All you need to know about 4K Blu-ray players, discs and the rest 

Written by Published | Rapallo AV Team

While Ultra-HD and 4K gets us all pretty excited, it probably also gets your head spinning with all the audio-visual lingo and new technology that goes with it.  

You sure are not alone in this frustration. Who’s got the time to keep up with everything the audiovisual world comes up with? We know first hand that you have a lot of questions around the Ultra-HD changes that may or may not happen. As we talk to you on a daily basis, we know you are wondering about: How will HDMI 2.0a, HDCP 2.2 and Ultra HD Blu-ray change things? What bandwidth do I need? And how do you implement all this Ultra HD technology?

 

Are you shaking your head yet?

 

In this age of connectivity, what works today may not work tomorrow or next year. Early Ultra-HD was a little confusing, because it came without source devices or content and there was even some uncertainty about what to call it.

Naming convention seems to have settled now with Ultra-HD (or UHD for short. Yes, it is the same thing!), and both content and Ultra HD Blu-ray are finally making their first appearances.

 

So to answer the most burning question first: what is Ultra HD Blu-ray, how and when can you get it?

Allow us to provide some answers…

 

After a preliminary spec in 2015, the Blu-ray Disc Association (20th Century Fox, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group and Warner Bros. are all members of the Blu-ray Disc Association) has now made the Ultra HD Blu-ray spec official, along with the name and the logo.

This is the short and the long of it:

 

  • 3,840 x 2,160 pixel resolution, versus the 1,920 x 1,080 pixels delivered by most current Blu-ray discs
  • High dynamic range (HDR). HDR simply means that the quality of your pixels is significantly improved resulting in considerable higher brightness.
  • Higher frame rates of up to 60 frames a second. Movies are currently shot in 24 frames a second.
  • HDR pictures can be delivered in one of two ways: either using the BDA-developed “BD HDR” section of the new specification, or via compatible HDR formats such as Dolby Vision.
  • Object based immersive sound: think ATMOS, DTSX and Auro 3D
  • Digital Bridge which will allow you to copy Ultra HD Blu-ray content to an external hard disk drive and to portable devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The spec also mandates that all Ultra HD Blu-ray players will be able to play legacy Blu-ray discs.
  • Video will be encoded under the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.
  • A wide colour gamut :10-bit colour depth and Rec. 2020 colour space.
  • NO Ultra HD 3D provision is included in the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification and there are no plans for it to be added at a later stage.

To get started, you will need a new Ultra HD Blu-ray player to play Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. While both Samsung and Panasonic were set to release their first Ultra HD Blu-ray player in 2015, this didn’t happen until now. The Samsung is already available but currently has waiting lists, the more expensive Panasonic Ultra HD Blu-ray player will be available later this year as will be the Philips Ultra HD Blu-ray. There are rumours floating when it comes to other brands, but nothing seems to be set in concrete at this stage.

 

The Panasonic DMP-UB900 is THX certified and will support 4K video on-demand services at up to 60fps and contains support for HDR. It’ll also happily accept hi-res audio files and is fully networked so content can be streamed from NAS drives and media servers. First reviews of the Panasonic are excellent, which makes us rather excited at Rapallo.

 

First Ultra HD Blu-ray discs are now also becoming available with titles like ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, ‘The Martian’ ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’, ‘Exodus’, ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, ‘The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials’ ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘San Andreas’.

 

While Netflix is the word that is currently dropped in just about any conversation, many amongst you will be happy to hear that the BDA seem to think that Ultra HD Blu-ray discs will deliver better performance than 4K streaming services. Ron Martin, VP of Panasonic’s Hollywood Lab and a crucial player in the development of Ultra HD Blu-ray, told What Hi-Fi?: “(A disc format) is the only repeatable, reliable way to do it. Streaming has certain advantages but many disadvantages.” But I guess that is a different discussion.

 

Important to know is that you will be able to play your existing Blu-ray discs on your new Ultra HD Blu-ray player. Obviously, Ultra HD Blu-ray discs won’t play on old players so if this Ultra HD technology persists you will have to upgrade to an Ultra HD player. Unfortunately, there is little chance of upgrading your existing Blu-ray player.

 

As for display: your 4K TV won’t need to have the HEVC codec mentioned in the above specs. The players will be able to work out what your TV is capable of and downscale the disc’s content accordingly. However, you will want a TV capable of displaying HDR as the effect is pretty ‘wow’.

 

Because cabling can be fairly hard to change after initial installation, it is important to get this right while you can.

You will be pleased to know that there is no harm in using HDMI 2.0a while you haven’t made the jump to to Ultra HD yet as it also won’t make any of your older electronics obsolete. HDMI 2.0a is backward compatible with older HDMI versions, so you’ll be able to connect your old Blu-ray player and/or AV receiver to a brand new HDMI 2.0a-equipped 4K Ultra HD TV with absolutely no problem.

 

However, the primary and pretty important reason for the switch to HDMI 2.0a with the future in mind is that 4K Ultra HD televisions require much more bandwidth to realize their full potential (Think at least 9Gbps, and if possible 18 Gbps). Add the requirements of object based immersive sound to the equation and there is no way around HDMI 2.0a for Ultra HD unless you want to kick yourself in the future for considering it ‘not worth it’ right now.

 

And last but note least, what about existing equipment? Introducing HDCP2.2.

HDCP 2.2 is the latest evolution of copy protection for 4K Ultra HD. It’s designed to create a secure connection between a source and a display. This is so you can’t take the output from a source (a Blu-ray player, say) and plug it into some kind of recorder, to make a copy of the content.

This is fair enough, but it is also potentially (depending on how HDCP2.2 gets implemented by movie studios) a bit of a fun spoiler. Worse case scenario is that you will have to start opening your wallet because it won’t work on anything but new HDCP 2.2 hardware. Even previously purchased early days 4K gear might not support it.  Again, there is no firmware update option available.

 

Knowing that, it’s obviously a good idea to ensure that any active components you are currently purchasing should support HDCP2.2 when you have future proofing for Ultra HD in mind (even if you are not going down the Ultra HD lane just yet; it’s good to know that your current set up will work fine on it). This includes receivers and sources in general, sound bars and displays.

 

So, what are we thinking? Ultra HD Blu-ray has the potential to be a really key moment in AV history. From what we can tell, its combination of 4x HD detail levels, HDR and wide colour gamut capabilities it revolutionizes picture quality to an extent that feels even greater in magnitude than the insanely popular step up from VHS to DVD.

The question is whether it will be treated by the film studios as a mass market technology or a niche, enthusiasts-only one?

Obviously the proof will be in the pudding, but we think it is a good idea to start making the ‘smart Ultra HD future proofing’ decisions we mentioned before.