Posts Tagged ‘4K’

Yearly News Roundup – 2019

Tuesday, December 31st, 2019

And just like that, 2019 is nearly over. Or maybe already over by the time I post this because, a) this thing took longer than I expected to finish, and/or b) you live on one of the Line Islands and you’ve reached 2020 earlier than everyone else on the planet.

So I guess this is as good a time as any to review 2019 and summarise everything that has happened over the last year. Or at least the things that I can remember right now.

And don’t forget to enter our 20th anniversary competition, where you can win some cool prizes simply by finding a codeword that we’ve hidden in a news article, or maybe even in this very article 😉

As with our usual “weekly” roundups, let’s start with the copyright stuff.

Copyright

Torrenting is down as expected, but that’s not because of the effectiveness of all the anti-torrenting laws and measures, but because people have moved onto other ways to get their piracy fix. Piracy streaming is now the go-to for people because streaming technology and people’s broadband speeds have improved to the point where HD streaming is possible and easy. Direct downloads are also making a comeback via private forums and chat groups, encrypted and password-protected download links, coupled with decent download speeds even for free hosting services. The downloader benefits from these two methods because they’re largely free from monitoring, and there’s little chance of a nasty email from your IPS informing you that you’ve been caught.

Streaming piracy has become even more popular in 2019

The response from the other side? Sites continue to get taken down, operators sued, new laws passed. So basically the same old, same old game of whack-a-mole.

With access to even faster download speeds, Blu-ray rips and 4K downloads, once the domain of the most hardcore due to their 25 to 100 GB downloads, will become more popular. At least for those that are still bothering to download stuff.

High Definition

Unless you’re somehow immune to our cross-promotional efforts, you should know that we now have our own YouTube channel. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned over the years to focus on the niche of 4K upscaled (and sometimes, native 4K) content, mostly trailers, but also behind-the-scene clips and even music videos of our own creation. I can confidently say that our 4K uploads are some of the best you’ll see on YouTube, and that’s largely down to the effort we take to upscale the content from the best possible sources. None of this ripping from a muddy YouTube HD upload and then doing a simple bilinear 4K upscale, with so-called 4K uploads looking worse than the original HD version.

You can’t expect quality upscaled 4K if you’re not working from a pristine source

We’ve also learned a lot about not just how YouTube works (and how channels that focus on quality often lose out to channels that focus on speed), but also how the whole trailers game works (it’s way way more complicated than what I originally thought – there’s a real art to how to best promote a movie, and some studios are simply better at it than others).

And some trailers are just better than others, and here’s our top 10 for the year:

Check out our choice of the top 10 best trailers released in 2019, plus five more notable mentions

Moving away from shameless self-promotion, the home video landscape remains in flux as streaming takes over everything and anyone who is anyone is coming out with their own streaming product (and at the same time, taking their stuff off Netflix).

But the one that has the best potential to disrupt Netflix is probably Disney+ and so far, it’s going to take a while for this to happen, if it happens at all.

The Mandalorian is probably the best Star Wars anything since the original trilogy (okay, Rogue One was pretty good too), but with the first season now over, there’s nothing really on Disney+ that’s a must-see. The other Star Wars shows, and the Marvel originals are months if not years away, and in terms of catalogue content, only a tiny fraction of the Disney and Fox library is on there (and Disney is not in a hurry to add more).

The Mandalorian is the best thing to have happened to Star Wars in ages, and the one show on Disney+ that makes the service worth signing up for

At the same time, Netflix is releasing about 1,362 new shows and original films every month. And while many of them are completely missable shows, many are really quite fantastic. I just hope Netflix doesn’t run out of money soon, because their production costs are enormous and without theatrical runs for their movies, they’re missing out on a potential billion dollars in box office takings.

The current big debate over original IPs versus more and more superhero movies involves Netflix and other streaming outfits too. One side argues that Hollywood (and cinema chains) is too focused on the next Avengers phase or Star Wars, and not giving movies like ‘Richard Jewell’ a chance. The other side argues that superior movies like ‘Richard Jewell’ and ‘Uncut Gems’, both in cinemas right now, just don’t make economic sense when the inferior ‘Star Wars’ is obliterating them in terms of ticket sales. In the case of ‘Richard Jewell’, I know for a fact that Warner Bros. did promote it as much as its other movies (in terms of trailers, promotional clips, etc…), but moviegoers are just not biting.

The question that some have asked is that would ‘Joker’ have made so much money if it had been simply called ‘Arthur’ and was not based on DC Comic’s IP? Most likely not!

So can you really blame Hollywood for being unoriginal when unoriginal is what pays the bills? The same for cinema chains, who will always show more love to an uninspired Marvel film over a film like The Irishman.

I’ve uploaded some great trailers for some really interesting films this year, but they will never get as many views as says a Top Gun 2 trailer or a Wonder Woman sequel. The only exception is Christopher Nolan, who’s original films are more anticipated than even the most anticipated franchise titles.

The other raging debate is over the apparent focus testing of movies, and how it’s ruining creativity and originality. The re-designed Sonic is what started this debate, with many believing that the original design, as bad as it was, would have made a weirder and less mainstream film that would have lived on as a cult classic. A movie so bad, that it’s good.

Spare a thought for the talented cast and crew of Cats, a movie ruined by scarily-awful CGI

But then the horror movie known as Cats happened, and its director Tom Hooper appears to have ignored all calls for focus-testing and character re-designing, and well, we now know that perhaps some changes should have been made. If Paramount can avoid what happened to ‘Cats’ with a re-designed Sonic, as pandering as it was, then I think they would believe that it was a change worth making.

And finally, disc sales continue to slide, as even 4K Ultra HD can’t save physical media from being made obsolete by digital and streaming. I had promised to write our 2018 disc sales analysis almost a year ago, and it’s almost time to write another 2019’s. I’ll probably combine the two together, and I’m not making any promises, but hopefully, that analysis will be uploaded soon. Spoiler alert: Blu-ray disc sales have fallen, not as much as DVD sales, but still quite alarming despite the increasing popularity of 4K.

Gaming

I haven’t covered gaming news as much in 2019, but the three big stories are the continued success of Nintendo’s Switch, and the two new consoles from Microsoft and Sony, the funnily name Xbox Series X and the PS5.

Ultra HD Blu-ray Logo
Sony finally jumping on the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray bandwagon

While I can go on about ray-tracking, 120 FPS gaming and SSD storage, but what interested me the most was the fact that Sony’s PS5 will finally support 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray playback, having skipped it in the PS4. I guess you can surmise that Sony now realise it was a mistake to not include UHD disc playback with the PS4, although they will argue that the cost of the drive and the fact that games are getting bigger and bigger were all factors in Sony deciding to jump aboard the UHD, and BDXL train. While I haven’t found any concrete information on what kind of disc drive the Xbox Series X will be using, but I would be very surprised if it turns out to not support UHD Blu-ray playback.

#Celebrate

On that note, we come to the end of this roundup, and (almost) 2019. Hope you all have a great time celebrating the new year, and may this new year be your best yet!

See you next year.

Weekly News Roundup (October 13, 2019)

Sunday, October 13th, 2019

Okay. So “weekly” news roundup has somehow turned into a “monthly” one, and that, I can assure you, is not a permanent change. However, this doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy making 4K trailers, some Star Wars stuff, and even this music video for ‘Joker’ (highly recommended). As always, check our Twitter feed for updates, happenings, and going-ons.

And yes, I promise I will start writing a bit more news (a bit more as in more than nothing), which is why I’m here today. But don’t get your hopes up, there’s only one thing to talk about this week.

Gaming

After months of no news, we suddenly have lots of it about Sony’s next game console, unofficially dubbed the PS5.

First of all, it now has an official name: PS5. Not much of a surprise there. Slightly surprising, given the lack of it on any incarnations of the PS4, is the including of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray playback. Finally, I hear you say. And you’d be right, because Sony gambled that 4K discs wouldn’t take off and they were wrong. While 4K UHD Blu-ray hasn’t replaced standard Blu-ray, but it’s built itself a nice niche and sales have been relatively strong for such a new format. 4K streaming has been doing well too, but it seems most people still prefer to get 4K from discs.

A photo of two PS4 controllers
More details about the PS5 has been released by Sony

The problem is that high-quality 4K takes a long time to download, or a very fast connection to stream. And I’m not even counting Netflix 4K as high-quality 4K, because compared to 4K discs and on a large high-quality screen, you can easily see the difference (same with YouTube – the 4K trailers I upload are nowhere near as nice when played back there, compared to my original MKV versions – you can download some of these 4K trailers for yourself and compare). The same problem is happening with games that are getting bigger and bigger, which is why Sony has opted to include a BD-XL drive in the PS5 that will allow game developers to put more on a single disc (100GB vs 50GB). Gamers can still download games, but Sony is introducing a new feature where they only need to download a part of the game to get started, with other parts downloading when needed.

Also announced are some important changes to the new DualShock controller for the PS5 (DualShock 5?), including haptic feedback, haptic trigger buttons and, finally, a USB-C charging port.

Sony also confirmed that ray-tracing support will be in hardware form as opposed to software. Interesting ammunition for the next console wars (assuming the next Xbox doesn’t also do hardware ray-tracing), and for those that are completely invested in gaming graphics.

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And that’s it for the week. Hopefully, there will be more news next week. For Star Wars geeks like myself, you might be interested to know that there’s a good chance the new Rise of Skywalker trailer might be coming on Monday during Monday Night Football. If not this Monday, then the next one for sure. Excited!

Weekly News Roundup (September 1, 2019)

Sunday, September 1st, 2019

And we’re back! Quite a few things have happened since the last WNR, and I know I promised to keep this thing regular, but sometimes everything else seems to just get in the way. No more promises though, but I will try my best in the future.

High Definition

If you’re an Aussie and you like the sort of things I like, then you would have been ecstatic about the news of Disney+ coming down under, and for the really good price of $8.99 (that translates to less than the US pricing of $6.99).

What’s more, with Disney’s fan event, the D23 Expo, happening just a short while after the pricing announcement, Disney used the event to give fans even more information about the service.

We got trailers for the new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian (and the trailer looked fantastic – if the show if half as good, it will be epic), original films Lady and the Tramp and Noelle. There was also a bunch of announcement for new Marvel shows, and a big one, Ewan McGregor coming back as Obi-Wan in a new TV series.

From a technical standpoint, there was also some exciting news that all Disney+ accounts will have access to 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. This makes Disney+ by far the cheapest streaming plan to included these advanced features, $9 per month cheaper than the Netflix plan with the equivalent feature.

Those in the U.S. can also bundle Disney+ with Hulu and ESPN+ for only $12.99 per month, saving almost $5.

A screenshot showing the Disney+ Interface
Disney+ will be worth having

With so much enticing content, a great price and unexpected feature-set, it looks like Disney is very very serious about going head to head with Netflix. All the talk about Disney+ not being a competitor for Netflix (and most of that talk is coming from Disney, which is telling) is technically correct, but with Hulu under its wings, there’s no reason, from a content point of view, that Disney can’t take on Netflix.

It will be good news for us consumers, not so much Netflix shareholders, I think.


And in the near future, when you’re watching a 4K Disney+ stream on your new TV, you might notice that there might be a new mode on your TV called ‘Filmmaker Mode’. If you see it, you should enable it.

Announced this week by the UHD Alliance, along with CE partners Panasonic, LG and VIZIO and along with the Directors Guild of America and The Film Foundation, Filmmaker Mode will be a shortcut that turns off all the post-processing features on the TV that distracts from the film-watching experience. You know the ones – motion smoothing, the over-sharpening and unnatural colour corrections, and when combined, makes movies look more like daytime soap operas.

The logo for Filmmaker Mode
Filmmaker Mode will make it easy to see films the way they are supposed to be seen

But now, with just one setting, you can watch the film as the filmmakers intended, with the right colour reproduction, and more importantly, the right framerate.

The new mode seems to be made for UHD Blu-ray discs, but there’s no reason why it can’t be used for streaming as well. So there won’t be any more excuses for films to be played back with the soap opera effect turned on. No excuses!!


That’s it for the week. Back to making trailers for me. Until next time!

Weekly News Roundup (April 14, 2019)

Sunday, April 14th, 2019

Welcome back to another edition of the WNR. There was sadly not much happening from the week before last, but then things started happening this past week, and here we are.

I think the moment things started happening was when I got connected to my new Internet connection. No longer am I stuck at 3 Mbps on an outdated ADSL connection, I’m now connected to proper broadband that’s bazillion times faster. Granted, it’s still via an outdated HFC connection and not via a superior fibre to the home connection, but beggars can’t be choosers. What’s even better than the download speed is the upload speed – no longer confined to a 1Mbps uplink (which was more like 0.7Mbps in real usage), I can now upload without a care in the world, whether it’s backups, or for Digital Digest, some new kick-ass trailers.

Promo thumbnail for the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker teaser trailer
If you’re keen on wasting a 1.3GB download on a trailer, you now have the option

It would have taken 6 hours before, but it only took a few minutes to upload the Ultra HD teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (it took a bit longer to encode the trailer though). And yes, it’s 1.3GB, but if you were on a super fast connection like I am now, it’s not a worry at all.

Unless you have limited hard-drive space, in that case, you might want to check out our new YouTube trailers channel, and you can watch the Episode IX UHD trailer there too. We’ll be adding more trailers now and then, and some classic ones too.

Oh yes, the news.

Copyright

Pirates may have found a new source for the latest un-aired TV episodes, with a dozen shows falling prey to the latest round of leaks. The leaks include un-aired episodes from shows like ‘The 100’ and ‘American Gods’, and even includes entire un-aired seasons of ‘Ramy’ and ‘The Red Line’. All of the leaks appear to come from promo screeners, which suggests that these advanced previews, meant for industry professionals, have somehow ended up in the hands of pirates.

Poster for American Gods
American Gods – one of the shows that was part of a massive leak of promo screeners

Even though some of the leaked titles does include a person’s name in the watermark, which may point to the original recipient of the screeners, this doesn’t really provide conclusive evidence that this person was the source of the leaks. The screener may have been intercepted before it reached this person or may have been stolen from this person without their knowledge. Still, it may be a starting point for an FBI investigation, if they choose to investigate it.

High Definition

And the big news of the week is something we’ve been expecting for a while now. Disney had its investor’s conference, and as promised, they provided more “deets” on their upcoming Disney+ streaming service.

We now know the launch date: November 12 in the United States (next year in Europe and Asia); the price: a low $USD6.99 per month; and that at launch, it will have more than 500 movies and 7500 TV episodes, including some exclusive Marvel and Star Wars shows.

Still from the TV show 'The Mandalorian'
The Mandalorian will stream exclusively on Disney+ for any one willing to pay the $6.99 monthly fee

Most of the original content we already know about, like ‘Loki’, ‘The Mandalorian’ and the still unnamed Diego Luna Star Wars show, but we also have ‘WandaVision’ starring the Avenger’s Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, reprising their roles as Wanda and The Vision. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan will also star in ‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’.

Disney gobbling up Fox also means lots of Fox content will be on Disney+, including every single season of ‘The Simpsons’ (that’s 30 seasons if you’ve lost count), and classics like ‘The Titanic’ and ‘The Sound of Music’.

As for whether Disney+ will be a “Netflix killer”, I don’t know about that. There’s very little overlap in content between Netflix and Disney+, and so they’re more complementary services than competing ones. Netflix will also have a lot more third party content, and a lot more originals too for that matter, so unless you crave Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Lucasfilm originals all the time, Netflix may be a more rounded choice.

Some of our more dedicated readers will remember what I wrote in the March 24 edition of the WNR:

So while Disney shares have fallen since the acquisition was completed, most likely due to the cost of the deal eating into Disney’s short term bottom line, the future is bright for the company. You don’t get financial advice that often here, but I would stock up and hold on to Disney shares with the expectation that 1 or 2 years down the line, this will prove to be a very smart decision. Of course, I have literally zero experience in investing, so you might be better off consulting the Magic Eight Ball (it told me “Most Likely” when I asked if I should buy Disney shares, so there you go).

Disney shares are “only” up 11% following these announcements. You’re welcomed!

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That’s it for this week, it seems. News and financial advice, that’s what you’ll get here. See you next time!

Weekly News Roundup (March 31, 2019)

Sunday, March 31st, 2019

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. It’s going to be a light one this week, as while we have a big announcement from Apple to cover, that was pretty much it.

Still, it gives us plenty to talk about this week, so let’s not waste any time.

High Definition

So the big news of the week was Apple’s entry into streaming video courtesy of their upcoming Apple TV+ service.

First of all, let’s talk about what it isn’t. It isn’t really a Netflix rival, at least not yet, because Apple TV+ will only host original content that Apple themselves have produced. So there won’t be any third-party licensed content that’s still the bulk of content on platforms like Netflix and Amazon.

Photo showing Jenifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell at the Apple TV+ launch event
Apple will hope its big star line-up will help to make Apple TV+ a success

And even with relation to original content, Apple’s content spend of $1 billion is only a fraction of Netflix’s annual spend on original content, so Apple’s ambitions, so far, are much more limited compared to Netflix’s.

Apple TV+ also won’t work on most of the non-Apple devices you actually own. While Apple is opening up Apple TV slightly, allowing it to work on selected smart TVs and even on the Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV+ won’t be accessible on your Android device, on your PC or in your browser. This could change at some point, but it looks like Apple wants the content on Apple TV+ to be mainly consumed on an Apple device (which is not surprising).

Using unique content to draw users into the Apple ecosystem is one thing, but what Apple may be even keener to do is to keep the Apple TV hub relevant in the age of Roku, Amazon Fire and Google Chromecast. Apple can’t make their 30% off of Netflix if Netflix doesn’t think it’s worth having their app integrated into Apple TV, and Netflix won’t think Apple’s 30% money grab is worth it if Apple TV is not popular enough.

Apple will hope that exclusive Apple TV+ content from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Oprah, J.J. Abrams, and shows starring the likes of
Jenifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, will help grow the Apple TV user base. Or at least grow it enough to make Apple TV an essential platform to be part of.

This talk of Apple reminded me of an old news story from way back. Way back as in when Steve Jobs was still alive, and when Toshiba’s HD DVD was still trying to beat Blu-ray. Jobs said then that Blu-ray was a “bag of hurt” and despite Apple being a member and a board member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, Apple never did bother to include a Blu-ray drive with any of their computers.

Apple never bothered with Blu-ray, but discs still have a place

Now Apple is getting into video distribution having skipped discs entirely, and this probably means something for discs (and not in a good news kind of way). But discs do still have a place (anyone who regularly tries to download high-quality 4K content will know this is the case), and they will be around for a while yet, even if they are no longer the default go-to for most people. What do you think? Do you still use discs? Let us know by voting in our latest poll.

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That’s all I have for you think week. Let’s wait and see what the next week brings us.