As a movie buff, a huge movie buff and a massive home theater geek – geek enough to choose the wrong side in the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray war, my logic is sound to this day. I insist – I’m a little obsessed with getting the best possible quality out of my movies.
For the majority of us at home today, it’s 4K Blu-ray. His guide to the best 4K Blu-ray players actually garners the most interest from readers, despite the fact that the best streaming services have taken over as the norm for so many people. One of the articles.
So I loved reading this story from a colleague at TechRadar Pro about the successor format to Blu-ray, which is already looking at being able to store 1TB on a single disc, and I’m hoping that by the end of the decade the disc will be We’re hoping to hit 10 TB per. What’s really different?
(Before we go any further, note that Folio Photonics, the company creating this new disk format, has no interest in using it for anything other than large enterprise data storage. Expectations.)
What excites me about the new disk format is that it’s not only huge, it’s also very fast. The company suggests that read speeds in excess of 300MB/s can be expected.
That is many It exceeds the maximum bitrate of a 4K Blu-ray video of about 16MB/s. So what do we do with the extra data?
forget 8k
The obvious answer might be “higher resolution” but that’s not what I’m interested in. Eventually all TVs may be 8K.Go back to the old movies again Soon, even by capturing film.
Depending on how you want to “measure”, 35mm film is generally thought to be able to offer resolutions between 4K and 6K when digitized, so it’s a good idea to bring the world’s movie library to 8K. There is no point in trying to convert.
That doubles for modern movies shot digitally. very Even something like the very expensive Avengers: Endgame rarely uses an 8K camera. Also, visual effects are not created in his 8K either. So even if the footage is high enough resolution, everything else in the frame is not.
The best 8K TVs have a place, but 8K won’t become the standard as easily as 4K.
No, you don’t need more pixels for a more advanced home viewing experience. Need better pixels.
Theater quality at home…or more?
The videos we watch at home are compressed and easily available via Blu-ray, broadcast, or Netflix. Uncompressed video is very very Due to its large size, it has to compromise on color depth, dynamic range and detail to deliver in a package suitable for the average wallet and internet connection.
Increasing the bitrate (or data rate) of the video reduces the amount of compression applied to each frame, thus making up for some of the lost parts. 4K.
You said that 4K Blu-ray has a bitrate of 16MB/s, but do you know the bitrate of digital cinema projection? About 31MB/s. With twice as much information per frame, you can get such rich contrast and realistic colors from your cinematic digital source.
But extra data takes up even more space. A 130 minute movie (like most superhero movies today, for whatever reason) can easily hit 250GB. We haven’t mentioned the high-quality Dolby Atmos soundtrack.
Current 4K Blu-ray technology can’t keep up with it, but next-generation disc formats may. I mentioned a disk size of 1TB and a data rate of about 300MB/s above, which is 10 times his for cinema quality.
so can we go Better from the theater? When scanning and capturing 35mm film, the exact data rate depends on the method, but BlackMagic’s Cintel Scanner for film (opens in new tab) (A truly beautiful object if you’ve never seen it before) captures information at around 300MB/s. Some other methods are similar to 200MB/s.
In any case, there are more potential Better than the image quality you get from the files that digital cinema uses. We were able to double the data per frame compared to the theatrical version. Heck, why not triple it!
What results do you expect to see from this? Again, it lies in the depth of the dynamic range and the naturalism of the colors in the image. Each frame has more shades from light to dark. to fit in individual color shades (even the natural color variations you get when the light hits the object), making it closer to what the eye sees.
Of course, whether cinema chains are allowed to release formats “better than the silver screen” without rebelling is another matter. (The answer is no.)
Does this require a new disk?
One of the reasons I’m so excited about this new format is the scope it provides for expansion. road Exceeding current video limits. But taking a step away from my fanatical desire for “better-than-theatrical” quality and setting the goal of “as good as theatrical” as a target for home viewing, the new disc format isn’t really Maybe absolutely necessary.
One reason is a new compression method called H.266 or VVC (Versatile Video Coding). This is the successor to the H.265 compression currently used in 4K Blu-rays and seems to offer the same level of (subjective) image quality, but requires about half the data.
So if a movie-quality file is about twice as much data as a 4K Blu-ray today, and this technology can cut the data rate in half, you can fit them in a 4K Blu-ray in the future, right? I don’t know if it will work this well in practice, but the question is whether enough people are actually interested in the new disc format to make the development work worthwhile, In theory it’s perfect.
The bigger question is, is this simply the job for the Internet of the future?Blu-ray’s 16MB/s data speed is actually about the same as the average Internet speed in the United States (which study to believe? slightly up or down). In the UK it’s around 7.5MB/s. It’s not enough to stream a video live, but if the movie is available and your streaming device has storage, you can download the movie and watch it in advance in theater quality.
If that sounds like an empty pie, know that in fact we’re almost there already. (opens in new tab) is a system that gives your home a huge storage device so you can download movies in better than 4K Blu-ray quality. Kaleidescape says we have about 30-35% more data, so not twice as much, but enough to make a difference.
But you’ll have to pay thousands of dollars just for the Kaleidescape player, not including storage. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one of his best 4K projectors on an affordable disc and achieve that quality, or download it to a cheap streaming device with an external drive with enough space? ?
we can dream Yes, dream about optical disc technology. what?
