Cinematography.com Naysayers: "4K display won't catch on for 25 years"

[Craig Ryan]

I agree with you guys, most Blurays do looks like crap, unfortunately. You've seen my posts on this issue, I'm well aware of what's going on there.

Truth is it's not the format that's not holding up, but the studios. No matter what format its on, if a bluray release looked like crap, a REDray release won't look much better. I've seen amazing blurays; there are many out there that fully take advantage of the format. The ones that don't however, are just a lackluster effort on the studio's part.

I'm not as optimistic as some of you are about REDray becoming studio accepted anytime soon; we just went though that damn format war, there's no way the general public is going to tolerate another for at least 5-10 years, and frankly I'm MORE than satisfied with the Bluray releases that have been good. In many cases, they've all looked better than they did in the theater.

Now unless RED is secretly dealing with the studios as we speak and are setting up some kind of RED ray distribution for a minority of videophiles like us, I doubt we will be seeing Iron Man 2 in Red Ray. Or the Hobbitt, or Batman 3, etc. Just being realistic is all; there's been far too many times in the past where I've been disappointed for keeping up unrealistic hopes :)

[michael zaletel]

Remember that VHS beat out Beta in the most famous (or infamous) format battle ever. Politics, Power and Timing probably affect these things more than quality.

Seems sad to say but Red will probably have to spend as much on PR, political donations, lobbyists and fine dining as they spend on research and development if they hope to see Red Ray widely adopted.

-michael zaletel
(shooter)

[Chris Kenny]

Blu-ray can look great. Some individual discs don't, but this is often because they aren't being mastered correctly (poor scan, too much sharpening, too much grain reduction, etc.) or the original source material doesn't hold up at 1080p (particularly an issue for older films, especially if no pristine copy can be found).

The mastering issues will probably start to go away over time. If you go back and watch some of the very early DVD releases, they're often terrible compared with modern DVD releases; it took some time for the industry to develop software and best practices that produced decent looking results. The gains with Blu-ray won't be quite that large, because it's starting much further ahead, but we can, I think, be reasonably certain that things will improve in the coming years.

[Häakon]

I don't think 4k is enough resolution, but it's a good start :-)

This is why I love Graeme. :)

[Thom Steinhoff]

I think we'll see 4K displays and 4K projectors in the home long before there is mainstream 4K content available--it's the nature of the arms race. how much 120 hz content do we have? How much 1080p content was really available when the first HD sets shipped?

Right now a 60,000:1 1080p 1600 lumen Panasonic projector is available for $2500 which is a sweet spot for mainstream home theater projector purchases. What is going to be at that $2500 mark in 2 years? 4 years? Sure, within a few years they may move to 3D, but what about 6 years? 8 years? 10 years?

Also, I would bet that in a year of Red Ray's release we'll see a Red projector fast tracked. They did announce something last year but it has been back burnered. Knowing Jim, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps right to a 5K or 6K projector to stun the competition.

But really, what sort of experience would Red need to develop a projector?

1. Sophisticated highspeed pipelines (Check)
2. High quality lenses (Check)
3. Big Money (Check)
4. Track Record of Partnerships(Check)
5. Transparent LCD experience(See 3 & 4)

Someone will do it--likely Red. And it won't be 25 years.

More like 2-5 Years.

[Zach Zoller]

Change, a never ending process.