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dcrandall
Visitor

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

I've honestly met one person who swears by gold-plated HDMI cables.

It's been explained, often.

Still swears by them.
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RokuMarkn
Visitor

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

I hope he's not wasting his money on those cheap $5000 cables. He needs something like this.

--Mark
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squirreltown
Roku Guru

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

"RokuMarkn" wrote:
I hope he's not wasting his money on those cheap $5000 cables. He needs something like this.

--Mark


Come on Mark, you're such a cynic. It does come with free shipping.
Kinetics Screensavers
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ACraigo
Visitor

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

"RokuMarkn" wrote:
I hope he's not wasting his money on those cheap $5000 cables. He needs something like this.

--Mark


This review is not associated with the product you linked (only a paltry 13 thousand dollar HDMI cable) - but is most likely equally accurate and not without it's entertainment value.

May cause slight problems
By AndrewCJ on October 16, 2014

I decided to pull the trigger and purchase this cable because my Samsung 85 inch 4k HD 3D TV ($40,000 if you are curious, fantastic TV, only had to re-finance my house 4 times and sell a kidney. I only need one so why not right?) just wasn't getting the best with its supplied cable.

When the product arrived, which it did so in a timely manner (2 days 4 hours 26 minutes 41 seconds) I was surprised at how superb the packaging was. When I released it from its restraints I gently plugged the cable into the required ports.

This is where I was amazed. The picture looked better than it had before which was already fantastic. Now I could literally touch the characters and feel their pain and happiness in movies (this became a problem in several war movies as my wife took 3 rounds to the chest and in the arm, don't worry she is in ICU being patched up). The audio sounded like that of a cascading waterfall while an orchestral symphony played Beethoven's 7th. I shed tears just thinking about it.

Now the reason I am giving it an average 3 stars is because of one major issue that may be ,to others, a deal breaker. After 2 weeks of enjoyment the Samsung TV I mentioned earlier and my blue ray player both absorbed the power of this cable to the extent they transformed into fighting robots and have destroyed my beloved house. I am now living in my parents house and lost all my possessions.
Tony
Roku 2 HD
www.youtube.com/user/TheFishMojo
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

"RokuMarkn" wrote:
I hope he's not wasting his money on those cheap $5000 cables. He needs something like this.

Oh come on, that would be ridiculous. "Acoustic Research" by Audiovox, really? And the cable is only gold-plated. 1/5 stars. That's a waste of money.

You need a pure-silver core cables for HDMI and USB at about $300/ft. We are not savages here, we all know those carry digital signals - so no need springing for gold core with these. Take the AudioQuest Diamond Braided HDMI Cable for $6900 instead - it's a bargain for the length. Check out the rave reviews, both of them. If you are on a tight budget, you may try the AudioQuest Coffee Braided HDMI Cable for $2200. Its conductors are only silver-plated, so quality obviously cannot be the same - but can't be that bad, with so many positive reviews.

But note that to benefit from these, you also have to get $600 power cables with palladium-over-platinum plating (gold plating is so passé), $3000 power conditioner and replace the in-wall power wire to at least $50/ft level (am still looking for the perfect circuit breaker and fighting the power company that stubbornly refuses to lay pure copper all the way to the power plant, WTF). Only sky is the limit with the audio cables, so go crazy with that. Don't forget a Cable Cooker™ to periodically condition and keep in top shape the cables.

Ulimately, the road to Crazytown, USA is paved with good intentions - but i am not sure there is a bright-line there, between reasonable and un-reasonable. And to craftily reconnect to the thread topic, the 4K video is somewhere on that road - closer to the origin than to the destination, i think.
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

"EnTerr" wrote:
I think it's safe to guess that no Roku player currently in existence will ever play 4K content. For multiple reasons, like memory and bandwidth requirements. Encoding guide lists player at H.264/AVC high profile level 4, which requires memory for at least 4 reference frames + 1 currently decoded + 1 on screen, x8MB each = ~50MB for 1920x1080 video. In the case of 4K that will require 4x more, 200MB RAM. I read that the high-efficiency video coding (H.265) can do 4K with "as little as 20-30 Mbps of bandwidth" and the maximum Roku does is 8 Mbps... over USB. Over network, Netflix's "SuperHD" 5-6Mbps has recently been implicated in causing player reboots.

And as personal opinion goes, i think Roku shouldn't even try to, unless 4K becomes broadly available, which i doubt. It's my impression that RokuCo follows the "law of the vital few" (or 80/20 rule if you will), by satisfying most existing needs with a minimal complexity solution.

Right. My personal opinion aside, here is an update straight from the CES 2015's ingress:
"El Jefe" wrote:
  • Third, we announced the availability of a Roku TV 4K reference design for our Roku TV manufacturing partners. This means that our TV OEM partners can begin development of Roku TV 4K models that merge the latest in TV viewing technology with the Roku operating system and experience. TCL is an initial partner working to deliver a TCL Roku TV 4K model in the future while Netflix is our initial 4K content partner.

So just like with the MHL port ("Roku-ready") 3 years ago, RokuCo is trying to keep ahead of the curve. Back then, i had abundance of healthy skepticism of the success of such product, because there were no un-smart TVs with MHL ports, for which that would have been a killer product. And it remained that way for 2.5 years and only recently (last 6mo) cheapo MHL TVs started popping up.

I wonder how this one will play out. My guess is it will take 12 to 24 months to bring product to market, so a 4k RokuTV will be available some time in 2016... say Summer 2016.
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TheEndless
Channel Surfer

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

"EnTerr" wrote:
My guess is it will take 12 to 24 months to bring product to market, so a 4k RokuTV will be available some time in 2016... say Summer 2016.

I think you're being a bit naive if you think they haven't already been working on this for quite some time already. I'd be surprised if the 4K sets aren't out by Q4 of this year at the latest.
My Channels: http://roku.permanence.com - Twitter: @TheEndlessDev
Instant Watch Browser (NetflixIWB), Aquarium Screensaver (AQUARIUM), Clever Clocks Screensaver (CLEVERCLOCKS), iTunes Podcasts (ITPC), My Channels (MYCHANNELS)
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destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

I don't know - we don't have access to create our own custom themes yet, do we? A lot can happen in a year, or ten years, or nothing can happen.
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

"squirreltown" wrote:
To be fair, the difference between 24/192 and 24/96 gets into the area where you need equipment that I could certainly never afford, so I don't want to imply i could hear the difference between those two formats. However, I certainly can hear the difference between 16/44 and 24/48, and really hear it between 16/44 and 24/96. As far as blind tests go, its important to remember that sound happens over time, and the brain needs to "learn" a particular sound to examine it.

This past week i saw this article http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2 ... io-quality
and i wonder how well can you hear the differences in the samples given (their order gets scrambled on webpage reload, so can repeat)? My guess ratio was 2/6 (the average expectation of a random choice).
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Komag
Roku Guru

Re: 4K MP4 h264/h265 content?

I couldn't tell any difference, guess I'm no audiophile :oops:
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