Article and photos by Marcus Siu

With the advent of the 4K UHD revolution that was clearly evident at this years CES show in Las Vegas; Ultra HD has become a widely popular feature in consumer products, such as cameras and smartphones.   Back in January, if you wanted to watch something on your new UHD 4K Display, then shooting 4K on these gadgets was pretty much all the 4K content that you would be able to play.

However, that was nearly four months ago.

Things have changed quite rapidly since the CES show as 4K streaming services through Netflix, Ultraflix and Amazon are quickly catching on.  Samsung offers much 4K content through their SmartTV’s.  Even Youtube is also offering 4K content.  However, it comes at a high price and/or mostly proprietary.

The most obvious product that seemed missing in action was the 4K disc player itself; a player that could play a Blu-ray that you could buy at the store and play it at any given time. However, Sony, the inventor of Blu-ray technology decided to manufacture their first 4K disk player, using mainly a boxed unit with a hard drive that is able to download and playback content, instead, much like the PS3, except it doesn’t utilize or play discs.

Well, that’s about to change later this year.

Just a few days ago, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) just announced the Ultra Blu-ray player(4K) specification is now complete and has also revealed the next-gen format’s official logo.

The new disc format promises the incorporation of the latest video standards, and players will also be backward-compatible with existing DVD’s and Blu-ray discs.  This will be great news for the consumers who are afraid their movie collections will be obsolete. After all, it wasn’t too long that we all thought Blu-ray’s were going to be the last format that would be in the consumer market for at least another decade.

In addition to the standard 3,840×2,160-pixel resolution, it will include expanded color range support which will make the visuals truly lifelike, along with higher dynamic range (HDR).  Also the frame rate content will read 60fps, 100 Mbps, which will make filmmakers like James Cameron happy.  UHD Blu-ray will also support “next-generation immersive, object-based sound formats, including Dolby Atmos and DTS: X.

At the Panasonic booth at the 2015 CES Show, it was clearly evident how quickly the 4K revolution was going in early January. Photograph by Marcus Siu

In addition UHD Blu-ray, like Blu-ray, will bring with it the “Ultraviolet”-like “digital bridge” feature that allows consumers to “view their content across a variety of home and mobile devices.”

Panasonic’s prototype Ultra Blu-ray player that was displayed at CES.

Panasonic was the first company to announce a prototype Ultra Blu-ray player at this year’s CES.  Expect to see players hit the market just in time for the Holiday season.