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4K blu-ray player vs. 4k up-scaling blu ray player

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strantor

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I recently got a Vizio 65" 4K TV (Best Buy, last year's floor model, $850) and have yet to watch any 4K content on it. The TV purchase was a quantum leap for me. I upgraded from a 32" 720P TV and a DVD player. I don't own a blu-ray player.

I went back to Best Buy today thinking I'd pick up a blu-ray player and a 4k blu-ray movie for tonight's entertainment. I've seen blu-ray players on sale for <$60. I picked the blu-ray movie first, making sure to get one that said "mastered in 4K." Then I went to the blu-ray players and immediately noticed that not all blu-ray players claim to be 4K-capable. The **broken link removed**which claimed 4K capability was $400.

They had less expensive ones with the 4K logo on them, but they all said "4K upscaling." (**broken link removed** for example, $109). When I google this upscaling thing, I find a bunch of explanations about how a TV or a blu-ray player will take a non-4k video and blow it up to fit a 4k screen. I get that; it's self explanatory, and a waste of time reading it.

But what I don't understand is why a blu-ray player capable of upscaling a non-4k video to 4k resolution, is not capable of reading a blu-ray movie whose native resolution is actually 4K? It seems to me that simply reading a 4k native format would be a much easier feat, requiring much less video processing grunt work. Or am I misunderstanding something?

What would happen if I put a 4k blu-ray into one of these upscaling players? Would it read a lower resolution (ex: 1080p) file which is already stored on the disk separate from the 4k file, and then upscale that to 4k? Or would it read the 4K file, downscale 4k to 1080p, and then upscale back to 4k? Would it simply not play at all? Do I really need to pay $400 to make use of my TV's 4k capability?
 
It is called first adopter's cost.

Simply put, manufacturers want to recoup its investment on a new technology, before that technology becomes a simple commodity.
I can still remember when VHS recorders were over US$1000, and that was in pre-inflation, pre-bank bailout, pre-quantitative-easying, high purchasing-power dollars.

My advice? You have already spent $850 on a gorgeous TV. If you want to enjoy its full capabilities now, and not one year from now, bite the bullet and spend the $300 differential.
Otherwise, just wait it out, because as sure as the sun rises every day, the price of 4K-native players will come down.
Most likely on a Black Friday or the Christmas Holidays.
 
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I'm still doing my own research in parallel with this thread. I haven't found my answer, but I did learn that the "mastered in 4K" blu ray disk I was going to buy, isn't 4k at all. It's the same resolution as an ordinary blu-ray, just with a different color encoding and some other gimmicky details. Apparently actual 4k blu-rays in actual 4k resolution are relatively brand new. They come in a black case and look like this:

145676_large.jpg


I don't recall seeing any disks like this at Best Buy. They were all blue case. Maybe I missed them because I wasn't looking for them.
 
It is called first adopter's cost [...] just wait it out, because as sure as the sun rises every day, the price of 4K-native players will come down.

. Apparently actual 4k blu-rays in actual 4k resolution are relatively brand new.

Holy crap! I didn't realize just how brand new 4K blu-rays were:
As of April 11, 2016 you can officially buy 12 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray titles from online and high-street stores. Among the launch titles are Kingsman, The Lego Movie, Life of Pi, and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Read more at https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/what-is-ultra-hd-blu-ray#WXSRMpJdUZO7dKSv.99

So I just happened to jump on the 4k bandwagon right in time for the birth of 4k disks. I had no idea! I will wait a while for the tech to mature and the prices to fall.

I thought you 4k TV owners have been watching 4k content, readily available on blu-ray all along. So now I wonder, what have you guys been watching?


EDIT: no wonder I had trouble finding my answer on google. All the articles I was reading were obsolete. They were written before any 4K blu-ray existed.
 
now I wonder, what have you guys been watching?

Well I just watched what was, to the best of my knowledge, a 4k movie on my new TV. The TV has an Amazon App through which I logged in my amazon account and found two handfuls of 4k movies available for streaming. I purchased one and was given a warning, something like "If your TV does not support 4k or your bandwidth is insufficient, we may decrease resolution to avoid buffering."

I got the warning before I completed the purchase and I almost cancelled because of it. It was $25, and if it would only stream at 1080p because of bandwidth (and not tell me it was doing so), then I could rent the same movie for much less. But I decided to go for it, and I was happy with the quality. I'm not sure it was really 4k but I'm sure it was 10x better picture than any other movie I've watched on any other TV. I really just want to watch one movie in what I'm assured is 4k, to see if there is any real and lasting awesomeness to it. You can marvel at the very clear difference in the store, with the TVs side-by-side looping the same 2 minute demo clip over and over, but in your own home, watching shows and movies from start to finish, I wonder how long it takes to become unspecial. (I wonder how long it would take before I kick myself for dropping $400 on player for movies that I don't own yet).
 
What can I add?
For starters, without early adopters like yourself, consumer electronics technology would be frozen!
So the late adopters like myself should sincerely thank you.

Additionally, for a period of time you'll have bragging rights. That is awesome.
 
But what I don't understand is why a blu-ray player capable of upscaling a non-4k video to 4k resolution, is not capable of reading a blu-ray movie whose native resolution is actually 4K? It seems to me that simply reading a 4k native format would be a much easier feat, requiring much less video processing grunt work. Or am I misunderstanding something?

What would happen if I put a 4k blu-ray into one of these upscaling players? Would it read a lower resolution (ex: 1080p) file which is already stored on the disk separate from the 4k file, and then upscale that to 4k? Or would it read the 4K file, downscale 4k to 1080p, and then upscale back to 4k? Would it simply not play at all? Do I really need to pay $400 to make use of my TV's 4k capability?

It's really VERY simple - it won't play at all!.

A BD disc can't store enough data for a 4K film, so 4K BD's are totally new technology, requiring a completely different player to read them - just as a DVD player can't read BD discs, or a CD player can't read DVD's (or BD's). I'm presuming, just as with all the other disc technology changes, it requires a completely different laser (thinner beam) to read the disc.

The 'mistake', which causes the confusion, was calling them 'BluRay' at all.
 
It's really VERY simple - it won't play at all!.

A BD disc can't store enough data for a 4K film, so 4K BD's are totally new technology, requiring a completely different player to read them - just as a DVD player can't read BD discs, or a CD player can't read DVD's (or BD's). I'm presuming, just as with all the other disc technology changes, it requires a completely different laser (thinner beam) to read the disc.

The 'mistake', which causes the confusion, was calling them 'BluRay' at all.

I agree. They should never have called the disks Blu-ray. But I shared fault by assuming that people with 4k TVs have been watching 4k content on Blu-ray since 2013 when I saw the first 4k tv for sale.

I wonder if and how long before the new disks (blank, writable) and disk burners become available for purchase. That could be handy. I read that a 4k movie can be over 100gb. A 100gb disk could be cool. But with the low cost of high capacity flash drives there might not be a market to make it happen.

Actually, I'm surprised the heads behind 4k didn't choose flash drives for the new movie media. Flash drives would have required no development of new disk technology, would have been more robust than a scratchable disk, would have been more reliable requiring no moving parts, would have enabled PC users to start watching 4k movies immediately, and would have cost less in packaging.

Edit: further, most new TVs have a USB port. It's conceivable that a 4k movie on usb flash drive could be watched without having to purchase any player at all... I guess I just answered my own question "why they didn't choose flash"
 
Actually, I'm surprised the heads behind 4k didn't choose flash drives for the new movie media.

I'm not, it's FAR too expensive, and FAR too easily pirated.

When you buy a film, you're buying the 'content', the actual hardware cost is fairly close to nothing - using FLASH drives would make the hardware cost a massive percentage of the cost of the product.
 
I'm not, it's FAR too expensive, and FAR too easily pirated.

When you buy a film, you're buying the 'content', the actual hardware cost is fairly close to nothing - using FLASH drives would make the hardware cost a massive percentage of the cost of the product.
On price, point to taken. I thought flash drive prices had fallen further than they have.

On security, I don't know the details but I know there are ways to secure them. In fact, some of the software suites I've used, use a thumb drive AS the security device. For example Rockwell (Allen Bradley) $17k PLCS programming suite uses a thumb drive containing a license guarded by something called HASP.
 
[QUOTE="strantor, post: 1262568, member: 173016"[
On security, I don't know the details but I know there are ways to secure them. In fact, some of the software suites I've used, use a thumb drive AS the security device. For example Rockwell (Allen Bradley) $17k PLCS programming suite uses a thumb drive containing a license guarded by something called HASP.[/QUOTE]

But again, you're greatly increasing the cost of the distribution - discs are relatively 'secure' and cost almost nothing to stamp.
 
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