Sony To Release “Mastered In 4K” Blu-rays

According to a press release issued this morning, Sony have announced a “Mastered In 4K” range of Blu-rays alongside plenty of CES discussion about their forthcoming 4K “Ultra HD” television sets.

Except, well, these “Mastered In 4K” Blu-rays aren’t 4K in resolution. They’re 1080p Blu-rays, mastered from the 4K original film sources.

The movies confirmed so far are: The Amazing Spider-Man, Total Recall, The Karate Kid, Battle: Los Angeles and The Other Guys. The press release says the movies are “sourced from pristine 4K masters and presented at high-bitrate 1080p resolution, with expanded color showcasing more of the wide range of rich color contained in the original source.”

“When upscaled via the Sony 4K Ultra HD TVs, these discs serve as an ideal way for consumers to experience near-4K picture quality” it continues. Ew.

Native, proper 4K titles are meant to be releasing in the Summer.

25 Comments

  1. i was about to say that it must be a licencing thing. But Sony owns those titles.

  2. Most of the best celluloid-sourced blu-rays use 4k transfers, and have done so for a while, so to make a point of it is just marketing nonsense. But I’m pretty sure Total Recall and Amazing Spider-Man were shot digitally and so probably max out at 4k anyway.
    The frustrating bit for me is the attempt to sell potential customers on the desirability of 4k in the first place. Video is approaching the kind of diminishing returns that killed SACD and other superior audio formats: not enough people can tell the difference. The average man on the street can’t tell the difference between DVD and blu-ray as it is, and I (a video snob) probably couldn’t detect the difference myself in a smaller TV without standing uncomfortably close. So it worries me to think the TV industry will dive into 4K as though people will give a damn.
    P.S. I’ll still pony up for an OLED TV! Hello? Sony? Samsung? Anyone?

  3. They’re reaching the point of diminishing returns. In order to appreciate a 4k resolution screen it’s going to need to be gargantuan in size.

    For the home market there are only very few people who are going to have the space, money and desire to get one of these super sized displays.

    There was an article this morning in The Metro saying that the advantage of a 4k TV of a regular size is that you could sit twice as close and retain image quality. That’s really clutching at straws.

  4. Pointless marketing bullshit.

    Many 1080p BDs are *already* mastered in 4K. Baraka, which was released in 2008, was even mastered in 8K. It looks spectacular on BD *because* native 1080p looks spectacular when properly mastered.

    Now for the shocking news… A movie mastered in 4K, transfered to 1080p and upscaled back to 4K looks exactly as it sounds: 1080p upscaled to 4K. Not that it’s a bad thing, as most people will never be able to see the difference between 1080p and native 4K (unless their home theater is at least 3 meters wide).

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