The history of the disc player fights. For six years, the next-generation DVD format battle finally came to an end. During this period, I do not know how many consumers were planted in the hands of HD DVD, but even if we still feel that period of history is thrilling, there are also many wonderful and interesting.
However, the success of Blu-ray did not result in the global popularity of DVDs and VCDs. Although the distribution of Blu-ray discs has become a common practice after movie theaters are offline, the real situation is that Blu-ray and even optical storage have become more and more distant from our lives. So that in the past few days, "Ultra-HD Blu-ray standard" appeared again in some reports, and we suddenly realized: Oh, there is Blu-ray 4K this ah. At this time, there are no longer other standards and Blu-ray competition for 4K optical storage dominance, can not look back on the manufacturers of the truss, it is really a pity.
Late winner ahead of the Ultra HD
In the era when the Internet was unable to support high-speed transmission, magnetic storage media suitable for circulation and later optical storage media played a key role in the spread of culture. As to whether the development of television has promoted the evolution of video discs or the technical innovation of video discs has forced TVs to increase their resolution, this is already an esoteric and tangled issue. However, one thing is certain that the advancement of TV and DVD must be related to our growing entertainment needs. Therefore, both hardware and content must keep up with the trend of the times. The past VCDs and DVDs have proved to be what humans need, and Blu-ray has come late.
In the CRT TV era, the screen resolution of 640×480 has been sky-high. Of course, some manufacturers will come up with black technology such as 1080p CRT TV to show off their enthusiasm, but the real popularity of high-definition television is also a matter of millennia. Born in the new century before the VCD and DVD, the latter provides a movie resolution of 720 × 480, which is commonly known as 480p, VCD is worse to provide 352 × 288 pixels of the film. These standards appear to be a product of low picture quality today, but in that era, it was no waste to use TV to play a DVD picture quality.
In contrast, Blu-ray was born in 2002 and is only 6 years later than DVD. Although high-definition resolution flat-screen TVs were expensive at the time, the full-scale defeat of CRTs was just around the corner. Therefore, the publication of the Blu-ray standard can be said to conform to the development of the times. It was wrong to entanglement with HD DVD for as long as six years, during which HD DVD even had the upper hand in content reserves. As a result, HD DVD was defeated and Blu-ray won unclearly. Blu-ray ROM and Blu-ray players supporting Blu-ray were far from keeping up with the rapid adoption of HD-resolution LCD monitors. At that time, DVD players in most homes The computer drive is still the DVD standard. At the end of 2011 shortly after Blu-ray won, 4K ultra-high-definition television opened the door to the new world. Until 2013, the price of 4k TV was no longer unattainable, and the highest resolution 1080p only Blu-ray finally failed to achieve the predecessor DVD. The scenery is completely reduced to an out-of-date optical storage medium. At this time, the arrival of the streaming media era has accelerated the process of sweeping Blu-ray into the historical trash can.
Hard disk copy streaming media dominates optical storage divergence
Unlike optical storage, there is no standard threshold for Internet distribution, which allows its own evolution to proceed at an incredible speed. Take YouTube, the world’s largest online video site, for example. In November 2008, it began offering 720p high-definition video. At the beginning of the year, Blu-ray only won the battle for HD video standard. In November 2009, 1080p Full HD video was also supported. Although the birth of streaming media is more than ten years later than the video disc, it has been able to match the blue light in resolution. In July 2010, YouTube finally announced its support for 4K Ultra HD video. What about optical storage? It was not until September 2014 that the Blu-ray Alliance announced that its next-generation UHD 4K Blu-ray will be adding support for 4K 60fps, HDR and other video playback. Wake up?
Netflix has provided more than 4K TV episodes in content reserves, including "The House of Cards" and "The Deadly Addict" and other popular American dramas. In the absence of Ultra HD movie storage media, streaming media has become the most effective way for 4K video promotion. This trend is in line with today's Internet trend. You will find that the audio industry has already evolved from physical media to digital media. Digital music is replacing CDs, and streaming media is also threatening the existence of digital stores. By comparison, the specification of a DVD is much more complex than audio because it includes not only video but also audio tracks. A Blu-ray disc can provide a maximum transfer rate of 54 Mbps, an average transfer rate of 48 Mbps for video and audio tracks, and a 25 GB capacity for single-layer Blu-ray discs. In the era of fiber optic networks and personal storage capacity is not yet developed, Blu-ray indeed has a unique advantage. With the arrival of a genuine 4k source hard disk copy, the use of the latest video encoding format, H.265, will make the 4k-chip source play a higher 60-200 Mbps video stream. Far more than Blu-ray and streaming media.
However, with the rapid popularity of optical fiber and the declining price of storage media, even having a 4TB hard drive is a matter of routine. With the Xtreamer Zhuo Code 4k player providing genuine 4k movie copy files, but at least let 4K Ultra HD movies stored on the hard drive for digital distribution, in the future more and more 4k source distribution copies laid the foundation. Although Netflix's recommended viewing speed for 4K video is 125 Mbps, the popularity of H.265 encoding enables the size of video files to be reduced by 50% in the same quality. After solving the problems of network transmission and storage, the online release of 4K movies in the future will be just around the corner. Can China's network speed meet the requirements and wait? However, the so-called 4k of online video websites in China are pseudo-4k content at most the source of Blu-ray up-conversion. Although the picture quality has a certain increase compared with the Blu-ray, but far from the original 4k picture quality far. Compared with foreign 4k video quality, the gap is even greater.
Goodbye 4k Blu-ray take a good walk
In fact, there are already manufacturers actively promoting the online distribution of 4K movies. Sony's 4K player FMP-X10 has a built-in 4K movie store. There are currently more than 31 4K movies available for download. Of course, the file size of these 4K movies is basically about 50GB, which is not much different from the current Blu-ray disc capacity. Therefore, these 4K movies may have compromises in image quality and sound quality. Its image quality is far from the true original 4K image quality, so it was not popular in the marketing department and was quickly eliminated by the market. At present, this model point machine Sony has stopped production to clean up inventory. We do not deny that Blu-ray is still the best medium for movie appreciation. Today's private theaters are also inseparable from Blu-ray and 4K players. The problem is that, like most civilians who think that mobile phones can listen to songs, they do not have much interest in high-definition and high-quality sound. Online viewing has become their primary mode of video appreciation for low-end audio and video users. High-end users have higher requirements for 4k image quality and sound quality, and will choose the hard disk local copy method.
In addition to Sony's earlier supply of 4k sources and players, it should not be said that another 4k player may be the mainstay of 4K's future, dare to take a revolutionary breakthrough in 4k products, is the famous audio and video brand from Europe xtreamer The name Zhuodian 4k player, it completely subverted everyone's understanding of audio and video media before, using a new hard disk copy method to carry out genuine 4k film source, very suitable for video game players and high-end home theater users. The biggest feature of this machine is that he owns 4k sources provided by Hollywood and other world-renowned film makers. At present, there are more than 200 departments. Every month, new 4k content is continuously added. The 4k playback system for this machine is also heavily invested in R&D. It has been tested and certified by world-renowned film makers such as Hollywood, and its quality and performance are also second to none. However, this machine is used overseas and can directly watch YouTube/Netflix overseas online content. Domestic use is estimated to need to be over the wall before it can be used. In addition to these features, the playback stream of the 4k source provided by them is more than 7 times the current domestic online playing video stream, ensuring the 4k picture quality, and they have the latest 4k+ panoramic sound source. This is also the current comparison of any one of the businesses. Now many 4k TV/projector users choose this product. We hope this product will have a good performance in the domestic 4k player market.
And the UHD 4K Blu-ray standard is not expected to be released until the end of this year, and the relevant supporting content may not be available until next spring. When the machine is expensive, the function is single, the disc area code is limited, the video playback stream is low, and the compatibility with the display device is not good. Not to mention the picture and sound quality of ultra-high-definition Blu-ray, but with this speed of development, it is hard to believe that it can resist the new streaming media and the advancement of the 4k source hard disk copy distribution. So Blu-ray, take it better. Maybe from the moment you win the format war, it is destined to be a tragedy