Mede8er and 4K Multimedia player

[Gentcsar]

Are Mede8er working about a 4k or UHD player ?

[steevy]

IMHO, it is too early to deploy UHD standards in multimedia player. It will take several years to UHD become mainstream HD format (if accepted by the market). HEVC/H265 are completely new standards and will require the implementation of new chip-sets, the new standard for HDMI (2.0) and much more powerful PC to back up movies with new optical formats (BDA has announced the development of a new three-layer optical disk on which to could save UHD movie). Many people are not aware that any of the equipment you now own (receivers, BD players, televisions, multimedia players, projectors) will not be compatible with the new UHD standard. Even those receivers who now have the option to 4K upscaling will not be compatible with the new standard because they are not designed for pass-thru 4K signals from the player to the receiver and on the TV.

[CineHD]

You are right, but there are always early birds and I am one of those. As soon as 4K BluRay discs and players appear on the market, I would like to have a media player beeing able to Support 4K nativ formats. Thus I would be one of the first to buy a new Mede8er which supports UDH.

[steevy]

As an "early bird", you can now adopt UHD format. You have a few 4K TV, a pair of HDD-based multimedia player with prerecorded 4K movie/demo material. Also, some companies have a multi-channel receivers with a pass-through option for native 4K signal. How will indeed 4K to go on the market, it remains to be seen. Cycles of 5-7 years to replace the entire "video / audio chain" are in my opinion too short and the market is not as flexible as seen by large companies. In most households, the DVD format is still the most popular format for storage and playback of data. Blu-ray format in reality never became popular as a DVD (proven by market research) and what will be with the great new 4K format, in terms of the broad market success, it remains to be seen.

[jer1956]

It doesn't reflect what most people enjoy to use. It's like with music. They tried to force better and better formats like SACD on people to keep up sales of players and disks, yet instead we had the explosion in using mp3 and aac downloads of much lower quality than CD itself.

Many people really need a muli-platform cloud service...not one ulta high quality box under the TV.  So you start watching a movie on your TV, catch up with it on you phone going to work, and finish it at lunch on your laptop, and none of it would be 4k.

When we look back 4k may be seen  as the last,  failed,  attempt to keep people upgrading their TV's, as 3d was before. Neither of which  will stop the closure of factories and amalgamation of TV divisions between  companies.  Like SACD, it will continue as a videophile format, but not mainstream.

[steevy]

I still remember the analog times. LaserDisc was the highlight of video technology and the quality of picture and sound. He never became a mass-accepted format. He was and remained esoteric thing for videophiles of that times. The market decides again. Low Quality VHS has managed to survive until the advent of DVD. A lot of well-conceived things fell through due to lack of acceptance of the market. Betamax, Grundig / Philips V2000 video system, S-VHS, D-VHS, Video8/Hi8, SACD, DVD-Audio, DTS audio CD, MiniDisc, HDCD, DAT / R DAT....etc. Only if something becomes widely accepted, it can be considered as a reliable investment. Everything else is a waste of money and adventure.

[Thorgal]

LaserDisc was the highlight of video technology and the quality of picture and sound. He never became a mass-accepted format. He was and remained esoteric thing for videophiles of that times

It was very popular but only in east asian countries. In Japan every second household owned et last one LD player. In the early 1990s Pioneer and Sony released the first MUSE HD based players and discs... years before the DVD with just SD resolution was released.

[steevy]

You are right. But a measure of popularity of some format can not be just by one segment of the market. By the way, 4K and 8K for TV broadcast  were first promoted in Japan. 4K and 8K are formats that Japanese national television (NHK) is trying to set as a basic standard for TV broadcast. But this is Japan. How long will all this take hold in Europe and America, we will see.

[jer1956]

Japan had analog 4/3 hd before even SD widescreen arrived.

[Thorgal]

It was the MUSE HDTV standard and started in 1988 with a resolution oft 1125i@60hz (5:3 aspect ratio).

[Heino]

Now it's january 2015. Any news baout 4k and mede8er?

[couto]

Now it's january 2015. Any news baout 4k and mede8er?

There isn't a chip/cpu on the market that support bluray 4K since the specs aren't officially finished....

what hollywood movies support 3840 x 2160...

In market perpective releasing a media player TODAY or in next months,  with Hmdi 1.4 and HEVC with half-baked software means that will be a absolete product in end of 2015.....

1- don't see any advantage to the consumer
2- don't see advantage to the manufacturer
3- don't see advantage to chip manufacturer

All does cheap androids with Pseudo 4K that can't handle Passthrough of HD audio,  they are a bad investment, because they will have NO firmware support or ENOUGH hardware capabilities for TRUE 4K  with TRUE BD specs...

Any 3 years released Blu-rays 1080p video  has better image than any MP4 movie with 3840 x 2160..or ANY netflix streaming in 4K UHD...just saying

[jer1956]

It is a problem for prime conttractors and retailers.  They need to product to make sell.  Oems dont have to make and sell cheap 4k kit to compete in this market as it is now, just to keep the first two happy.

The basic economics are not  good. More chip makers, more prime contractors, less users. ARM don't come with an 1186 emulator so  that means everything would have to  be re-written.  So  that means a more expensive product in a price driven  market. They could just drop  android/kodi "as is" on it like all  the others, but why bother if no one is making any profit even  by doing that? It wouldnt be a Mede8er  any more if they  did. And even  after all that..would it play media better than  an X3D?

For me, the next player has to play rips of media the x3d can't.  That means 4k, and as Couto  has said until we have 4k media to  rip, and the tools to  do it, no maker can be sure the current chips can do it, nor users.

[jer1956]

Someone posted a link to a 4k product. That has been removed. No one is saying 4k devices don't exist. We are saying that some companies need product to stay in business even if the new product cannot be proven to be a useful 4k product in practice.


It remains to be seen if companies jumping on the 4k band wagon with stay in business.  There are too many now because no one has to develop aanything....just dump android / kodi on it.  If it has issues...tough....what do you expect at the low price you've paid.

[steevy]

For now, the only source of True4K video is a commercial streaming with heavy compression and (few) HDD-based pre-recorded multimedia players. True4K optical disc, for now, does not exist. 4K BD format has not yet been
defined (officially), and it should be a three-layer or even four-layer (BDXL). The current BD players are optimized for reading a double-layer discs and decode AVC/MPEG2/H264 video codec, so that will not be compatible with the three or
more-layer BDXL discs, recorded with the new HEVC/H265 video codec. The only consolation in this whole UHD circus is fact that we have PC optical BD drives that can read / write multi-layer BDXL discs. The whole "problem" about 4K
video, was created by the premature launch of UHD TV sets ("Money, money, money") without logistical support in the optical and other media and devices. Unlike HD, which was supported with HDDVD, Blu-ray Disc and HD streaming - immediately
after the launch of HD television sets. For now, with "new and glorious UHD", people are cheating with "4K remastered" 1080p discs and BD players with upscaling options FHD to false 4K video (sorry for my bad english I'm from Neptun).