We knew it was coming. The Blu-ray Disc Association announced at IFA that it was ‘most of the way done’ with defining a specification enabling the format to handle UltraHD imagery. Chairman Victor Matsuda told CNet that the technology will begin to be licensed in spring or summer next year, with players arriving on the market in time for Christmas 2015.
As well as UltraHD resolution, the updated version of Blu-ray will also support a wider colour gamut (Rec.2020 and 10-bit colour), higher dynamic range and UltraHD at 60fps. That’s a lot of data to fit onto a disc, although according to Ron Martin (VP of Panasonic’s Hollywood lab and a member of the BDA), the new format will work on existing discs (but not players) with a 50GB+ capacity. Higher capacities are also being worked on.
Instead of H.264, the new Blu-ray format will use the more efficient HEVC (H.265) encoding. Data will be extracted at 50 or 60Mbps – or perhaps up to 100Mbps, around double the current rate.
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The new format will, of course, require TVs able to support the various specifications listed here. See Bob’s comments on our QD Vision story, in this show report, for more information. (TA)
