4K & HDR: streaming vs Blu-ray
4K TV OWNERS REJOICE: ULTRA HD MOVIES AND TV SHOWS ARE FINALLY ARRIVING IN FORCE. HERE’S EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STREAMING OR WATCHING 4K FROM DISC.
THE MOMENT HAS finally arrived. An Ultra HD — or 4K — TV or projector is finally worthy of your hard-earned dollars. While these spectacularly high-resolution displays have already been on the market for a couple of years, there’s been one rather glaring issue — 4K content, or a lack thereof.
Thankfully, that issue is now being resolved, albeit slowly, with the release of Ultra HD Blu-ray players and movies. There isn’t a great deal of discs on sale yet, but now that players are in the market, we can safely assume the trickle of movies will become a flood. There’s also another solution to this issue, though — 4K streaming.
We’re going to take a look at this option first, as there’s actually far more 4K content available via the internet than physical disc media. Sadly, most of you probably won’t be able to access it. There’s also a minefield of conflicting specifications that makes setting up an Ultra HD system far from accessible.
4K BENEFITS
Ultra HD quadruples the number of pixels compared to Full HD (aka 1080p) video, increasing the resolution from 1,920 x 1,080 to 3,840 x 2,160 pixels. That’s an increase per frame from 2,073,600 pixels to a whopping 8,294,400 pixels. This sounds fantastic on paper, but in the real world, the difference is hard to note unless you sit extremely close to your display (such as computer users), or your display is over 70 inches diagonally at normal viewing distances. Newer Ultra HD displays also feature High Dynamic Range (HDR) colour, but older models tend not to. If your display has the Ultra HD Premium logo, this means it supports HDR. Just to confuse things, there are actually two different HDR specifications — HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Older HD TVs supported an 8-bit colour space, also known as the ‘Rec. 709’ video specification. Ultra HD displays with HDR10 ups this to a 10-bit colour space, also known as the ‘Rec. 2020’ video specification. By allowing much more colour information, the Rec. 2020 video spec offers a huge 60-fold
increase in the number of colour combinations displayed on screen. To the viewer, this means much smoother colour gradients, and an overall dramatic increase in the accuracy of colour. It’s definitely a more noticeable increase in image quality on 60-inch screens than the higher resolution offered by Ultra HD, but it also makes each frame larger in terms of data size.
Dolby Vision is an even bigger increase in image quality, up to a 12-bit colour space (68 billion colours) and also tells your display how bright it should be for every frame, whereas HDR10 doesn’t. Instead, HDR10 sets the brightness at the start of the film, rather than Dolby Vision’s ability to do it by frame or scene. Most acknowledge that Dolby Vision is the superior technology of the two due to these differences.
Thankfully, Dolby Vision-enabled TVs are compatible with HDR10, and HDR10 displays should be compatible with Dolby Vision — but you’ll only notice the extra benefits of Dolby Vision if your player or display is certified as such, and there aren’t any Ultra HD disc players on the market yet that support this.
Thankfully, it is available via some streaming services. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into another Blu-ray versus HD-DVD or VHS versus Betamax war, as consumers are the losers in these kinds of battles. As such, we’d suggest going for a Dolby Vision display, just in case HDR10 ends up losing.
HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH DO YOU NEED?
The leading supplier of online 4K content in Australia is currently Netflix and their recommended internet connection requirements are eye-opening, to say the least. According to their official Help page, they recommend a minimum connection speed of 25 megabits per second. That’s the top speed currently offered by ADSL2+, but in most cases, ADSL2+ connections are considerably slower, as they rely on old copper networks to do their business. The length and quality of the copper thus has a huge impact on performance. Netflix also recommends that it’s a stable speed of 25Mbps, and ADSL2+ speeds can vary hugely simply based on a change in the weather. Helpful.
According to Akamai’s State of the Internet 2016 Quarter 2 report, which is globally recognised as the most accurate measurement of average internet speeds around the world, Australians suffer a pretty pathetic average internet speed. At just 8.5Mbps, the average Australian internet connection does not have anywhere near the speeds required by Netflix’s 4K streaming service. Even the basic NBN speed currently offered on www.nbnco.com.au just scrapes in, at 25Mbps.
So you’re going to need a cable or fibre connection to get the speeds required for Netflix’s 4K service, but there’s another issue — the amount of data that 4K chews through. Netflix claims that its 4K service uses, on average, around 7GB of data per hour.
With most Aussie ISP’s placing data caps on their plans, it’s easy to see why this might be a problem. For example, if you’re on 250GB of data per month, 4K Netflix will demolish this after just 35 hours of TV viewing. You’re also going to need a TV or device that supports Netflix’s 4K streaming, and currently, this is not supported by PCs, as Netflix views it as a security risk. However, it’s just announced that you’ll be able to play 4K content via PC with two big provisos. One, you have to use Microsoft’s Edge browser. Secondly, you’ll have to have a PC with the new Intel 7th-generation (aka Kaby Lake) Core i processor. This second limitation is most likely because Intel’s new processors come with native support for HDCP 2.2, a DRM protocol used to prevent the copying of 4K video. Le Sigh.
NOT JUST NETFLIX
There are other online suppliers of 4K content, with YouTube being the next most popular. It doesn’t advertise its required speeds anywhere that we could see, but the online consensus seems to be that it’s around 20 Megabits per second. Amazon also offers 4K videos, and suggests a minimum stable speed of 15Mbps. It also offers HDR content as a separate type of video, and it has the same speed requirement as 4K. There’s no mention, though, of whether its HDR videos are also of the 4K resolution.
There are a handful of other sites that offer 4K content, including Ultraflix, DirecTV, Comcast and PlayStation Video. However, most of these require a VPN to get around geolocation blocking, as most are only available in the US. They’re also not compatible with all TVs, computers or other media streaming devices, so you’ll need to check that your Smart TV has the relevant app, and if not, fork out for a device such as Amazon’s Fire TV.
As you can see, finding an online source for 4K content is still a minefield of bandwidth requirements, device compatibility and competing formats. Our advice is to go with Netflix, provided your
display supports its 4K playback, as it has the largest library and is the most readily available in Australia.
ULTRA HD ON DISC
As we’ve explained, streaming 4K and HDR content requires much faster broadband than most Aussies have access to. Thankfully, the recent release of Ultra HD Blu-ray players promises to make it much simpler to watch these films. There are several players already in stores, but what makes an Ultra HD Blu-ray player different to your standard Blu-ray machine?
Both use blue lasers for reading and writing data, but Ultra HD discs are much larger in capacity. Where a standard Blu-ray disc can hold between 25 and 50 Gigabytes of data, Ultra HD discs start at 33GB in size, with the largest holding a huge 100GB of data. The data is also read at a much faster speed. Again it varies depending on the disc, between 82 and 128 megabits per second, whereas Blu-ray only requires 54Mbps. As a result, Ultra HD discs are not backwards compatible with a normal Blu-ray player, which is why many companies are now bundling both the Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs into the one box. However, the Ultra HD players can handle standard Blu-ray discs, so you won’t need to hold on to your old Blu-ray player to enjoy your existing library of Blu-ray discs. Ultra HD players can also downscale to HD resolution if you’re stuck with an HD display, but you won’t get any of the benefits of Ultra HD.
As mentioned, Ultra HD players all support HDR, but their larger size means they can also handle more audio information. If you’re lucky enough to have a sound system that supports either Dolby Atmos or DTS-X Surround Sound, you’ll be pleased to hear (no pun intended) that Ultra HD discs support both of these formats.
Unfortunately, you’re probably going to have to upgrade your AV receiver if you do make the switch to an Ultra HD player. If your receiver has HDMI 1.4, it’ll support the increased resolution, but none of the other features, and will only run at 30 frames per second. If your receiver supports HDMI 2.0, it’ll allow for full 4K resolution at 60fps, and it will also need High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection 2.2m, or HDCP 2.2, required for HDR and 4K playback via disc. This is relatively common on most HDMI 2.0 receivers and displays with HDMI 2.0, but is not guaranteed. The latest HDMI standard, 2.0a, includes HDCP 2.2 within its specs, and thankfully, many receivers and displays equipped with HDMI 2.0 can be upgraded to this with a simple firmware update. Note that you’ll also need a high-speed HDMI cable that is compatible with HDMI 2.0a to ensure everything plays together nicely.
WHAT’S AVAILABLE ON DISC RIGHT NOW?
As Ultra HD Blu-ray players are still relatively new, the number of discs isn’t exactly massive. They’re currently selling for around $50 each, and at the time of writing, there were around 20 movies available to buy in Australia. They’re mostly Hollywood blockbusters, including The Hunger Games series, Everest, X-Men: First Class, Mad Max Fury Road and The Legend of Tarzan. However, Bowie fans will be happy to see that Labyrinth has been remastered in Ultra HD. Looking forwards, around 20 new Ultra HD discs will be released over the next few months, but so far, there doesn’t appear to be any TV series included in the release lists.