Sony announces successor to Blu-ray

I wasn't aware we needed one, but supposedly by the end of 2015 there will be some sort of optical device starting in the 300 gig range. I don't know what their plans are as for how they are going to introduce it. I mean a lot of people still use DVDs and with the next gen consoles are you telling me 100 gig Blu-ray discs are not enough? Most games companies only use a fraction of what Blu-ray can offer now. I personally don't see a need for a successor so soon. This is all I know and is all they said.

I read a couple articles about this. It seems that it may be possible the PS4 (and probably the Xbox One) will be or could be made to read these discs. While these discs certainly could be useful for gaming, they're probably going to cost too much per disc to make it financially viable, at least in the beginning. Say a game takes up 100 gb of data. It would probably be cheaper to put the game onto two or even three 50gb BluRay's than a single 300gb. This is simply based on the historical cost of new storage mediums. Look at how expensive blank BluRay discs were in the beginning compared to dvd-r's. I can see more of a use for these in the professional world.

As far as storage for 4k movies go, I guess so. You know Sony is pushing it. Now, I've been a techy guy for a long time. Got my home theater and all that crap. But I'm done. 2k BluRay's look great. I have a decent collection of BluRay's and I'm not buying these movies again. There's been TONS of discussion and argument over 720p vs. 1080p (and now) vs. 4k. Most people agree that with a moving image it mostly depends on screen size. I remember that test Pioneer did years ago with their 720p plasma vs. other manufacturer's 1080p lcd's. They had several home theater media enthusiasts in a room with a line of 50" flat panels. One was a 720p Pioneer Plasma (RIP) and the others were 1080p lcd's made by numerous other companies. Onviously, all the logos were covered up. They played media on them and asked which one looked the best. The answers were either the Pioneer or no one could tell. Bottom line was, at that screen size, it was very difficult to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. How much bigger of a TV does the average house need to tell the difference between 2k and 4k? Geeze, most people don't even care. My girlfriend can't even tell the difference between DVD and BluRay.

I think when it comes to double, triple, etc. dipping, movie studios are scared. They've made millions off of getting people to rebuy the same movie on a new format. However, we've finally come to a point where, with BluRay, the home version looks just as good, if not better (many catalog titles) than it did in the theater. Sony and Panny can do all the fancy marketing they want but they're not selling this guy a new optical format for film. I'm done.

I already stopped upgrading. After going from VHS to LD to DVD, I stopped. Oh sure, the new stuff I buy is BD, but I'm done rebuying. 99% of my library is DVD. Heck, I don't even pay Netflix that extra buck to rent BD.

I love BluRay, I probably would have loved HD-DVD. Honestly, i have a 720p plasma and unless I tell someone it's 720p, I've never had anyone tell me it didn't look good. Plasma has some advantages over LCD anyway, although LDC technology is looking better and better, moving images get that blur and artifact effect that I never see on my plasma.

The only time I actually notice the difference is in TPA, where I actually have to focus in on really really small details, like the text on lamp inlays. 1080p does have an advantage in that regard, and I'm sure 4k would also have a further advantage in displaying microscopic text.

I have a 50" display and sit between 12-14 feet away from it. I'm pretty sure it was said that at 2.5 times the width of the display as a viewing distance, there is no visual difference between 720p and 1080p.

Where I do see a difference however would be at the Theater. Our local "IMAX" which is just a retrofitted theater, so it's not the 75mm film but the paired 4k projectors. I have to say, it's beautiful. I mean beautiful. 1080p stretched out to massive size when you are sitting relatively close is still nice i guess but at 8k, I think it would almost qualify for Apple's "Retina" standards. Purely off the cuff though, as I don't feel like doing calculations or finding out how big our "IMAX" screen is.

I'll be honest, I love BD for old film conversions as fild didn't have a "resolution" per se the way we think about it now (film grain size was the limit), but my copy of T2 on BD looks phenominal. But re-releases of mid-2000s movies aren't much better than up-scaled DVDs.

Have to say, movies shot in super-high resolutions look fantastic though.

Honest, I'm skipping the 4k train, displays as it is cost as much as a nice AFM machine. I might upgrade when 8K comes along, assuming that my eyes haven't deteriorated past the point of being able to tell DVD and BD apart by that point.

I called good riddance when VHS was finally abandoned. I think DVD was the greatest thing to happen to home cinema ever. BD has a great picture, but I'm still happy watching DVDs, especially when a movie is the fraction of the price still of a BD.

I'm really just not that interested in a format war. How about releasing a 32-bit common audio format so that digital sound will finally have a wider frequency reproduction range than vinyl records? Even 24-bit DVD quality and uncompressed 24-bit BD quality falls short there.

Samsung rolled out 77 units of Ultra HD this year....base price near 38k + tax. The next console round we may need PC monitors because there's no way Utlra HD will be viable for normal folks for at least a decade. Sony was also referring to game storage for this new optical system. I believe the big N's propiertary storage is HD-DVD, They just bought out the rights to a defunct format. I too still use DVDs. Until the price is completely equal I am not paying 5 bucks more to see every freckle on a person' face.

4k higher resolution means more data right? Currently no 4k output so this should help.

and just when blu-rays were starting to be affordable too. never actually got one myself yet. they should just eliminate discs all together, to easy to scratch and ruin.

superballs said:

I'm really just not that interested in a format war. How about releasing a 32-bit common audio format so that digital sound will finally have a wider frequency reproduction range than vinyl records? Even 24-bit DVD quality and uncompressed 24-bit BD quality falls short there.

Click to expand...

The problem with increasing the bit depth (8, 16, 24 bit) is the size that the digital audio will become.
As it stands 90 minutes of 24 bit, 48,000 Hz uncompressed 8 channel digital audio (7.1) is ~3955.078 megabytes. You can check your own conversions with settings here

You can pull some actual numbers from Blue Ray Discs for a comparison: Here's Avatar:
Codec: DTS-HD Master Audio Language: English Bit Rate: 4146 kbps Description: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4146 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit) Size: 5,027,442,684 bytes

Staying at 24 bit, and utilizing better DSP technologies, like getting away from Dolby and utilizing more DTS would be an increase in sound quality through discrete audio channels for one thing. There could also be commercial consumer changes by not brickwall limiting everything and allowing for dynamic floor, but too many engineers go crazy and this leads to ear splitting explosion/gunshots and conversations that cannot be heard unless the system is loud enough to rock the neighbours. There is lots of room, but it's not being well applied, IMO.

I was actually talking more along the lines of audio for music, as in a replacement for CDs. Something for the audiophile to grasp onto more or less.

Albums rarely make it beyond 45 minutes as it is. A dual layer DVD could handle the space at that point. But if they wanted to, they could go with a BD format audio disk as it stands now.