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H.265 is Here!

Singulus Technologies Develops Replication Line for 100GB Blu-ray Discs

Singulus Technologies AG announced that it has successfully developed BLULINE III, a new replication line capable of manufacturing triple-layer Blu-ray Discs with a storage capacity of 100GB. The BLULINE III will allow the production of next generation optical discs using the current BLULINE II machines for dual-layer Blu-ray Discs.

Following the announcement Dr.-Ing. Stefan Rinck, Chief Executive Officer of Singulus Technologies AG, commented: "Just in time for the market introduction of the new ultra-high definition television technology (4K or Ultra-HD), we completed the development of the production technology for the new triple-layer Blu-ray Discs with 100GB storage capacity. For Singulus Technologies AG, in the Optical Disc segment the year 2013 has been very positive overall. Until the end of this year's August we received significantly more orders for Blu-ray Disc production machines than in the prior-year period. We also see good opportunities for the sales of our Blu-ray production equipment in the future. The positive life cycle of the Blu-ray Disc will continue for some years with the launch of the new ultra-high definition television format".

The following information was also provided with the official announcement:

"The further advancement of today's Blu-ray Discs, the triple-layer Blu-ray Discs with 100GB storage capacity, is the preferred playback medium for the new 4K technology. With the realization of a new and specifically designed data compression method for the ultra-high definition technology, the storage volume per information layer can be increased from 25GB to 33GB. In its committees, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is currently discussing the specifications of new, global standards. Singulus Technologies already completed the marketable concept of a new replication line.

At the IFA 2013 media and technology companies provide insights into the future of television: Sky, Astra, Sony, Harmonic, the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute and the German TV-Platform present ultra-high definition. The new generation of high definition television provides four times the resolution (3,840 x 2,560 pixels) of HDTV. 4K will become less expensive: in Berlin a Chinese manufacturer is presenting new Ultra-HD TVs with a price tag of less than €2,000.

In the 1st half of 2013 Blu-ray Disc sales increased by 41 % compared with the same period one year ago (German Association of Audio-Visual Media (BVV), August 2013). With a share of more than 90 %, physical media (Blu-ray and DVD) also continue to dominate sales in the home entertainment market in 2013. Blu-ray Disc sales in the U.S., the international key market, will expand with a double-digit growth rate in 2013. This favorable trend is amplified by the market launch of the new ultra-high definition television technology and the upcoming market introduction of the new gaming consoles Playstation PS4 by Sony and Microsoft's Xbox One. Both gaming consoles are even expected to be equipped with a Blu-ray drive with 4K support to win the consumers' favor. At several gaming conventions and the IFA, the two new consoles were a highlight."
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http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=12140


Getting closer to 4k content :D.... Either a firmware update to some Blu-ray players, or the really old players would have to be replaced. The PS4 will likely lead this in a strong way. My guess is that they will release a Blu-ray movie with the 4k version and and the 2k version in the second disc, doubtful that all the Blu-ray players available will be able to perfectly read the third layer. Sell a 4k/2k version and a stand alone 2k version. Similarly to how they sell the 3D/2D Blu-ray movies and the stand alone 2D version.
 
Bishope1999 said:
Sell a 4k/2k version and a stand alone 2k version.
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The more I read, the less I understand these resolution marketing terms. What is possibly the 2k movie that I could play back on a standard BD player?
Up to FullHD, we used to count vertical resolution. Now, for the marketing hype to look better, we count the horizontal resolution!
PS for me personally, a true 4k movie would mean a 7680x4320 image.
 
it's not like we haven't seen h.265 coming for quite some time now. It'll end up in ARM in a short while.
 
priitv8 said:
The more I read, the less I understand these resolution marketing terms. What is possibly the 2k movie that I could play back on a standard BD player?
Up to FullHD, we used to count vertical resolution. Now, for the marketing hype to look better, we count the horizontal resolution!
PS for me personally, a true 4k movie would mean a 7680x4320 image.
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The 2k resolution is 2048x1080 while our HDTV's and Blu-ray players have a resolution of 1920x1080, which is pretty close. For a movie that is filmed with a aspect ratio of 2.39:1, the actual resolution of that movie is around 1920x800 on Blu-ray, while a movie that was filmed with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 will have an actual resolution of 1920X1080. The vertical resolution of these two films will be different, but only because of the aspect ratio the movie was filmed in. Our tv's are 16x9 and not 21x9, which is why Full HD is mainly referred to as 1080p. But regardless of one movie having less vertical resolution than the other, the image quality does not change at all. The number of pixels remain the same in the same area.

So any Blu-ray movie is pretty much close enough to 2k. Take for example Avatar. That movie was filmed in 2k and not in 4k. So the Blu-ray version that is out now, is about as close as you're going to get to the original way it was filmed.

Same thing will happen with 4k if they decide to market it as 2160p. As long as our TV's remain 16:9 and not 21:9, the movies will lose vertical resolution if they're wider than 1.78:1.... If we were to have 21:9 UHD TV's, then the movies would have a lower horizontal resolution if it is not as wide as 2.35:1..... But in the end, the image quality remains the same. The only thing that changes is the aspect ratio of each film.

Edit: Also forgot to mention, a resolution of 7680x4320 would be referred to as 8k. 4k has a resolution of 3840×2160 We are still a bit away from those tv's or delivery methods.
 
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Regarding this encoder. I encoded a sample video at the max bitrate that it offered, 11 mbps, original file was 1920x1080i at 24mbps. When the encode finished, I played it back and noticed the image quality was downgraded when compared to the original file. A lot of compression artifacts were all over the video. When I went further into the settings, I noticed that it only is encoding files in h.264 in 1080 and up to 2160. But the option to encode in H.265/HEVC are not available at the moment. All it says for the two HEVC codec option is that the profile is not currently available, support is expected soon.

So this encoder, is not encoding videos in h.265/HEVC. It's only encoding files in h.264/AVC at the moment.
 
Bishope1999 said:
Edit: Also forgot to mention, a resolution of 7680x4320 would be referred to as 8k. 4k has a resolution of 3840×2160 We are still a bit away from those tv's or delivery methods.
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That's my question. It used to be 480/576, 720 or 1080 referring to vertical resolution. Now we are talking about 2k, 4k and 8k, referring to horisontal resolution. Is that just for marketing bigger numbers?
 
priitv8 said:
That's my question. It used to be 480/576, 720 or 1080 referring to vertical resolution. Now we are talking about 2k, 4k and 8k, referring to horisontal resolution. Is that just for marketing bigger numbers?
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Oh I see. Well it's up the studios how ever they want to market it. They can either market it as 2160p or 4k. It seems like 4k is what they are going to go with, but also if they market it as 2160p, the general public may have a better understanding of it because they are so familiar with 1080p as being HD.

My guess is that 2160p will be heavily marketed so people will know, but they will most likely go with the Ultra HD/ 4k names as a "newer thing." The 2160p will be more recognizable and I think they will promote it as well to inform people.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
That's what the HEVC user said, as he saw the tsunami coming.
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I'm not sure why you're being all negative about this, Netflix has already stated that they'll be using H265 for 4k content in the future. The Blu-Ray Association has said the same thing about using it to deliver 4K blu-ray movies in the future. Everyone's just been waiting for it to be finalized. H265 is gonna be the new standard.

Not that you need any of those references to know that anyway. H.265 provides the same (or better) picture quality that we currently enjoy with H.264 at half the file size. Obviously it's going to become widely-adopted codec used by every media file on the planet. The bandwidth savings for both provider and consumer will be astronomical.

Yeesh.

priitv8 said:
That's my question. It used to be 480/576, 720 or 1080 referring to vertical resolution. Now we are talking about 2k, 4k and 8k, referring to horisontal resolution. Is that just for marketing bigger numbers?
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Yes.

Bishope1999 said:
My guess is that 2160p will be heavily marketed so people will know, but they will most likely go with the Ultra HD/ 4k names as a "newer thing." The 2160p will be more recognizable and I think they will promote it as well to inform people.
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The CEA decided on Ultra HD as the official consumer title for 3840×2160. So far we've seen both "4K" and "Ultra HD" in the marketing for these televisions -- which have been out for a few years now and are already starting to hit mass market price points.
 
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NMF said:
The CEA decided on Ultra HD as the official consumer title for 3840×2160. So far we've seen both "4K" and "Ultra HD" in the marketing for these televisions -- which have been out for a few years now and are already starting to hit mass market price points.
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Thanks. I had not looked up the official report from the CEA, but it did seem that they were going with the 4k/UHD wording.
 
Thank you OP for posting this!

The Samsung Galaxy S4 can hardware decode H.265 HEVC. And that's about as mainstream adapted as it gets.

in other news... when was the last time anyone watched a DivX file? Maybe downloading porn off LimeWire in the 90's lol how are they still in business?
 
There are a lot of improvements and optimizations in h.264 implementations right now that will extend the lifetime of h.264. It's perfectly feasible to deliver in 4K with h.264 right now. I've seen several demos and they look great at bitrates well under blu-ray and even feasibly over a good broadband connection.

h.265 is a good theoretical advancement, but translating it into practical hardware and software implementations will take a lot of time.
 
priitv8 said:
The more I read, the less I understand these resolution marketing terms. What is possibly the 2k movie that I could play back on a standard BD player?
Up to FullHD, we used to count vertical resolution. Now, for the marketing hype to look better, we count the horizontal resolution!
PS for me personally, a true 4k movie would mean a 7680x4320 image.
Click to expand...

Well, actually we didn't. We used to say VHS, or Laserdisc, and eventually DVD. When we quoted numbers we said both, 640 x 480. It wasn't until the HD marketing that we dropped to the vertical which was SILLY to begin with since the vertical number changes in HD depending on the aspect ratio. There are "720" movies that are not 720 at all, but ARE 1280 no matter what.

Anyway, back to the op, 265 sounds very cool, but probably wont care until Apple or at least Handbrake supports it.
 
NMF said:
Not that you need any of those references to know that anyway. H.265 provides the same (or better) picture quality that we currently enjoy with H.264 at half the file size.
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Or the same file size for much better quality. Which is what I would like to see.

It's time for online versions to have parity with the quality and features of disks and more reasonable pricing. Especially TV shows. Buy a season on iTunes or Amazon and you pay as much as twice what you would for a disc box set with way less quality, basically no features etc.

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potatis said:
couldn't the new iPhone decode h265, if not now then by a future iOS update?
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We could see it first on the iPad, which is the more video friendly screen size. And the ATV box. Heck for the Apple TV it could be a main reason for a hardware overall.
 
Well, no h265 on the ipads(?), only iphone 6/s, but as the new apple tv has an A8 it could be capable too. Maybe they want to get as many units they can into households, then h265 encode movies in the itunes store.
 
NMF said:
Not that you need any of those references to know that anyway. H.265 provides the same (or better) picture quality that we currently enjoy with H.264 at half the file size.
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That isn't quite true. Currently, H264 provides better quality. You can throw as much bitrate at an H265 encode but the end result will still not look as good as a similarly high bitrate H264 encode. It's certainly more efficient, which is why content providers who rely on streaming are excited about it, but the quality isn't up to H264 standards...at least not yet. Worryingly, they haven't improved much on this aspect of it since it was introduced years back.
 
geesus said:
That isn't quite true. Currently, H264 provides better quality. You can throw as much bitrate at an H265 encode but the end result will still not look as good as a similarly high bitrate H264 encode. It's certainly more efficient, which is why content providers who rely on streaming are excited about it, but the quality isn't up to H264 standards...at least not yet. Worryingly, they haven't improved much on this aspect of it since it was introduced years back.
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This depends entirely on the codec implementation. The H.265 specification (just like the H.264 one) just provides the tools that codecs can use. It depends on the implementation how effectively they are utilized. The major difference between the H.265 and H.264 standards is that the former provides additional and improved tools.

I know of one H.265 codec that is pretty advanced and significantly improves the image quality at equal bandwidth compared to a mature H.264 codec.
 
Rigby said:
This depends entirely on the codec implementation. The H.265 specification (just like the H.264 one) just provides the tools that codecs can use. It depends on the implementation how effectively they are utilized. The major difference between the H.265 and H.264 standards is that the former provides additional and improved tools.

I know of one H.265 codec that is pretty advanced and significantly improves the image quality at equal bandwidth compared to a mature H.264 codec.
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Is that on a consumer level? Maybe professional H.265 encoders perform better than x265? This may well be the case, as examples of H.265 via Netflix, show grain reproduction that seems currently unrepeatable via x265. For us experimenters or archivers, at the moment x264 does outperform x265 though, unless space is a premium.
 
geesus said:
Is that on a consumer level? Maybe professional H.265 encoders perform better than x265? This may well be the case, as examples of H.265 via Netflix, show grain reproduction that seems currently unrepeatable via x265. For us experimenters or archivers, at the moment x264 does outperform x265 though, unless space is a premium.
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I guess that there are many that are "skipping" the h.265 codec, since unlike free to use h.264 codec, you have to pay 0.5% of your gross revenue to HEVC for using the h.265 codec. And in the end of the day having to pay 0.5% of your earnings will cost you much more in administration of said earnings and payments.

h.264 is supported by almost all devices on the planet, its free and it does have a fairly good viewing quality.
And if you want more, then there are planty of good free codec out there.
 
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