More thoughts on media and where to pull data from...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Does RED RAY really need to work off optical disc?

If it will really play back 2 hours of 4K from a standard dual layer DVD-R (not quite 9GB), then do we need to really deal with optical media at all, with all of its shortcomings?

CF cards are becoming cheaper by the day. Write-once FLASH media is beginning to hit the market and will be available at even cheaper price points than rewritable flash.

2 hours of 4K on a dual-layer DVD sounds great, but that isn't enough for some feature film delivery. With the current implementation, would that mean that on a 2 hour and 20 minute film presented in 4K that we would have to "change the reel".

2 hours of 4K in less than 9GB. That's huge... It also screams out loud to be a format that can be easily downloaded or transferred. What about RED RAY (or whatever) server units or software. For large venue installations, corporate environments, even upscale home AV installs, what about the ability for the RED RAY to have gigabit ethernet connectivity so it can pull and play from a centralized server?

[JD Holloway]

Good point regarding cinematic delivery.
I do like the idea of a red ray player (non pro) every home though.
I wonder if JJ bought out the technology from these guys for the player and incorporated a way to get 4k on it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquir...n-dvd-disarray

This was a few years back.
Its funny to hear people talking about this delivery format like its a typical RGB delivery scheme compressed to hell. I cant for the life of me see how that would work. It almost feels like a bizarre hardware bayer RAW re/decoder real-time accelerator.

magic pixie time...

[Christoffer Glans]

With the same codec as the DVD-R would have when playing 4K material, wouldn't it be possible to put the same videofile on a CF card 8gb and play it from that? Seems more "safe" then optical discs and much faster...?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

With the same codec as the DVD-R would have when playing 4K material, wouldn't it be possible to put the same videofile on a CF card 8gb and play it from that? Seems more "safe" then optical discs and much faster...?

Yes, my thought exactly. It could also trim down the size of the player and eliminate an optical disc mechanism (moving parts) that can break. Flash memory is getting cheap. Even commodity FLASH can handle the transfer rates needed (theoretically, I'm coming up with < 10Mbps). So still not re-inventing anything here. 2 hours is going to be a bit tight on an 8.5GB DVD.. 12GB to 16GB CF and/or write-once FLASH just seems like a really slick option.

[Christoffer Glans]

A "Red" DVD that can only play on a Red Ray player and no other is kinda cancelling it's purpose out. If you have 8gb cards, then it's more likely that you play the videofiles from that. It's also safer for presentation. After a while a DVD player breaks down or gets slow. My computer DVD-burner/player has made so many discs and played so many movies that it's useless now and it's only two years old. Imagine what will happen to a device that is for pure playing and burning all the time and what will happen when working with that professionally ( = a huge amount of burned/played material)

CF isn't going to break down and you can fit more on a 16gb card then a DVD dual layer. They are even increasing in size and five years from now (if CF is still here), they will probably reach close to 100gb, perhaps.
If you then can choose quality vs lenght it will increase it's lifetime alot. So, a 2 hour movie on a 100gb card with a bandwith that is balanced (quality vs lenght) will create a hell of a player that will be usefull for many years to come.

Focusing on it's ability to play from CF cards is I think better then focusing on discs. If the DVD-R discs can't be played in any other player then a Red Ray, then I think the CF cards is a better way to go...

Just speaking my mind here... I'm with you Jeff on this.

[Dylan Reeve]

I very much like the idea of a TCP-based network stream option. Then even if we couldn't put something on disc, it could be streamed from a server, and some something like cinema projection, where multiple projections could be fed from a single server would be ideal.

[Dj Joofa]

I very much like the idea of a TCP-based network stream option. Then even if we couldn't put something on disc, it could be streamed from a server, and some something like cinema projection, where multiple projections could be fed from a single server would be ideal.

Sycophant, you really want UDP and not TCP based streaming option.

[Dylan Reeve]

Sycophant, you really want UDP and not TCP based streaming option.

Yeah, UDP, you're right. Multicast support would be cool too.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Could you imagine the ramifications on the AV industry if it could pull from any conventional UDP streaming NAS box? Or even any common Windows, Mac or Linux host with appropriate server software.

IP multicasting would be awesome too... The commercial / corporate applications for that would be enormous. Surf your UDP channels on your RED RAY at the upscale hotel... Guest service announcements and resort info continuously looped on port 1000, etc.. Large company CCTV broadcasts, hundreds or thousands of on-demand videos, all in glorious 4K on the same box or someone can simply insert a disc or CF card.

I know we can only speculate about RED's ultimate plans for RED RAY, but IP connectivity seems like a must, IMO. To me this makes just as much, if not more sense, than RS232 control and other features we're seeing requested.

[Dj Joofa]

I know we can only speculate about RED's ultimate plans for RED RAY, but IP connectivity seems like a must, IMO. To me this makes just as much, if not more sense, than RS232 control and other features we're seeing requested.

Spiff and I had some discussion on this topic. Unless Red Ray is optimized for network protocols in existence its performance shall suffer. I can tell you from my experience that for streaming the number of pixels is not as important as the audio-video sync. You can search for 71654838433 publications out there on how to maintain audio-video sync on the Internet, but in the practise, it is not an easy task to maintain it well at all times, and people have to resort to simple mechanisms, which actually work pretty good a lot of the times.

You may view the thread at:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12838