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4K HDR Content Rolling Out on iTunes Ahead of Apple TV 4K Launch
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That's why I like buying discs with digital copies! Backups!
I was speaking to a cousin of mine the other Wednesday afternoon, and he mentioned he's given up physical as well.
I prefer physical due to the video and audio quality differences (though I'm far less likely to tell the audio difference than the video which is often night and day), but occasionally I've purchased some digital content which I will never purchase on a physical disc as the difference in quality isn't as important to me.
To each their own. Like you said, there are trade-offs, and I see advantages both ways.
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No way they are using h264 for 4K streaming. It'll be h265 HEVC.
You can set your download quality preferences, so even if a movie is available in 4K, you can download a lower-quality version if you want. You can also adjust the streaming quality on Mac, iOS, and AppleTV, although it's a little vague for streaming ("Best Available" or "Good"...whatever those are). Maybe they'll add more granularity or at least more descriptive labels for 4K.
Yes and No, with the 4K format you finally get what the 1080P movie should have been quality wise,
as it cost the same (if not more) then the actual physical disk that has much higher quality bitrate
Oh, yeah. That alone pays for the Apple TV and then some. If this was physical media and I wanted to update even just my favourite movies, it would be significantly more.
Your calculation is off by a factor of 8.
The number on the left is Bits/s, on the right you have GigaBytes.
15 Mbps gives you about 6.75 GBytes/hour without counting protocol overhead...
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Ahead of next week's launch of the new Apple TV 4K with HDR support, Apple has begun releasing 4K HDR content on iTunes in the United States and other countries.
4K movies are denoted by a new "4K" and "Dolby Vision" tags visible in the iTunes Store and in the TV app on iOS devices, Macs, and the Apple TV. 4K content is not universally displaying across all devices just yet, but it should be rolling out fully soon.
A limited number of 4K movies are available at the current time, but availability should expand before the new Apple TV launches next week.
Apple's 4K movies are available at the same price as HD movies, and for iTunes customers who have already purchased HD quality content, Apple is upgrading the HD content to 4K at no additional cost.
The Apple TV 4K will be available for pre-order starting tonight at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time or 3:01 a.m. Eastern Time. Orders placed tonight will be delivered next week, on Friday, September 22, the official launch date of the device. Pricing on the 4K Apple TV starts at $179 for 32GB of storage.
Article Link: 4K HDR Content Rolling Out on iTunes Ahead of Apple TV 4K Launch
Those Prices!!!!! Awesome! Meanwhile Vudu/Ultraviolet still charging $29.99 for everything. All except Disney who is charging $24.95 for Guardians - the first studio to charge that amount on the service. I really hope Vudu follows Apple's lead. There's no way they can ignore what iTunes is doing with their UHD content.
Should be, but if you have MBP and not iMac they will be downscaled. Depending on how new model it is, you might not see it in wide color gamut either. All Kabe Lake Macs should manage that, and I think all iPad Pros except the first 12.9" model. HDR is a no on all Mac models, but this years iPad Pros might manage it, or I confuse it with their recording capabilities. I suspect Apple will upgrade all iTunes movies to H.265, even 1080p as the old ATV now manages it.
Disney is NOT evil just because they don't want to play Apple's game yet. They have their own service and technology issues to work out before they jump onto this and they only have one, ONE 4K movie out at the moment, with 2 more coming.
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To be fair, I actually wasn't considering iTunes/Netflix/Amazon rips. They have to balance quality against the typical bandwidth or hard drive space of their customers. Ideally they'd offer more granularity to fill your bandwidth, but that gets costly and complicated. So your fears are more valid than I initially thought.
I was pointing out that well encoded content is indistinguishable from the original (even with a drastic reduction in bitrate). Take a look at this: one of these images is directly from a BluRay with a bitrate of 30Mbps, the other is from an encode at 13Mbps: 1 2. That's nearly a 60% reduction in bitrate, yet I certainly can't tell the difference between those two frames, yet alone 24 of them a second (which implies we can decrease bitrate much further before they're distinguishable)! So just because the original's bitrate is drastically higher than the encode doesn't mean it can't possibly compete. Compression algorithms are designed to do that.
Unless your TV gets drastically larger or you sit significantly closer to it, I'm betting your viewing conditions are going to stay roughly the same. So you have higher bitrate video, compressed with a more efficient codec, sourced from an even higher quality master than before. Since 4K is already deep into diminishing returns in terms of resolution (HDR is far more noticeable), I hope you're going to be pleasantly surprised with the results!
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[doublepost=1505459523][/doublepost]done, so excited. Got my 4K Apple TV. Now let me go over and get my iPhone 8. Upgrading from the 6s. Still salty they are doing preorders in the middle of the freaking night! 3AM EST.
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That's nearly unbelievable. I've heard people claim they can do it, but usually it's qualified by listening to specific songs (or parts of songs) that they are intimately familiar with. When I did my ABX testing, the quantization of cymbals was pretty obvious to me. But I stopped noticing around 192 Kbps VBR. Scanning for artifacts like that seems more plausible, but I almost refuse to believe anyone can tell just casually listening to music.
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Man, you're getting robbed in Australia. The US UHD Blu-ray standard price seems to be either USD $25 or $30, with collector's-crap sets running $35. Usually if all you care about is the 4K disc you can get away with $25.
Don't forget the Xbox One S has a UHD Blu-ray player in it--I got one for USD $250 in a bundle with a game back in November during holiday sales season in the US. I've now seen $225 deals for it. The cheapest standalone UHD Blu-ray player I saw last year was $300~$350. Eventually UHD players will come down in price, but why buy one even at $250 if you can get an entire game console for the same money? It was the same with the Playstation 3 when it came out.
I'm soooooooooooo bummed. They got this ALMOST right! BLAST! Dolby Vision was unexpected and awesome. However, only Dolby Digital+ 7.1 for audio still. NOOOO!!!!!! This also means it will most likely retain the embedded DRC too. Just pop in a Blu-Ray of John Wick (or stream using VUDU) and compare to Apple TV version. Night and day.
I really hope Apple realizes audio is 50% of any film. Dolby Atmos and DTS Master Audio support is a MUST. For SURE DUMP the embedded DRC!!
I really hope Apple realizes audio is 50% of any film. Dolby Atmos and DTS Master Audio support is a MUST. For SURE DUMP the embedded DRC!!
Great to see 4K+HDR/Dolby Vision rolling out across the store. Would need to upgrade both the Tv and my AVR to support 4K to make use, which isn’t going to happen in the near future. Just need confirmation from either Apple tech specs page or elsewhere that the iPad Pro 10.5 will support the new 4K+HDR10bDolby Vision content and that would seal the deal on an upgrade I was already minded to go for.
You cannot compare screenshots to a moving image.
I've compared Blu-ray to 1080p streaming, and UltraHD Blu-ray to 4K streaming. 8 times out of 10, the physical copy blows the digital out of the water. 2 times out of 10, the difference is negligible.
A few titles have been found that haven't been added to this list yet, but here's a good list (so far):
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=14083346&postcount=61
Also, what's the status on iTunes being able to playback 4K content on the new iMacs? The 5k screen, 10b dithered panel, with 500+ NITS are well within the min spec for HDR playback. Actually darn close to LGs own HDR/DVision TVs. Is Apple doing it? Or are they wanting to sell us new iMac's next year? I know they only officially stated the iPad Pro as an HDR device. Oddly.
Yes it will. From the tech specs page for iPhone X on Apple’s site:
- Video formats supported: HEVC, H.264, MPEG-4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG
- High Dynamic Range with Dolby Vision and HDR10 content
Got my ATV 4k and iPhone 8+. I really hate the Plus form factor, but I want the dual camera. My 6s has been acting strange lately and I got screwed out of my AppleCare when I used my phone company's insurance to replace a cracked phone last yr. . It's all good though, I switched carriers my plan went from $75 to $40 and the cost of the new phone is $39 a month with a $300 trade in so it's a wash. I'll pay it off and switch to Virgin mobiles $1 a month scam in a few months
. It's all good though, I switched carriers my plan went from $75 to $40 and the cost of the new phone is $39 a month with a $300 trade in so it's a wash. I'll pay it off and switch to Virgin mobiles $1 a month scam in a few months
Sweet! HDR content on my S8+ is so damn beautiful. Can't wait to see that content on the 10. Thanks bro!
Absolutely you can. The quality of your movie must come from the quality of these images. All artifacts you see in the movie must be present on the stills. Not all scenes are equally complex, yes, but then you would just compare high octane (or other visually challenging) stills against each other. If you can't see artifacts in those scenes, how do you expect to see it in the movie?
Note: the goal isn't to detect where the artifacts are. The goal is to flip between the two and see if you can instantly recognize a difference. People usually post many comparison screenshots between their rip vs the original master, purposefully trying to capture scenes with different contrast, motion, colors and complexity overall.