This all started when I received my first UHD BluRay disk. I was excited… I’ve always been a proponent of keeping content in the native resolution as the viewer’s screen and finally, I got a movie that from cradle to grave… is in 4K resolution.
The first step is to rip it. I’ve quickly learned that my bluray reader cannot even read the disk. The Ultra HD BluRay discs are triple layered and will require a newer line of UHD drives. I happen to pick up a LG WH16NS60. Amazon had a good price and of course, who can complain about their 2 day shipping. But wait… there’s more. Of course, the drive doesn’t work right out of the box. Urgh, such is the life of a content handler. I found on makemkv’s forum of other users who got their lg drive to work and thus I followed some directions there and got my drive to be friendly with the software.
After ripping the movie out, I soon learn the exponentially challenging information growth from 4k. Using my favorite settings in handbrake, it would have taken my PC 21 hours to compress. Whoa. Secondly, I only have one client that is 4k capable and thus other clients would be invoking live transcoding to bring it down to 1080p; that will require some processing power.
At the end of the academic exercise, I’ve determined the cost to serve 4k is not worth the gain. Handbrake really left some artifacts compressing 4k, which render the benefits null, and with the hardware requirements, my server just cannot provide an adequate experience. Oh well, until my next server upgrade then!