While RED has been pretty tight-lipped about its
planned RED RAY product, some footage shown off at RED's NAB party gave a sizable hint that RED RAY could be much more than meets the eye -- specifically a $1,000 device that can play cinema-quality 4k video off of standard DVDs. At the party they played an uncompressed showreel of 4k footage on a Sony 4k projector, which clocked in at 1.3GB per second, and then showed that exact same footage under the "RED RAY" codec at a mere 10Mb/s (megabits, not bytes; about half the bitrate of SD DV), at a compression rate of 700:1. Attendees claimed they could see zero visible compression, though a projector in a ballroom isn't exactly the best case scenario to test that sort of thing. Unfortunately, there's little other info about how they're achieving this (we hear "wavelets" come into the equation at some point), or to what nefarious aims, but with compression like this the implications for content distribution are pretty stunning: 1080p+ streaming for all. Naturally, the down side of all of this is probably some pretty hefty processing power on the consumer end, but we'll cross that I/O bridge when we come to it.
[Thanks, Ben H]
posted Apr 25th 2009 3:48PM
I don't believe it... Wavelet compression (think Jpeg2000) is certainly a step up from the past, but no way can it be this good. Compression algorithms are incredibly complex and progress made is minor and sequential. how in the hell would they be able to make such a leap in performance?
Regardless, I think most people would be overly joyed if they got high-quality 4K footage at 40 or 50 Mbit /s.
Bullhockey. I'm sure they were running tons of post processing filters to reduce blocking and banding.
Actually the devise is filled with fairies - they sprinkle fairy dust while magicians and wizards fight over capture and exporting settings. I can't give any more details than that or they'll take my Oakleys away from me while I'm sleeping!
and engadget is currently surveying the masses about SD viewing....
This is BS, running 4k video at about DVD video bitrate? They are either greatest compression algorithm writers in history or this is BS. I'm going with the later
Hopefully they implement some kind of program to help me convert all my HD-Red-DVDs too Red-Ray
well, RED seems pretty neat. I am happy they are making progress and expanding the product line
The showed something like this last year or the year before. It read almost exactly the same: Insane quality, insane resolution, insane compression rates, all using red laser DVD.
I had no idea if it was true then, and have no idea if it's true now.
-Pie
Actually, if the SD DV bitrate you are talking about happens to be DVD; the max is only 9.8 megabit.
SD DV is 25Mb/s.
It's an uncompressed format, and NOT what is on a DVD.
That is MPEG2, which are you rightly say tops out at around 10Mb/s
DVD spec actually maxes out at 10.06 Mb/s (11.06 Mb/s physical), but you are advised not to push the bit rate ceiling past 9.8 Mb/s (9.4 Mb/s is sometimes also quoted here).
" . . . I don't believe it . . . "
" . . . Bullhockey . . . "
" . . . This is BS . . . "
People said the same thing when they announced the RED One Camera before it's release and now a whole lot of people are enjoying a giant slice of humble pie. We have 2 RED cameras and a close relationship with the guys over there. I have to admit, of all the announcements and prototypes I've seen, this has me the most baffled. I was there and saw it for myself - I didn't go behind the scenes to see if it truly was running off RED Ray mind you, but they've never lied to us in the past and I doubt they would lie to us now. Too much is riding on their name for that and they have way too many critics to make a claim this outrageous without being able to back it up.
All I know is they showed us this years RED Reel in uncompressed 4K and followed it up right after with last years reel only instead of uncompressed 4K it was RED Ray at less than 10mb/s. I kid you not when I tell you the latter was indistinguishable from the former. Insane! That being said, I imagine it's going to take a pretty beefy system to encode either their R3D format or uncompressed 4k into Red Ray . . . think of how long h.264 / Blu-Ray takes to encode now even with the new Nehalem architecture!
TB
The difference is that the RED ONE's big advantage was the price, which is an artificial construct. You don't break any laws of physics or information theory no matter what price you set. Achieving what they claim to have done with the 4K demo reel is a different matter altogether... not saying it can't be done, but this time it isn't an economics problem.
We all know Jim Jannard has a bazillion dollars at his personal disposal, which appears to allow him to pull off product economics that are not possible elsewhere. But we also know that RED is severely overhyped with very little product actually delivered (compared to what's always "just around the corner"). It's really no surprise there are still so many RED skeptics, me included. 4k video at under 10 Mbps that is indistinguishable from an uncompressed stream? That sounds like a best-case scenario, or a claim that will have qualifiers and caveats attached to it, once people get to use it.
Let's wait until we actually see this product in the real world, and not in some tightly-controlled marketing demo.
So will the PS4 play red rays?
Red Ray is just HD-DVD revenge on Bluray...
Toshiba ain't giving up baby!
It wasn't the exact same footage FWIW - they showed the footage from last year in the Red Ray format and the current years reel was shown in full 4K.. and yes the screen was not a 4K screen it was not as impressive as I thought it would be mostly because the location at the RIO was not geared for the projection! tho it was pretty damn good....