Comparison: iTunes 4k vs 1080p bluray vs 4k bluray

[ActionableMango]

I say the following even though I'm a disc fan who still occasionally buys discs, imports discs, and I even subscribe to TWO disc-by-mail rental services.

It is inevitable that streaming video quality will equal and surpass discs. Already there are two streaming CODECs (AV1 and VP9) which are superior to the CODECs used on discs. Discs use HEVC (H.265), and are stuck with it in order to have backward compatibility. It doesn't stop there. The next CODEC is being worked on, VVC (H.266), and just like AV1 and VP9 I expect streaming to adopt it while discs to remain on HEVC.

Furthermore, there is little chance of a new disc format being created in order to take advantage of continuous advancement. The existing 4k UHD is likely to be the last disc format. Physical disc sales are plummeting off of a cliff. Who wants to invest into that? Many long time disc player manufacturers have given up making them. The Blu-ray Association has said there is no talk of making 8K Blu-ray discs. The 8K Association says the same thing.

I will agree on one point where discs still have a massive quality advantage. I have never heard streaming audio that sounds anywhere near as good as audio on Blu-ray discs. It does not take an audiophile to hear the difference. For fun I did A/B tests on random titles and every single person can hear a dramatic difference. It also doesn't take an audiophile system. I have a cheap $300 5.1 speaker setup--at $50/speaker this is cheap gear. And yet the difference even on this cheap set is enormous.

 

[Macalicious2011]

I say the following even though I'm a disc fan who still occasionally buys discs, imports discs, and I even subscribe to TWO disc-by-mail rental services.

It is inevitable that streaming video quality will equal and surpass discs. Already there are two streaming CODECs (AV1 and VP9) which are superior to the CODECs used on discs. Discs use HEVC (H.265), and are stuck with it in order to have backward compatibility. It doesn't stop there. The next CODEC is being worked on, VVC (H.266), and just like AV1 and VP9 I expect streaming to adopt it while discs to remain on HEVC.

Furthermore, there is little chance of a new disc format being created in order to take advantage of continuous advancement. The existing 4k UHD is likely to be the last disc format. Physical disc sales are plummeting off of a cliff. Who wants to invest into that? Many long time disc player manufacturers have given up making them. The Blu-ray Association has said there is no talk of making 8K Blu-ray discs. The 8K Association says the same thing.

I will agree on one point where discs still have a massive quality advantage. I have never heard streaming audio that sounds anywhere near as good as audio on Blu-ray discs. It does not take an audiophile to hear the difference. For fun I did A/B tests on random titles and every single person can hear a dramatic difference. It also doesn't take an audiophile system. I have a cheap $300 5.1 speaker setup--at $50/speaker this is cheap gear.

My biggest long term concern with streaming is throttling by ISP or by the streaming service itself e.g Netflix.

I hope that there will be growing options to cache/download content on to ATV or even TVs to avoid throttling. Although this can be done on mobile devices, I have yet to hear of this possibility on status device.

 

[Packers1958]

8K is overkill. You really will need at least a 100 inch screen to see a difference. Plus there are no plans to make movies, tv shows or even broadcast sports in 8K. The amount of bandwidth needed would require a major overhaul by providers and cable companies. So don't expect widespread 8K in the next 10 years. As far as upscaling, it will never match native 1:1 pixel mapping. So 1080p will always look best on a 1080p tv. 4K will always look best on a 4K tv and 8k on an 8K tv.

 

[Prorege1]

I say the following even though I'm a disc fan who still occasionally buys discs, imports discs, and I even subscribe to TWO disc-by-mail rental services.

It is inevitable that streaming video quality will equal and surpass discs. Already there are two streaming CODECs (AV1 and VP9) which are superior to the CODECs used on discs. Discs use HEVC (H.265), and are stuck with it in order to have backward compatibility. It doesn't stop there. The next CODEC is being worked on, VVC (H.266), and just like AV1 and VP9 I expect streaming to adopt it while discs to remain on HEVC.

Furthermore, there is little chance of a new disc format being created in order to take advantage of continuous advancement. The existing 4k UHD is likely to be the last disc format. Physical disc sales are plummeting off of a cliff. Who wants to invest into that? Many long time disc player manufacturers have given up making them. The Blu-ray Association has said there is no talk of making 8K Blu-ray discs. The 8K Association says the same thing.

I will agree on one point where discs still have a massive quality advantage. I have never heard streaming audio that sounds anywhere near as good as audio on Blu-ray discs. It does not take an audiophile to hear the difference. For fun I did A/B tests on random titles and every single person can hear a dramatic difference. It also doesn't take an audiophile system. I have a cheap $300 5.1 speaker setup--at $50/speaker this is cheap gear. And yet the difference even on this cheap set is enormous.

You are right we are on the last disk generation. When I wanted to upgrade my 12 year old Blu-ray disk player earlier this year to a high quality 4k UHD player I was surprised to see how few choices I had in the market and furthermore it was not in stock, so I had to wait 7 weeks for my Sony UBP-X800M2 4K Ultra. I believe we are on the last generation of players as well, so grab them whilst you can.

 

[max2]

You are right we are on the last disk generation. When I wanted to upgrade my 12 year old Blu-ray disk player earlier this year to a high quality 4k UHD player I was surprised to see how few choices I had in the market and furthermore it was not in stock, so I had to wait 7 weeks for my Sony UBP-X800M2 4K Ultra. I believe we are on the last generation of players as well, so grab them whilst you can.

That sucks

 

[Macalicious2011]

8K is overkill. You really will need at least a 100 inch screen to see a difference. Plus there are no plans to make movies, tv shows or even broadcast sports in 8K. The amount of bandwidth needed would require a major overhaul by providers and cable companies. So don't expect widespread 8K in the next 10 years. As far as upscaling, it will never match native 1:1 pixel mapping. So 1080p will always look best on a 1080p tv. 4K will always look best on a 4K tv and 8k on an 8K tv.

I think improved image quality will likely be led by improved on device machine learning and object detection rather than 8k resolution.

Hopefully Apple has some plans in this area for their future M1 chip equipped ATV4K.

Personally I would rather see broadcasters and content developers improve HDR as I believe that it has very discernible impact on image quality.

This morning on Netflix, I flicked between Dolby Vision and non-DV 4k content and the difference is huge. The colours, lighting, highlights and shadows look jawdroppingly stunning in HDR. 1,000 brightness is superb.

Non-HDR on Netflix now looks uncalibrated and a little bit oversaturated.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I hope that there will be growing options to cache/download content on to ATV or even TVs to avoid throttling. Although this can be done on mobile devices, I have yet to hear of this possibility on status device.

Would be nice, but doubt it. Their copy protection is way too weak for that. It's not like people are not already sharing this stuff all over the place, but allowing downloads and local storage would make it even easier.

If you want to download, then the consumer solution is Kaleidescape. Depending on studio and title, they get their own masters and some stuff is better quality than the regular 4k discs. Other stuff is identical to discs. Works with full download to local storage only, no streaming. No flat-rate available though, you have to pay per movie.

Plus there are no plans to make movies, tv shows or even broadcast sports in 8K.

Tell that to my 8k version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[Macalicious2011]

Would be nice, but doubt it. Their copy protection is way too weak for that. It's not like people are not already sharing this stuff all over the place, but allowing downloads and local storage would make it even easier.

If you want to download, then the consumer solution is Kaleidescape. Depending on studio and title, they get their own masters and some stuff is better quality than the regular 4k discs. Other stuff is identical to discs. Works with full download to local storage only, no streaming. No flat-rate available though, you have to pay per movie.


Tell that to my 8k version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There are already netflix video downloaded for Android.

The least that could be done is allowing TVs and devices to cache 20min of a movie at a time to minimise the risks of bandwidth throttling or buffering.

I believe Comcast will introduce a 1.2tb monthly limit next year, after which broadband subscribers need to pay $50 for every 10GB!

 

[GrumpyCoder]

The least that could be done is allowing TVs and devices to cache 20min of a movie at a time to minimise the risks of bandwidth throttling or buffering.

I believe Comcast will introduce a 1.2tb monthly limit next year, after which broadband subscribers need to pay $50 for every 10GB!

There's already a cache used, I'm not sure how long it lasts though. I'm on a 500Mbps line, so I never ran into problems except when the ISP had technical problems. They're currently working on fibre 1Gbps connections as the next upgrade.

1.2TB isn't all that much, especially when looking at Kaleidescape movies. They're usually disc size or more, so between 50GB and over 100GB per movie (some less). $50 for 10GB sound ridiculous. Reminds me of the old days when they moved away from phone lines and traffic was limited.

 

[JayCar]

Yesterday we watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets on UHD Bluray with HDR enabled. Holy Batman!

HDR is simply sensational and the difference eith it disabled is almost night and day as I toggles between the setting on the Xbox.

Colours pop more, highlights are brighter without washing out the image. Simply put, every single scene looked near perfect in lighting, shadows and colours.

For those who will buy a new TV soon, get one that does HDR very well!

View attachment 1682388

I'm glad you're enjoying the new set! I had a feeling upgrading from your previous generation set to a new one, would alone be a significant update. I was shocked at the differences as well. It's amazing the differences in just a few years. Sony's X1 processor is very good. Congrats and enjoy!

 

[Anonymous Freak]

UHD Blu-ray should be better. *MUCH* more data available, and no need to worry about streaming (making a video "streaming optimized" makes it take more bitrate for a given quality, which makes it even worse.)

Not to mention the fact that if you have a physical disc, as long as you have a functioning player, it will never just stop working. The "UltraViolet" "buy digital copies" movie service has already closed - thankfully they gave you the opportunity to migrate your movies over to another digital service; but if you had somehow missed that, you're just out of luck now.

On the other hand, I can still play my HD DVDs just fine using my old Toshiba HD DVD player. Or I can rip them to my computer using my old Xbox 360 HD DVD drive connected to a computer, and watch them any way I want.

 

[ActionableMango]

Not to mention the fact that if you have a physical disc, as long as you have a functioning player, it will never just stop working. The "UltraViolet" "buy digital copies" movie service has already closed - thankfully they gave you the opportunity to migrate your movies over to another digital service; but if you had somehow missed that, you're just out of luck now.

On the other hand, I can still play my HD DVDs just fine using my old Toshiba HD DVD player. Or I can rip them to my computer using my old Xbox 360 HD DVD drive connected to a computer, and watch them any way I want.

That's the worst possible example to make your point. HD-DVD discs are frequently mentioned as suffering from bit rot, especially WB discs. And WB was one of the largest supporters of HD-DVD, so this affects a huge number of titles.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/warner-brothers-hd-dvds-disk-rot.1614448/
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/having-very-bad-luck-with-warner-hd-dvds.1332907/page-21
https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=840

Pop your old WB HD-DVD discs in. If they still play throughout the whole movie, consider yourself lucky.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

That's the worst possible example to make your point. HD-DVD discs are frequently mentioned as suffering from bit rot, especially WB titles. And WB was one of the largest supporters of HD-DVD, so this affects a huge number of titles.

Rot has been around since the old laserdisc days. You will also find it on DVDs and BluRay discs, in fact any optical format can suffer rot. Doesn't change the fact that any provider can shut down and you're screwed. Just do a search on this forum what happened when resolutions were lowered from 4k to 2k or specific versions were removed. That's why I always like to have a 1:1 copy stored locally and remotely. And I like to have everything available with a push of a button. No reason to dig through thousands of laserdiscs, DVDs, HD-DVDs and BluRays.

 

[Duncan-UK]

I say the following even though I'm a disc fan who still occasionally buys discs, imports discs, and I even subscribe to TWO disc-by-mail rental services.

It is inevitable that streaming video quality will equal and surpass discs. Already there are two streaming CODECs (AV1 and VP9) which are superior to the CODECs used on discs. Discs use HEVC (H.265), and are stuck with it in order to have backward compatibility. It doesn't stop there. The next CODEC is being worked on, VVC (H.266), and just like AV1 and VP9 I expect streaming to adopt it while discs to remain on HEVC.

Furthermore, there is little chance of a new disc format being created in order to take advantage of continuous advancement. The existing 4k UHD is likely to be the last disc format. Physical disc sales are plummeting off of a cliff. Who wants to invest into that? Many long time disc player manufacturers have given up making them. The Blu-ray Association has said there is no talk of making 8K Blu-ray discs. The 8K Association says the same thing.

I will agree on one point where discs still have a massive quality advantage. I have never heard streaming audio that sounds anywhere near as good as audio on Blu-ray discs. It does not take an audiophile to hear the difference. For fun I did A/B tests on random titles and every single person can hear a dramatic difference. It also doesn't take an audiophile system. I have a cheap $300 5.1 speaker setup--at $50/speaker this is cheap gear. And yet the difference even on this cheap set is enormous.

Its all very well to talk about future non HEVC codecs, but how is the end user going to watch them without upgrading their hardware? And who is going to use them if there aren't sufficient users with that hardware? I really doubt that legacy kit is going to be good enough to run the codecs in software alone.

Locking in a codec is unfortunately unavoidable - it would be great if broadcasters dropped MPEG2, let alone H.264 in favour of something more modern, but they won't because so few people would be able to watch the end product...

 

[Duncan-UK]

Thanks. What we need is sort of a 4K certification, saying that this movie is visually identical to the original 4K (or higher) source. The master isn't going to give that great a quality if the original source isn't that good, or there are lower resolutions in the production chain. For example, from widescreenreview Batman V Superman, which is on the list:

"The range of the image sources used to create Batman v Superman is remarkably varied: Super 16 mm film, Super 35 mm film, 65 mm film (IMAX), 3.4K Arriraw digital, and even GoPro HD digital images. The digital intermediate is 4K, but the images lack the fine detail typically seen when full 4K resolution (or higher) sources are used to create a 4K digital intermediate. The images are grainy at times, most likely they were the scenes shot on 16 mm film. Color is manipulated to produce desaturated images with ugly and depressing greenish and/or orange-y tints."

Have this one so guess I should watch to see how much of this is obvious.

Surely all of the above is down to the intent of the film-makers. They didn't use 16mm because they'd run out of memory cards...

Some sort of certification is ridiculous - all it would demonstrate is that some geeks can tick a box about supposed quality with no thought as to what the content provider is trying to do.

 

[ActionableMango]

Its all very well to talk about future non HEVC codecs, but how is the end user going to watch them without upgrading their hardware? And who is going to use them if there aren't sufficient users with that hardware? I really doubt that legacy kit is going to be good enough to run the codecs in software alone.

Locking in a codec is unfortunately unavoidable - it would be great if broadcasters dropped MPEG2, let alone H.264 in favour of something more modern, but they won't because so few people would be able to watch the end product...

My Apple TV, iPads, iPhones got VP9 CODEC support added with tvOS/iOS 14 via software update.

 

[HDFan]

8K is overkill. You really will need at least a 100 inch screen to see a difference.

8K is not just about pixels. Brighter color, wider range of bright and dark levels, smoother gradients, etc.

Some sort of certification is ridiculous - all it would demonstrate is that some geeks can tick a box about supposed quality with no thought as to what the content provider is trying to do.

Don't understand your point. The content provider has to be involved as they would be the ones to certify that the final product is a faithful reproduction of the original source. Have no idea who the "geeks" are. We're talking about the people in the production chain who actually care about the quality of their work.

 

[HDFan]

Here is a list of 4K UHD discs that use 4K masters.

Is this your list?

 

[Duncan-UK]

My Apple TV, iPads, iPhones got VP9 CODEC support added with tvOS/iOS 14 via software update.

Fair enough. I didn’t know that. It’s encouraging that the hardware can support it.

 

[Macalicious2011]

My Apple TV, iPads, iPhones got VP9 CODEC support added with tvOS/iOS 14 via software update.

The problem is that many TVs and other devices have limited or near zero upgradability or resource headroom.

 

[ActionableMango]

Rot has been around since the old laserdisc days. You will also find it on DVDs and BluRay discs, in fact any optical format can suffer rot. Doesn't change the fact that any provider can shut down and you're screwed. Just do a search on this forum what happened when resolutions were lowered from 4k to 2k or specific versions were removed. That's why I always like to have a 1:1 copy stored locally and remotely. And I like to have everything available with a push of a button. No reason to dig through thousands of laserdiscs, DVDs, HD-DVDs and BluRays.

Yes you are right. I doubt a $20 streaming stick has any horsepower to go beyond its initial design goal.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of TVs, streaming sticks, streaming boxes, cable boxes, etc being sold every year. TVs alone sell about a quarter of a billion units every year.

So upgrades definitely happen, either software or hardware. I think plenty of people will be capable of using advanced CODECs in the future. Heck, look at things now. How many people are still using ATV gen 1 or the original Roku box?

 

[Packers1958]

Is this your list?

No

 

[Packers1958]

8K is not just about pixels. Brighter color, wider range of bright and dark levels, smoother gradients, etc.


Don't understand your point. The content provider has to be involved as they would be the ones to certify that the final product is a faithful reproduction of the original source. Have no idea who the "geeks" are. We're talking about the people in the production chain who actually care about the quality of their work.

An issue with 8K is that it cant get as bright as many bright LCD tv’s. You are talking closer to 1000 nits, whereas some 4K LCD tvs are over 2000 nits. With HDR, those significantly brighter specular highlights make the picture pop. The more pixels, the more energy required to drive them. Energy standards prevent 8K from getting much brighter than currently available. There will have to be new tech to do that, as LCD can not unless energy standards are eliminated. Thats why plasma died and there are no 4K plasma tvs. Micro LED might get there, but likely not with 8K.

 

[Moonjumper]

I think improved image quality will likely be led by improved on device machine learning and object detection rather than 8k resolution.

Hopefully Apple has some plans in this area for their future M1 chip equipped ATV4K.

Personally I would rather see broadcasters and content developers improve HDR as I believe that it has very discernible impact on image quality.

This morning on Netflix, I flicked between Dolby Vision and non-DV 4k content and the difference is huge. The colours, lighting, highlights and shadows look jawdroppingly stunning in HDR. 1,000 brightness is superb.

Non-HDR on Netflix now looks uncalibrated and a little bit oversaturated.

Image quality for 4K sources is usually best unaltered. Upscaling benefits tremendously from processing, but if it is already 4K, it more often makes it worse. My first step when I went 4K (I have a Panasonic OLED, a few years old, but still amazing) was to search for suggested settings on AVForums, but a quick search didn't show any for your set. Delve a bit deeper and you might find them. The general rule of thumb is turn off every piece of processing, play a good bit of source material (the best 4K scene you have), then try with different bits of processing turned back on. My TV has nothing turned on for 4K. For upscaling I have a few things turned on, including a mild widening of the colours near to what the TV is capable of, allowing the non-HDR content to look a bit better.

A 4K Blu Ray should look better than iTunes 4K due to a much higher bitrate, but you will only see the real differences if you set up your TV properly. If the Blu Ray has been upscaled from a 2K intermediate, so will the iTunes version in almost all cases. note that a 2K intermediate can look a lot better than a standard Blu Ray. The original source will be a far higher bit rate, so the 4K Blu Ray will have been exposed to less compression, plus there is the HDR.

How much difference will vary, plus some movies benefit from image quality than others. Sci-fi tends to benefit more than a rom-com for example. It makes sense to buy the best stuff on 4K Blu Ray, while saving money by buying the iTunes for others. Particularly as many films are on offer each week. Plus some movies are only 4K on iTunes. I got War of the Worlds (1953 version) because the only disc version was DVD at the time, but iTunes was 4K on special offer for £3.99.

You asked for some recommendations for good quality 4K Blu Rays. The David Attenborough BBC documentaries are excellent. Planet Earth 2, Blue Planet 2, and Dynasties (not as good as the others) are all in what remains of Zoom UK's 3 for £30 offer. The most recent is Seven Worlds, One Planet and it looks amazing. Another good one from that Zoom offer is Black Hawk Down.

The original Blade Runner looks great, as does The Martian. Gemini Man is divisive. It is nothing special as a movie, but being made at 120FPS is different. Many hate it as are used to 24FPS, but I love it, even though the 4K Blu Ray is downsampled to 60FPS. It allows action to be seen because blur does not have to be added to compensate for a low frame rate. The movie is very sharp and detailed. It looks more 4K than anything else I have seen. A search suggests the iTunes version is only 24FPS. I'd love to see a 120FPS version if the Apple TV gets updated to HDMI 2.1 and getting 120FPS capability as part of that.

 

[phrehdd]

You hit the nail on the head. A UHD 4k bluray standard would be great.

Although some movies look stunning, there are many with negligible improvements over the 1080p bluray and not worth the £10-15 premium.

Fully agree there should be standards. Alas, there was no standard for DVD nor Bluray and it remained to this day a hit and miss affair. I recall a friend receiving a disc (DVD) from Netflix services of some 'vintage' movies and was shocked to see that the makers of these discs had videotaped a television and it looked beyond terrible. Alternatively, there have been some DVD and Bluray that fully utilized their respective mediums in both audio and video.