The content on a Blu-ray disk is compressed - just not as much as iTunes or other services. An uncompressed HD 1080p video file (e.g. 2 hours worth of content) could be over 1TB.
Thanks. I stand corrected.
The point I was trying to make was that, so-called 1080p movies on iTunes are already compressed to almost a 10th of the blu-ray size. So there obviously would be some additional compression if 4K becomes available for streaming (when compared to the theoretical 4K disc), which would negate all the space/ bandwidth constraints that @jameskatt2 mentioned. @herbapou's post is a lot clearer though.
When I stream Netflix 4K it averages 19Mbps, which is about 9GB per hour. I'd be okay with only having 50 hours of recorded video at a time.
While the main point of the Apple TV is probably getting HomeKit into as many homes as possible before Christmas, boasting about bringing streaming 4K into the mainstream seems to me might be a hugely important differentiator over Roku or Chromecast, and 4K TVs are so cheap now that the only reason not to buy one (and rotate your 3 year old 1080p to the kids room) is that it's unfortunate that we have to buy new TVs more often than once a decade!
Even now, if I copy a Blu-ray uncompressed to my hard drive, it is 30-40 GB, but the same movie on iTunes would be about 4-5 GB for the same 1080p definition.
1080p definition? What's that?
Look, I like iTunes for some content just fine - but implying a movie off of iTunes is the same as a BlueRay is patently absurd.
Yes you can compress stuff, but eventually you are throwing away content/quality to get more and more compression. If you are going to compress the crap out of 4k to get it near todays HD then why bother with 4k? Just to check the 4k box off? How stupid.
To increase realism (if that is the goal), then the thing that matters is a decent resolution (2K Is acceptable), but more important is the frame rate. When you hit 60 FPS that seems to be a sweet spot, according to Doug Trumbell.
Frame rate? Movies in theaters are 24fps!!
We aren't talking video games. Ugh. Right now the worst factor for video quality is contrast (or the utter lack of) and shitty black levels - and that's due to LCDs dominating
look at how stingy Apple has been historically wtih things like iPad RAM. Apple seldom over provisions their hardware. They'd rather you come back in 2 years and buy new hardware from them. Non-upgradable hardware turns into more profit for Apple when it comes time to upgrade.
I suppose one could buy into the forced upgrade consipricy. Or acknowledge the far more likely explanation that every design decision has a cost and since DRAM requires power to maintain its contents, arbitrarily adding RAM you don't need now to "future proof" would have a negative impact on battery life for the devices entire life.
And why in the world would Apple allow a 3rd party provider like Netflix offer 4k on AppleTV if iTunes does not yet offer 4k content? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
Thankfully Apple doesn't tend to think like that or there would be a lot more stuff banned from the App Store
I don't think I saw it mentioned here, but just what % of homes even have 4k TVs?
The best question so far in this thread. There are a ton of SD TVs out there - people assuming the general populace is going to rush out and buy 4k TVs are beyond delusional.
Finally, I can't help but think back to the days when there were higher resolution audio formats that the industry tried to push but people never really bought into. They went past the "good enough" standard for the vast majority of people so the formats essentially were DOA. I'm not saying 4k is DOA, but considering that most of the content people are currently watching (cable/satellite) isn't even 1080p, you have to wonder.
4k is dead for the next 10 years for all but the most hardcore AV geeks. Look how long BluRay discs took to take hold and they are hardly ubiquitous even today - I have pleanty of DVDs I'm in no rush to rebuy and I see way more DVDs for sale than BlueRays, even today!
People want something better than today's 720p/1080i
Who are these people? How many? Enough to really matter? I sincerely doubt it.
If most of my friends and families older TVs hadn't croaked there would be a ton of SD CRTs floating around in my immediate circles still.
Right now the only problem 4k solves is sagging CE profits. It's a solution looking for a consumer problem to solve. HD is indeed way more than "good enough" for the vast majority of folks. Getting people to buy the proper sized set and sit the proper distance from it to really see the difference in 4k is going to be the biggest problem in convincing people it's better than HD.
That so many seem to have completly forgotten all of this in the long transition to HD is amusing - and that transition is still going on!
There's lossy compression and loss-less compression.
The latter obviously compresses less but retains quality.
The former results in content that is noticeably inferior.
It's funny how people think number of pixels is the be all and end all.
I have seen poor quality 4k that is far worse visually than 1080p.
If I'm honest I think 4k is still very niche.
I also think 4k is kind of pointless on TVs but is great for those like me that use home cinema projectors.
Much the same as 3d is fantastic on projectors and not TVs.
Straming 4k won't be mainstream for years to come.
Most people still only watch SD / DVD not HD / BluRay!
4k will only make sense in disc or local data-server format for years.
That said, if it costs Apple nothing to allow 4k streaming on the next AppleTV from third party sources then they should include it. I don't think they should support 4k on iTunes or with their new streaming TV service but if people have the bandwidth to watch Netflix4k then they should be able to.
I do think the "report" is merely someones speculation though.
Yep. As it is, I've got a 230Mb/s connection at home, and Netflix still streams House of Cards with the dark scenes all muddy. Cable HD is a complete joke. Any panning scene in basketball game reveals artifacts that make me wish I was watching SD. Coming from many years in the games industry, I'm very distracted by artifacts, which I had spent many late nights mitigating in my own work.
They should also bump us up to 60fps, which would cut motion blur in half, assuming the compression artifacts are minimized to the point that we can see the difference.
On top of that, if a person currently views 1080p in the recommended distance range (where pixels beyond the angular resolution of our eyes), say on an 84" screen in a home theater, then to fully appreciate a 4K resolution, they're going to need a 168" screen.
I say give us real 1080p, then start worrying about 4K. I see 4K at this point as a means to crop w/out loss of quality for 1080p production.
Look, I like iTunes for some content just fine - but implying a movie off of iTunes is the same as a BlueRay is patently absurd.
Yes you can compress stuff, but eventually you are throwing away content/quality to get more and more compression. If you are going to compress the crap out of 4k to get it near todays HD then why bother with 4k? Just to check the 4k box off? How stupid.
Way to miss the entire context of the post Doc. Before flying off the handle and looking like an idiot, why don't you see the context in which I mentioned that. I never implied that the quality of iTunes movies is the same as the Blu-rays. Quite the opposite. Take a chill pill before you get all worked up.
We aren't talking video games. Ugh. Right now the worst factor for video quality is contrast (or the utter lack of) and shitty black levels - and that's due to LCDs dominating
Compressed 4k - I can't wait
/sarcasm
The subject was increased realism, in other words, a greater sense that you are looking through a window, instead of looking at a screen. Your comment comes completely out of left field.
You do realise there is a massive difference between the movie you get from iTunes, and from a Blu-ray? You can't directly compare them
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterrockets
....
On top of that, if a person currently views 1080p in the recommended distance range (where pixels beyond the angular resolution of our eyes), say on an 84" screen in a home theater, then to fully appreciate a 4K resolution, they're going to need a 168" screen.
I say give us real 1080p, then start worrying about 4K. I see 4K at this point as a means to crop w/out loss of quality for 1080p production.
In full agreement. Far more "bang for the buck" would come from video services taking advantage of the new H.265 codec to provide streams with less compression artifacts - and potentially still reduce the bitrate some.
4K content is still extremely limited, with few live programs available at all. Most sports broadcasts are 1080i or 720p (from the provided source), not evening taking advantage of 1080p (for the simple reason that very few cable/satellite/Telco IPTV set-top boxes are able to display it). A concerted effort for 1080p across the board would be a great leap forward that benefits majority of target market.
I’d love ‘em to make their own “console”, but let’s have the Apple TV actually do what it was initially envisioned to do first.
Hey Tallest have you ever tried something like a Minix. I know you hate Android and everything it stands for but a good Android TV set box is a pretty fantastic gadget to have. I reluctantly bought one after a friend recommended his Minix. I'm hooked now, it's awesome, especially when used in conjunction with Kodi, the Android version of XBCM. It doesn't have iTunes but with both the Google Play Store and Amazon Prime there hasn't been a time that I couldn't find anything, though I rarely use these type of services as I rip Blurays. What makes something like the MINIX really great is the ease at which you can connect to you Cloud Storage, NAS drives, networked computers and USB harddrives. I can even play movies from our networked BluRay player. The Apple TV is a really nice media player as well, especially for those who just need the basics and something that's super easy to navigate around. We currently have two Apple TV's, one connected in our kitchen and my daughters room. Defiantly recommend Jail breaking though, got to have XBMC, really, it's the best app I have ever used for a media player that connects to you TV. Anyway, if gaming, surfing, 4K video, having ample ports and inputs, freedom to install whatever you want is your thing, defiantly grab a MINIX NEO X8-H Plus to compliment your Apple TV, it also comes with a MINIX NEO A2 that has a very, very useful keyboard in the back with built in gyroscope for games like Real Racing 3 (best remote ever), don't forget an Xbox or Playstation controller (they work out of the box). The Nvidia Shield TV is also coming out in May, which will be epic, 200 bucks though.
I’d love ‘em to make their own “console”, but let’s have the Apple TV actually do what it was initially envisioned to do first.
Sorry, I must of been out of the rumor loop. Last I heard, the 2015 Apple TV was said to be offering app support. If that's not the case, that would be disappointing, but still not a deal breaker.
Comments
The content on a Blu-ray disk is compressed - just not as much as iTunes or other services. An uncompressed HD 1080p video file (e.g. 2 hours worth of content) could be over 1TB.
Thanks. I stand corrected.
The point I was trying to make was that, so-called 1080p movies on iTunes are already compressed to almost a 10th of the blu-ray size. So there obviously would be some additional compression if 4K becomes available for streaming (when compared to the theoretical 4K disc), which would negate all the space/ bandwidth constraints that @jameskatt2 mentioned. @herbapou's post is a lot clearer though.
While the main point of the Apple TV is probably getting HomeKit into as many homes as possible before Christmas, boasting about bringing streaming 4K into the mainstream seems to me might be a hugely important differentiator over Roku or Chromecast, and 4K TVs are so cheap now that the only reason not to buy one (and rotate your 3 year old 1080p to the kids room) is that it's unfortunate that we have to buy new TVs more often than once a decade!
1080p definition? What's that?
Look, I like iTunes for some content just fine - but implying a movie off of iTunes is the same as a BlueRay is patently absurd.
Yes you can compress stuff, but eventually you are throwing away content/quality to get more and more compression. If you are going to compress the crap out of 4k to get it near todays HD then why bother with 4k? Just to check the 4k box off? How stupid.
Frame rate? Movies in theaters are 24fps!!
We aren't talking video games. Ugh. Right now the worst factor for video quality is contrast (or the utter lack of) and shitty black levels - and that's due to LCDs dominating
Compressed 4k - I can't wait
/sarcasm
I suppose one could buy into the forced upgrade consipricy. Or acknowledge the far more likely explanation that every design decision has a cost and since DRAM requires power to maintain its contents, arbitrarily adding RAM you don't need now to "future proof" would have a negative impact on battery life for the devices entire life.
Thankfully Apple doesn't tend to think like that or there would be a lot more stuff banned from the App Store
The best question so far in this thread. There are a ton of SD TVs out there - people assuming the general populace is going to rush out and buy 4k TVs are beyond delusional.
4k is dead for the next 10 years for all but the most hardcore AV geeks. Look how long BluRay discs took to take hold and they are hardly ubiquitous even today - I have pleanty of DVDs I'm in no rush to rebuy and I see way more DVDs for sale than BlueRays, even today!
Who are these people? How many? Enough to really matter? I sincerely doubt it.
If most of my friends and families older TVs hadn't croaked there would be a ton of SD CRTs floating around in my immediate circles still.
Right now the only problem 4k solves is sagging CE profits. It's a solution looking for a consumer problem to solve. HD is indeed way more than "good enough" for the vast majority of folks. Getting people to buy the proper sized set and sit the proper distance from it to really see the difference in 4k is going to be the biggest problem in convincing people it's better than HD.
That so many seem to have completly forgotten all of this in the long transition to HD is amusing - and that transition is still going on!
There's lossy compression and loss-less compression.
The latter obviously compresses less but retains quality.
The former results in content that is noticeably inferior.
It's funny how people think number of pixels is the be all and end all.
I have seen poor quality 4k that is far worse visually than 1080p.
If I'm honest I think 4k is still very niche.
I also think 4k is kind of pointless on TVs but is great for those like me that use home cinema projectors.
Much the same as 3d is fantastic on projectors and not TVs.
Straming 4k won't be mainstream for years to come.
Most people still only watch SD / DVD not HD / BluRay!
4k will only make sense in disc or local data-server format for years.
That said, if it costs Apple nothing to allow 4k streaming on the next AppleTV from third party sources then they should include it. I don't think they should support 4k on iTunes or with their new streaming TV service but if people have the bandwidth to watch Netflix4k then they should be able to.
I do think the "report" is merely someones speculation though.
Yep. As it is, I've got a 230Mb/s connection at home, and Netflix still streams House of Cards with the dark scenes all muddy. Cable HD is a complete joke. Any panning scene in basketball game reveals artifacts that make me wish I was watching SD. Coming from many years in the games industry, I'm very distracted by artifacts, which I had spent many late nights mitigating in my own work.
They should also bump us up to 60fps, which would cut motion blur in half, assuming the compression artifacts are minimized to the point that we can see the difference.
On top of that, if a person currently views 1080p in the recommended distance range (where pixels beyond the angular resolution of our eyes), say on an 84" screen in a home theater, then to fully appreciate a 4K resolution, they're going to need a 168" screen.
I say give us real 1080p, then start worrying about 4K. I see 4K at this point as a means to crop w/out loss of quality for 1080p production.
1080p definition? What's that?
Look, I like iTunes for some content just fine - but implying a movie off of iTunes is the same as a BlueRay is patently absurd.
Yes you can compress stuff, but eventually you are throwing away content/quality to get more and more compression. If you are going to compress the crap out of 4k to get it near todays HD then why bother with 4k? Just to check the 4k box off? How stupid.
Way to miss the entire context of the post Doc. Before flying off the handle and looking like an idiot, why don't you see the context in which I mentioned that. I never implied that the quality of iTunes movies is the same as the Blu-rays. Quite the opposite. Take a chill pill before you get all worked up.
Don’t repeat lies as fact, particularly bad ones.
I’d love ‘em to make their own “console”, but let’s have the Apple TV actually do what it was initially envisioned to do first.
The subject was increased realism, in other words, a greater sense that you are looking through a window, instead of looking at a screen. Your comment comes completely out of left field.
You do realise there is a massive difference between the movie you get from iTunes, and from a Blu-ray? You can't directly compare them
....
On top of that, if a person currently views 1080p in the recommended distance range (where pixels beyond the angular resolution of our eyes), say on an 84" screen in a home theater, then to fully appreciate a 4K resolution, they're going to need a 168" screen.
I say give us real 1080p, then start worrying about 4K. I see 4K at this point as a means to crop w/out loss of quality for 1080p production.
In full agreement. Far more "bang for the buck" would come from video services taking advantage of the new H.265 codec to provide streams with less compression artifacts - and potentially still reduce the bitrate some.
4K content is still extremely limited, with few live programs available at all. Most sports broadcasts are 1080i or 720p (from the provided source), not evening taking advantage of 1080p (for the simple reason that very few cable/satellite/Telco IPTV set-top boxes are able to display it). A concerted effort for 1080p across the board would be a great leap forward that benefits majority of target market.
Hey Tallest have you ever tried something like a Minix. I know you hate Android and everything it stands for but a good Android TV set box is a pretty fantastic gadget to have. I reluctantly bought one after a friend recommended his Minix. I'm hooked now, it's awesome, especially when used in conjunction with Kodi, the Android version of XBCM. It doesn't have iTunes but with both the Google Play Store and Amazon Prime there hasn't been a time that I couldn't find anything, though I rarely use these type of services as I rip Blurays. What makes something like the MINIX really great is the ease at which you can connect to you Cloud Storage, NAS drives, networked computers and USB harddrives. I can even play movies from our networked BluRay player. The Apple TV is a really nice media player as well, especially for those who just need the basics and something that's super easy to navigate around. We currently have two Apple TV's, one connected in our kitchen and my daughters room. Defiantly recommend Jail breaking though, got to have XBMC, really, it's the best app I have ever used for a media player that connects to you TV. Anyway, if gaming, surfing, 4K video, having ample ports and inputs, freedom to install whatever you want is your thing, defiantly grab a MINIX NEO X8-H Plus to compliment your Apple TV, it also comes with a MINIX NEO A2 that has a very, very useful keyboard in the back with built in gyroscope for games like Real Racing 3 (best remote ever), don't forget an Xbox or Playstation controller (they work out of the box). The Nvidia Shield TV is also coming out in May, which will be epic, 200 bucks though.
Don’t repeat lies as fact, particularly bad ones.
I’d love ‘em to make their own “console”, but let’s have the Apple TV actually do what it was initially envisioned to do first.
Sorry, I must of been out of the rumor loop. Last I heard, the 2015 Apple TV was said to be offering app support. If that's not the case, that would be disappointing, but still not a deal breaker.
Come on Apple, build in UHD 2160P support to the next Apple TV so I can get more content on my Vizio P-Series 70"!