![\"Panasonic](\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/panasonic_4k_bdp.jpg\")
<\/a>This Ultra HD Blu-ray player looks like just any other Blu-ray player, but can play 4K Blu-ray discs<\/p><\/div>\n
Which brings us to the week’s\u00a0only notable story, of Panasonic’s demonstration of a 4K Blu-ray player prototype<\/a>. It’s still a very early prototype, with the commercial version months away (probably closer to the end of 2015, than right now), so even this story is\u00a0very much a non-story. What is slightly more interesting is the official name of the new 4K Blu-ray discs:\u00a0Ultra HD Blu-ray. To be completely honest, I had kind of expected it to be called “Blu-ray 4K”, to follow the naming convention established by “Blu-ray 3D”, but using “Ultra HD” allows some room for expansion in case CE manufacturers\u00a0can’t\u00a0get the traction they want from 4K and move on to 8K or whatever.<\/p>\n So this was very much a CES dominated by 4K (just like last year’s), and proponents of\u00a0physical discs will hope that UHDBD can take off and give discs a second-life. Because, based on the revenue stats from 2014<\/a>, Blu-ray\u00a0will need it. Revenue fell 8.7% compared to 2013, the first time revenue has fallen since the format’s inception. Of course, a lot of this is due to the lower average price of Blu-ray titles (so more discs sold, but at a lower average price, still equals a loss of revenue), and also largely dependent on the caliber of releases. It was notable that, despite being less than a year\u00a0away from its commercial release, only Panasonic managed to bring a prototype Ultra HD Blu-ray player to CES this year … most of the 4K focus has been on digital and\u00a0streaming options instead.<\/p>\n But I think discs still have a place, and especially for 4K, since the 15 Mbps required to stream a single\u00a04K Netflix stream (which can only be considered to be “good” quality, not “theatrical” quality) may be too much for most non-fiber connected homes. Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, on the other hand, will be able to give 4K streams 3 or 4 times as much bandwidth so they can truly shine on even the biggest screens, which is what 4K is all about really. It’s like that old joke about sending TBs of data, and that sometimes carrier pigeons are the best choice in terms of throughput. So for 4K movies that may take up to 100GB of space, discs are still the best choice for now.<\/p>\n