Sony's 4K movie streaming service compatible with PlayStation 4
Sony tries to destroy bandwidth caps everywhere with 100 GB downloads
At this year's CES, Sony showed its next future technology drive: 4K television displays running at a resolution of 3840 × 2160. The company realizes that you can't sell a TV without content, so Sony also announced that it was working on a 4K video distribution service. Sony Electronics president Phil Molyneux told The Verge that the service will eventually be compatible with the upcoming PlayStation 4. The problem? The size of the films.
"The size of a typical movie, depending on the length of the movie, you're talking a 100 GB plus," said Molyneux. "Then you come into variables: how fast is your broadband at home or do you have optical broadband like they do in Houston, Texas, where you can get the movie down pretty quickly. So, that is one of the challenges that we have to work through. Looking to the future, we need to develop as an industry new compression ratios and technologies. That dialogue is an active process for us at the moment."
Surprisingly enough, Sony is launching its 4K televisions this summer with download-only infrastructure. The TVs will ship alongside a special 4K content server. The problem with 4K physical media is there currently isn't an industry standard for discs that can handle 4K content.
"Consumers are used to download and streaming. I don't want to discount the good work that's going into potential physical media distribution, but that's an industry association and they're working hard," he added.
Sony has already revealed that the PlayStation 4 would support 4K photos and videos, but not 4K-enabled games.
[Image via ComputerActive]
Gonna instapass on this one and save myself much pain. Not that it's an option in most of the UK anyway...
Google Fiber, the fastest internet in then world as far as I know runs at 1Gb/sec which is ~7.5GB per minute, and it only exists in one city in the country right now... So unless Romania secretly developed unbelievable internet technology, downloading and streaming 4K videos is far from viable right now.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Nicholas Pantazis on 2nd March 2013 6:18pm
Technologically, this is interesting, yes. But there's no market for it right now, and considering Sony's losing money hand-over-fist, I find it surprising they're chasing this in a material way.
The highest I've ever seen my download go is a little over 4MB/s. If I want to watch a 2 hour movie I don't want to wait 4+ hours just to watch it. The few times I'm ever in the mood to watch a movie, I want to watch it now or (if netflix doesn't have it) in about 20 minutes after I've gone to the movie rental store.
Obviously you will still need a decent connection to stream smoothly, but until we know the actual connection requirements I don't see why it's not a viable option.
Look, Sony have the ability to provide this (niche) service so why not? Its not like everyone has a 4k TV or really anyone for that matter, but there will come a point when people do start to adopt them to whatever degree and the expectation is that it will fall within the PS4 life cycles.
Next, on broadband speeds. Well, here in the UK with an 'upto 100Meg' connection I'm reaping the benefits of progression in communication technologies all the time and I can already imagine streaming or downloading large quantities of data (not likely to be 4k movie as I don't have the 4K TV), so its in the realm of possibility. These broadband speeds at least for many countries with high technology is not all that rare now.
Finally, XAVC is the new Codec designd by Sony to allow high quality 4k film to be stored and streamed whilst possessing a size not astronomically bigger than "Full HD". They have spoken about the intention being able to store 4k on a 50GB blu ray. As for streaming, I'm sure the quality can be varied from the rawest, purest 4k definition and super high definition audio, to something even more practical for streaming, much like we see in current HD streaming. If one decides to stream a film instantly, we don't expect that the quality will necessarily be equal to that of the disc version. I doubt anyone would bemoan a HQ XAVC stream in any case.
If you can stream pretty damn good YouTube vides at 1080p now, don't write of the idea of 4K on an all new codec with superior compression and taking into account the fact we do have some considerable movement in networks.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Adam Campbell on 4th March 2013 1:45pm
It's all about time-scales, I suppose. Given how far in the hole Sony is, I wouldn't have thought it a good idea to chase the 4k market too quickly. But, of course, future-proofing is always good.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BF9E09ECEC8F88F
Unless... of course, if the 100GB plus size refers to the actual content being streamed to us then you worries are normal. I never thought that will be the case though when it will be streamed.
- Save significant memory and bandwidth on new XAVC codec.
- Save significant memory and bandwidth on a reduction in quality through streaming (though still superior on a 4K screen compared to 1080p on that screen).
- Save significant memory and bandwidth on optimising the audio quality - most homes/systems can't tell between the rawest uncompressed audio and a compressed, smaller version, so many people will be happy with that. When I listen to high quality MP4, WMV or MP3 I'm not complaining for example.
Sony (amongst others) are trying to keep the storage/bandwidth requirements modest for the resolution using new technologies, whilst keeping a high quality. If someone is a super audiophile or otherwise, they can go an get the 4K blu-ray, for the rest of people who may just be happy to get stunning 4k on their TVs instantly, they're not going to be bothered by a reduction in quality over a massive blu-ray version. Just like when we watch HD film and videos on-line now.
Quality vs Storage and Bandwidth has to be varied and taken into consideration. If the argument has become "oh but its crappy", its now into nonsense territory as obviously the audiophile or those who need to scrutinise every pixel are not the mass market or at least won't be once higher resolutions are more widely adopted.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Adam Campbell on 5th March 2013 4:46pm
Now would be a horrible time to go for 4K, but in 10 years 4K projectors will be under $2000, download speeds and caps will let you stream the movies smoothly, and you'll have a ten year back catalog of movies and TV shows to watch. Well... movies at least, since the theaters are using 4k versions of the movies. And 4k porn!!