Sony's 4K Video Download Services Launches

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  • admin
    Administrator
    • Nov 2001
    • 8954

    Sony's 4K Video Download Services Launches

    Sony has officially launched its 4K video download service, promising a steady stream of 4K content starting at $7.99 for a 24 hour rental.

    The service, named Video Unlimited 4K, will offer 4K movies to rent or to buy, with available titles including Men in Black I and II, On the Waterfront, The Da Vinci Code, Moneyball and Looper and episodes of the hit TV show Breaking Bad. Early adopters of 4K can access the service via Sony's 4K Ultra HD Media Player, which retails for $699 and comes with a 2 TB hard-drive pre-loaded with 10 4K movies.

    Sony says their 4K library will grow to more than 100 titles by the end of the year, including recent releases like This Is the End, After Earth and Elysium.

    Some of the above listed titles can be rented with a 24 hour viewing window for $7.99, while others can be purchased for an one-time fee of $29.99. Purchased movies are enabled with UltraViolet support, allowing other devices to access non 4K versions of the films.

    For the launch, Sony talked up their experience in working with 4K as well as the benefits of up to 4 times as many pixels as 1080p video.

    "Sony Pictures has been working in 4K for several years. 4K mastering and restoration allows us to capture and convey more of the information from a film’s original 35 mm negative, while new 4K cameras like the F65 offer higher resolution and expanded color palettes to help us create ever-more immersive experiences for audiences in theaters and at home," said Chris Cookson, president of Sony Pictures Technologies.
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  • drfsupercenter
    NOT an online superstore
    • Oct 2005
    • 4424

    #2
    Is there a way to stream the 4K movies on a computer? $8 for a 24-hour rental sounds fine to me, but there's no way I'm paying $700 for a device just to watch the movies.

    It would be interesting to see if they look any better than Blu-Rays when played at 1080p resolution.

    On that note, do you have any idea if those "mastered in 4K" Blu-Ray discs are actually *in* 4K or if they're still 1080? Amazon seemed to advertise them as if they were a 4K copy of the film, but somehow I don't think that's the case.
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    • admin
      Administrator
      • Nov 2001
      • 8954

      #3
      You'll need more than just a $700, you'll also need a 4K TV to enjoy 4K content, and so add a few more thousand dollars to the price tag.

      I would think that downscaled, 4K content would look pretty good at 1080p, but I don't think the difference to properly encoded native 1080p content would be that huge. I'm current looking at encoding some 4K clips using DivX 10's HEVC codec and then uploading them somewhere for people to have a play with. There are already 4K content available on YouTube.

      Those "mastered in 4K" Blu-rays are just normal 1080p Blu-rays, but they come from 4K masters. If you can remember back to "Superbit" DVDs way back when, then these are similar, as these discs don't have extras on them so the video uses a higher bitrate than normal Blu-ray releases (plus more care is taken into producing these transfers). You'll notice an improvement, but it won't be night and day.
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      • drfsupercenter
        NOT an online superstore
        • Oct 2005
        • 4424

        #4
        The 4K content on YouTube looks awesome when I play it full-screen on my 1080p display.

        So Sony's 4K service won't let you just rent the movies in 4K and play them downscaled, you have to have a 4K TV as well?
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