CES 2016 was buzzing over Ultra HD, 4K content with High Definition Range (HDR) post processing and Ultra Definition disks and players. After all UHD 4K disks will be available in seven weeks and Time Warner already announced a few disks the other day.
MediaTek came up with its own solution called MT8581 and we saw it in action. The quality is great from the short demo we saw. MediaTek claims that it is the only company with a dedicated chipset for Blu-Ray players. With that in mind, all the first players to launch later this year should have the MediaTek MT8581.
Joe Chen, executive vice president and co-chief operating officer, MediaTek said:
“MediaTek’s expertise in multimedia technology means we understand the coming world of advanced screens. We design solutions so consumers get the most stunning, crystal-clear experience regardless of which format they choose for their viewing experience. UHD with HDR imaging has the potential to revolutionize home viewing as much as the leap from VHS to DVD did, hence our research and development investment.”
The new chip needs to process four times the pixels of the Full HD and need to do the picture processing and HDR. The HDR is to create a bit more realistic lightning and we saw this in computer games a few years ago. It does make the picture look better but it is hard to compare it unless you have two identical TV sets head-to-head playing the same content. HDR reproduces a greater dynamic range of light and dark visuals than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques, improving the appearance of on-screen contrast.
The MediaTek MT8581 supports Blu-ray, DVD and CD playback, including the latest BD-ROM format, such as BD-Live and BonusView. New Players will be able to scale non-native 4K content including DVDs and Blu-ray to 4K. The MT8581 features HEVC, H.264 and VP9 4K 60p video decoder for 4K (3840x2160) video content and also MPEG-2, VP8 and VC-1 2K 60p video decoder for legacy 2K (1920x1080 video content).
For audio decoding, it has Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, and DTS-HD master audio, via multi-format decoding, that can support high quality audio streaming.
With three size density and drives up to 100 GB you can get much better quality then a Netflix HDR 4K stream. Netflix requires 25 Mbit/s connection while the 4K Blu-ray specification allows 82Mbit/s, 108Mbit/s and 128Mbit/s data read speed depending on the densities. The initial 4K Blu-ray specification allows for three size densities 50GB single layer, 66GB dual-layer and 100GB triple-layer each with 82Mbit/s, 108Mbit/s and 128Mbit/s data read speeds, respectively.
HDR reproduces a greater dynamic range of light and dark visuals than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques, improving the appearance of on-screen contrast.
MediaTek plans to mass produce MT8581 for Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray players in the second part of 2016. The company claims it had a big success with two key customers in 2015. Last year MediaTek won contracts from Sony with 4K Android TV powered devices, many high end sound bars and connected speakers.
MediaTek multimedia division won an exclusive deal for the Android 4K Fire TV box that became available in the latter part of 2015 and sold quite well.
