Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems HD621 Does it support 4K?

Hi Mark,

Many thanks for sharing this positive news.

Your Cave just gets better and better.

Regards,
Carl

Thanks very much to both MarkH and Avii for useful responses.

Of course it now begs the question as to whether HDMI v2.0 will be a firmware upgrade to the HD621.

I read this.

Yup, UltraHD will likely break everything, requiring upgrades. But perhaps the next-gen players will also be able to output 422 8-bit colour which means, while we wait for Meridian to upgrade things, we can still get at the 4K resolution from them...

I'm sure that the initial answer from M will be "use the secondary output from your 4K player" and that "when there is more 4K material available, we'll consider an upgrade". Which is actually pretty sensible.

I find a worrying amount of what I actually watch was either shot on 35mm (so 1080p already starts to show the limits of the filmstock) or worse, SD video.

YMMV.

Fantastic, finally I can get some value from my 30Gbit measured HDMI cable

On a serious note, thanks for verifying the HD621 with the Sony 4k projector MarkH!

We are in the midst of evaluating some 4k displays at work. Current input standards for these displays are as follows:

1x HDMI 1.4a input - UHD (3840 x 2160) @ 23.98/24/25/29.97/30Hz
4x HDMI 1.3 input - UHD (3840 x 2160) @ 50/60H

We're using the term UHD at work as these are not true 4k displays (in the Cinema world 4k is 4096 � 2160).

Color space and color depth are also issues, but most of the current displays are Rec. 709 (HDTV).

A little O/T, but personally the last thing I want is 4K in a home setting where I'm sitting relatively close to a small-ish screen. Even at true 1080p, while sports and documentaries are great, I'm occasionally seeing the limits of production quality even on the best movies. There was a lot of talk about this when The Hobbit came out and turned off critics who saw the early previews -

The Hobbit

Now much of that is about 48fps, but the resolution plays a part, I think. This is close to my heart as I work in the industry, but IMO we're now reaching, cinematically, the same point we reached in stills digital photography a few years ago - we don't need more resolution, we need better bit depth, colour rendition, tonal gradations, etc.

Where we do want true 4K and possibly beyond might be cinema projection, although I'd still say the same as above re: the quality of picture as opposed to resolution (I still find most digital projections somewhat 'flat' looking compared to what I was used to on film). In fact, film, and it's associated grain, gradual clipping, etc., had a forgiving quality which was extremely useful in suspending disbelief...

Not to mention I don't want to start buying my DVD *and* Bluray collection again in order to match an even higher resolution screen. When does it end?

On topic - while I have no desire for it personally, the market reality is that in a few years time you probably won't be able to buy a decent screen which isn't 4K, so this is a valid issue re the future-proofing of the HD621, I think.

[Edit: came across this thread in a search for something, and didn't notice it was so old - sorry!]

4K is more than just pixel resolution.

It also comes with a significantly bigger colour gamut (Rec.2020) that will capture more lifelike colours. And those colours will (hopefully) be delivered at a higher bitrate and lower compression than the 8bit 4:2:0 encoding currently used on blu-ray. This may have a bigger impact on image quality than the resolution...

I may be wrong, but I think 35mm film resolves to around 4K+ resolution, so with 4K digital we can almost make transparent digital copies of the best 35mm film masters...

I'm also in no rush to rebuy my collection, having done it so many times already. I'll probably just buy unseen films and a few select legacy titles.

But I want 4K at home NOW! But *then* I think I'm done... no 8K for me...

In that case, it sounds cool.

Thanks for resurrecting this discussion. It's apposite now that HDMI 2.0 has been agreed.

So: I understand that HDMI 2.0 uses the same connector (and in most cases) the same cables. BUT will it be firmware upgradeable or require completely new hardware?

I'm now going to wait until next year (at least) before I replace my Sony blu-ray with an Oppo and introduce a HD621 into my home... I'd rather wait. But I suppose it'll then be 8K we're discussing.

I've replaced my vinyl with cassettes, then returned to vinyl, then CD and now SACD and Blu-ray. My Laserdiscs were replaced with DVDs and now Blu-rays. No Edison cylinders though. It's the way of the world...

This popped into my inbox today, since we 're discussing it-

4K Debate