Samsung Readies 125GB Blu-ray Discs For 4K Streaming

[admin]

Samsung is ready to bring to the market a four-layer 125GB Blu-ray disc, and players to play these discs, for 4K streaming by the end of the year.

Speaking to The Australian newspaper, Philip Newton, Samsung Australia's VP for consumer electronics, says that the only major hurdle left for a standalone 4K Blu-ray player is choosing the standard for video compression.

Google's foray into the 4K space by promoting its VP9 codec as its 4K codec of choice, a format that is also backed by Samsung, has muddied the waters in recent weeks. VP9 will go head to head with the International Telecommunication Union backed HEVC/H.265 format, the natural successor to the industry backed H.264 format currently used for HD Blu-ray movies.

Once a standard is chosen, and this could include the support for both VP9 and HEVC, Newton says Samsung will be at the ready with its four-layer 125GB Blu-ray discs and players to read these discs.

For now, Samsung is pressing ahead with its own 4K content plans by providing 20 movies and 30 documentaries on 3.5-inch hard drives.

Other companies believe that the future for 4K does not necessarily belong on an optical disc.

Users with suitably fast (16 Mbps of faster) Internet connections and a new 4K TV by Sony, LG, Samsung and others will also be able to view 4K content straight from Netflix, the company announced at CES. Netflix will use the HEVC codec and new TV equipped with the HEVC decoding chip will be able to access Netflix's fledgling 4K content library immediately.

"People are recognizing that disc formats are yesterday's solution," says Netflix's chief product officer Neil Hunt.

[drfsupercenter]

The problems I have with Netflix - and any streaming-only site in general - are two fold.

1. Say I want one specific movie. I have to pay a monthly fee (at least in the case of Netflix) just to be able to watch that movie whenever I want. Whereas if I just went to the store and bought the Blu-Ray, I'd pay a little more up front but then have it forever and can do what I want with it.

2. Because of copyrights being as dumb as they are, nothing stays around forever. This is most noticeable with medium like Xbox Live and games that get "de-listed". Now, say I bought a movie, but the company decided to revoke the license for whatever streaming partner they were using - now anybody who owned that movie is out of luck. Again, if you have a physical copy in your hand that won't happen.

Downloading is fine, and I buy all of my Xbox Live games digitally. The difference there is that even if a game gets removed, I can still play the copy that's on my hard drive. In the case of streaming, that wouldn't be so.

[admin]

It's a bit like the rental vs owning debate (with Netflix more like a 24/7 rental store, albeit one that doesn't have an extensive collection of titles, and basically no new releases), except with digital ownership (and DRM), you might not actually end up owning anything (so even downloaded stuff, or stuff purchased on disc, may cease to work if it has an online authentication component).

In a perfect world, Netflix (or some other service like it) would have *everything* added, at the latest, 6 months after its original DVD/Blu-ray release (where I assume, at least for most stuff, sales would be quite slow or non existent by then). I would gladly pay a lot more if there was a bit more certainty about what would and wouldn't be available, and when.

Technical issues aside, the studios' greed would ensure this never happens.

Back on topic, I think 4K is still best delivered via disc at the moment, since 15Mbps (and that's only on devices with the HEVC decoder chip, and probably compromises in terms of quality) is too high of a requirement at this time.