Computers & Electronics

Is 4K UHD bluray already a failed format?

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  • May 29th, 2017 11:58 am
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Mar 23, 2009
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I just bought a UHD Blu-ray player for my 1080p projector, a Sony VPL-HW45ES, specifically to get access to Dolby Atmos on releases that only include it on the UHD release. I wasn't originally planning on doing this, but there was a big sale at Best Buy on the Philips BDP7501 so I couldn't resist, as the price dropped to $199.99. Initial MSRP was $549.99 and recent regular pricing has been $299.99 or higher.

However, there is a problem, which is that the HDR to SDR conversion doesn't always give you the image that you'd normally expect to get, so that playing the native 1080p Blu-ray might actually be superior in many cases. The players do a best estimate of what the SDR should be when converting from HDR but it's just not the same as properly encoded SDR. With my copy of Logan, the 1080p Blu-ray looks damn near perfect in terms of colour balance. OTOH, when playing the Logan UHD disc through the system, the image looks dim and a bit washed out, and it also tilts to a green hue. I have to adjust the settings to compensate.

I'm told this player shares much of the innards of the higher end Panasonic DMPUB900, and both are claimed to usually have superior HDR --> SDR conversion than the Samsung UBD-K8500 player in many instances. However, because the playback settings are global, if I change the settings for a UHD disc, they affect playback of 1080p discs. Furthermore, I suspect the SDR conversion results will vary from UHD disc to UHD disc.

The other annoying part of this is that I've since learned that much of the authoring software out there has an option to provide metadata that tells the player how to properly convert UHD HDR to SDR. However, this is not part of the UHD Blu-ray spec, and therefore that metadata is not included on UHD Blu-ray titles so we get this mess. I'm also told that ironically, YouTube 4K can contain this metadata and provide proper SDR to displays without HDR support, something that UHD Blu-ray cannot.

I was tempted to just return the player and to stop buying all UHD discs, even if they have exclusive Dolby Atmos. In fact, that's what I did for Deadpool. That disc was a "maybe get" for me and not a must buy, but when I found out only the UHD disc had Dolby Atmos, I just decided to pass on both the UHD and the Blu-ray and purchased neither.

However, I think I might just keep it as a second Blu-ray player given how cheap I got it for. Although it plays 1080p BDs just fine, the one other major issue it has is that it won't stream Netflix at any resolution. Because it sees the display does not support HDCP 2.2, the app simply refuses to launch. I can't even stream 1080p Netflix. So, because of this and because my Samsung BDJ-6300 Blu-ray player has a faster and somewhat nicer UI, I would keep that in the system too. (I also have other devices that can stream Netflix, including in that same system, but the Samsung player provides the best Netflix quality. For some reason the Netflix out of my Bell 4K TV receiver is soft, and it's annoying to use because the UI is slow.)

One important point to note here though is that this SDR conversion issue does NOT just apply to UHD 2160p to HD 1080p conversion. This also applies to 4K playback on 4K TVs that do not have HDR support. On those systems there must be HDR to SDR conversion too. You'll still get the full UHD resolution, but you'll still run into the SDR conversion problems. This is important because most 4K TVs in the wild so far do not support HDR, and even in 2017, lots of non-HDR 4K TVs are still being released.

tl;dr:

I have a 1080p projector and UHD Blu-ray player. I got the UHD player because it was less than $200, and because some releases have Dolby Atmos only on the UHD disc.
Player is good for 1080p Blu-ray discs, but unfortunately, Dolby Atmos is missing on some of these.
Player, despite being a well-rated one, sometimes might having problems converting the HDR info to SDR. This is a problem on both 1080p systems and many 4K systems. No 1080p systems support HDR from UHD Blu-ray, and many 4K systems don't support HDR either.

How much this will hurt UHD BR adoption I don't know, but it certainly can't help, and UHD BR adoption is already slow.

EyeGasm wrote: Estimates suggest 60-80% off new tvs sold this year and next will be 4K TV.
Some hold old to old TVs for a long time.
What that doesn't tell you though is that a large proportion of those 4K TVs do NOT support HDR. This is significant. See above.
BernardRyder wrote: Current gen consoles are close to the tipping point of affordability for the everyman. Having a new TV purchase to compliment the console's abilities is nothing to sneeze at when it comes to moving product. The fact that the current gen can barely "faux 4K" it says a lot for the lack of interest in 4K. Now couple that with the lack of 4K TV channels! People will eventually be forced to buy them, yes, but as you said why bother until there's a very good reason to do so? Consoles would definitely push more sales, especially in light of the lack of (almost) any 4K content out there.
Yes, consoles price-wise are getting closer to the tipping point of affordability, but they're not quite there yet IMO, as they usually are still well above $300 even on sale (ie. Xbox One S). But even below $300 isn't good enough IMO. It would preferably be under $200.

Furthermore, consoles have their own issues, such as size, fan noise, UI, and what not. Plus the specific console in question has various playback issues for UHD.

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