“The roadmap says we have the capability to do that — to increment to 66GB or maybe 100GB. those things are under study,”
VP of Panasonic’s Hollywood lab Ron Martin and member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, speaking on the future of the 4K Blu Ray Discs
What’s a UHDTV (Ultra High Definition Television) without content, you may ask? A really expensive picture frame!
Or in the case of the Curved U9000 Series of UHDTV which I had the chance to see and experience as I’ve chronicled in Samsung unveils their First Curved Ultra High Definition TV, the U9000 Series at Mona Visitors Lodge, a really large curved picture frame.
Fortunately the Blu-Ray Disc Association has come our rescue with UHDTV or 4K Blu-Ray Discs, seeing as 4K, which has resolutions as high as 4 times 1080p or , 3,820 x 2,160 based on the standard, is coming in the next 10 years. They made this glorious announcement at the IFA Electronics Show in Berlin, Germany and in explaining it the enthusiastic crowds during their presentation, they set Summer of 2015 as the date they’d debut this technology.
Streaming currently appears to be the main contender with read content from sources such as Netflix with shows such as House of Cards and Breaking Bad remastered in 4K along with a few other films. That content hasn’t reached critical mass as yet and may increased based on the type of shows Netflix perceived the bootlegging crowd likes the most as pointed out in Netflix uses Torrenting Trends to pick popular Content.
Sony already has around 200 4K titles, mainly limited to it line of UHDTV. That means there is a huge horde of content yet to be filled but content providers from the MPAA (Motion Picture Artiste Association) as well as Cable Channels and Local and Regional Television stations in the United States of America.
Blu-Ray Disc Association rally the Content Providers – 4K Blu-Ray Disc Train leaving by 2015
So what the Blu-Ray Disc Association has been doing is rallying the support of some movie studios, like Disney and Sony, to support their proposed standard for 4K Blu-Ray Discs. This new compression standard will consist of both new hardware an new software, meaning that if you want to watch a 4K Blu-Ray Discs, consider making more space in your den for another shiny new device. Both have to be ready in order for 4K Blu-Ray Discs to be a success with the consumers.
And the advantages of 4K Blu-Ray Discs are clear.
Because it’s a hard-copy of the movie and not a stream, it’s not susceptible to artifacts, poor colour saturation and black levels as would a Stream over the Internet. Plus you Broadband Internet has to be up to snuff to even begin to handle 4K movies, many of which will play at compressed using HVEC, run at 60 frames per second with refresh rates as high as 120 Hz and file sizes as high as 50GB to 100GB.
You’d basically need to have either AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS or Google Fiber service, which depending on where you live in the United States of America, may or may not be available.
Even the very UHDTV according to today’s standards may not even be able to handle the colour range of these planned 4K Blu-Ray Discs and may themselves require an upgrade, which is the case of Samsung’s Curved U9000 Series of UHDTV is as easy as changing the Samsung One Connect Box.
4K Blu-Ray Disc – Spinning Plastic Discs outdated but Quartz may be Hip to be Square
Not sure what these Discs will look like, as they may be single-sided Multiple layered discs. but one thing is for sure; they may no long be circular in shape at all, like the Blu-Rays of old spun rapidly inside Blu-Ray players like an old phonograph or even the more modern Blu-Ray counterpart.
They may even be in the form of a SSD (Solid State Drives), a mechanically spinning disc is outdated in today’s emergent Technology World of 4TB SSD Hard-Dries and 128GB SD Card and would basically be like using a phonograph all over again. Also, the discs have to make to last and not be susceptible to aging, scratching or physical damage.
What I envision is the use of flat square shaped discs instead of round ones that store the data electronically in a SSD or even use some form of optical storage where the data is scored into Quartz Glass using Nano Lasers and is capable of holding as much as 360TB of Data. This based on the research of Hitachi back in 2012 University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Center and Eindhoven’s University of Technology led by Dr. Jingyu Zhang as recently as 2013.
And when will this all be coming to the Caribbean? When we eventually get FTTH (Fiber To the House) which is increasingly looking possible by 2015.
This based on September 2014 News relating to US$250 million being invested in Jamaica by CWC (Cable and Wireless Communications) as part of a US$1 billion Caribbean wide infrastructure upgrade to boost their infrastructure as I’d explained in Digicel Cable and Submarine Fiber Optic Acquisitions point to 4G LTE based Caribbean Streaming TV.
Then there is also Digicel’s recent completed acquisition of a Caribbean-Wide Fiber Optic Network, also recent news in September 2014. All chronicled and projected in my article Digicel Cable and Submarine Fiber Optic Acquisitions point to 4G LTE based Caribbean Streaming TV.
Until Fiber optic Broadband becomes more commonplace, the future of UHDTV Content may actually be set in Quartz!