14 DAY TRIAL // The 4K movie format has been available for a while on all sorts of streamable online media services, from YouTube to Netflix and others. Blu-rays, however, have been left aside for a while, until now.
While the process of upgrading current full HD Blu-ray content to 4K format was announced this spring by The Blu-Ray Disc Association, the actual shift will be reflected on store shelves barely this winter. The BDA has announced that, besides amping up the resolution from 1920x1080 to the 4K 3840x2160 standard, the new UHD format will support H.265 codec, HDR lighting, and a wide color gamut of up to Rec.2020, sporting the new "Digital Bridge" feature.
Apparently, the new Digital Bridge feature will provide UHD Blu-ray disc owners a way to register their copies of Blu-ray movies on their new UHD Blu-ray players from Sony and Samsung. These new players will register your copy with a cloud server database from which you'll be able to stream your movies around your house on any device, at your own will. To simply watch the movie on your Blu-ray disc, you don't need to register it on any cloud service, just pop it into your player and it'll run as any other Blu-ray movie.
Digital Bridge, a tighter control over your UHD Blu-ray media
According to Victor Matsuda, Chairman of BDA, the new Digital Bridge feature will offer two options to users : copy and export. Copy will allow the user to have the media transferred to an authorized media device, while the export option will allow them to stream it on a table or a smartphone.
It's worth noting that the new 4K format will not be an exponential improvement on your entertainment system, since the UHD Blu-ray is not the same fundamental shift as it was originally from DVDs, and when DVDs improved on VHS.
To really enjoy the new 4K resolution, users should buy massive new 4K screens to see the new image fidelity improvement. If you decide to stick to your old 1080p screen, no difference will be noted, so buying UHD Blu-ray players or UHD Blu-ray discs will be useless, unless maybe you want to enjoy them being streamed around your house. However, there's already Netflix for that.
