cover and change the name from 4k to 24k.

I don't necessarily care if its optical or a solid state memory chip, but I want my films in my possession. I want the option of a pay-once unlimited views model. The day that goes away is the day I find another hobby to spend my money on. Go on studios take away the model that has been your cash cow since the DVD days. See how long I support you when you take away all my 'economical' options.

The real fact is that I have spent more money on buying discs that I have only watched once or twice. The studios need to realize there is a staunch group of people prefer to collect. And those are your loyal customers. For all this talk about streaming... you know what the most used streaming service is? That's right the $7.99 all you can view Netflix buffet. Why? It's cheap. A number of my coworkers use Netflix... Not one single one of them has used Vudu or iTunes for movie content.

So go ahead studios kill the collector market. You know the fans of film that are willing to spend $100s to $1000s a year on shiny discs. Yeah you can make it up at the discount buffet.

After 4K, the studios will likely have nothing more to sell to us. They already have nothing more to sell to us in audio after the advent of the loseless codec in Blu Ray. If they give us good 4K video in physical media, they are giving away their farm. So it's reasonable to think that there'll be no physical media for 4K content. That leaves streaming the only viable option.

But I think we are still not a the cloud everything stage with the current internet infrustructure. So despite what I wrote before, I believe there's gonna be one more go around with the physical media in 4K.