Is there a 4K (aka UHD) disc other than UHD Blu Ray?

Hello!
What we know so far is that a DivX disc is a CD containing SD video that can play in some standalone DVD players and of course the computer. We created these when blank DVDs were expensive to record SD video. It is not DVD quality but a good compromise.

When Blu Ray discs were released to play HD video, we used and still do, AVCHD-DVD discs to record HD video. They are DVD discs containing HD video at 720p or even 1080p and can play in some standalone Blu Ray players and of course the computer. Again not even close to Blu Ray quality but a good compromise.

I am curious if there is any equivalent format to record 4K video on a cheaper DVD or BD-R disc that can play on standalone UHD Blu Ray players (aka 4K Blu Ray players). Has anyone tried to burn a standard .MKV or .MP4 file on a DVD-R UDF or BD-R UDF data disc and play it? Does it work? Just curious.

PS: I don't yet own a standalone UHD Blu Ray player, so I cannot test it myself. I only have a BD-R XL recorder to burn anything from CD, DVD or BD-R formats.

spapakons said:

Hello!
What we know so far is that a DivX disc is a CD containing SD video that can play in some standalone DVD players and of course the computer. We created these when blank DVDs were expensive to record SD video. It is not DVD quality but a good compromise.

When Blu Ray discs were released to play HD video, we used and still do, AVCHD-DVD discs to record HD video. They are DVD discs containing HD video at 720p or even 1080p and can play in some standalone Blu Ray players and of course the computer. Again not even close to Blu Ray quality but a good compromise.

I am curious if there is any equivalent format to record 4K video on a cheaper DVD or BD-R disc that can play on standalone UHD Blu Ray players (aka 4K Blu Ray players). Has anyone tried to burn a standard .MKV or .MP4 file on a DVD-R UDF or BD-R UDF data disc and play it? Does it work? Just curious.

PS: I don't yet own a standalone UHD Blu Ray player, so I cannot test it myself. I only have a BD-R XL recorder to burn anything from CD, DVD or BD-R formats.

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I have the hardware (burner and standalone UHD BD player), but I've never tried it.

Some apparently have recompressed UHD disks onto a 25GB BD, but I don't know whether they showed the result on a standalone player.

I think more people rip their UHD BD collection, recompress the files, and keep them on a NAS.

As an old guy, I keep playing the shiny disks. They seem to be on the way out, to be replaced by streaming. Purists still use disks, but I imagine that streaming technology will improve. I speculate that the streamers might adapt the data rates to what rate your ISP can provide.

I've seen a lot of standards come and go starting from the days of floppys that were actually floppy
it's an inevitable consequence of the way that we are part of the rapid stage of development of PC data storage.

I now use as day to day transfer, devices in the form of a tiny USB device with more storage than I could dream of in the older days. the optical generation of storage was amazing when it arrived but it's now in the process of replacement in the way of previous systems
I find myself with USB "sticks" with 128GB & even 256GB. I have packs of CDs and DVD's that are unopened after several years.

of course the way to transfer data these days is mostly related to internet download that remove the need for intermediate devices.
Of course I ensure that the downloads are stored on Hard Drives and included in backup routines. I am finding that I will often find myself downloading the latest copy of installers rather than use the one on local storage, just to save the need for updates for a download that is not that old

Buying a standalone 4k Blu-ray player for this purpose right now would be an absolute pure waste of time and money IMO. To be able to show a 4k movie file (.mkv file) that is stored on an optical data disc such as a BD-R to friends or family, the standalone 4k Blu-ray player in question would have to support that feature specifically, which not all of them do. On just about any modern 4k smart TV you could get away with just DLNA streaming in 4k and/or play the file directly from a mass storage device that you should be able to hook up to the USB port of the TV. Personally, I, don't tend to do a lot of that because it still has its own unique set of limitations (and possibly some quirks), and these can vary a lot also.

For starters, using my mouse to click on the seekbar of MPC-HC (from K-Lite Codec Pack Full, with madVR set up to automatically change the vertical refresh frequency of the graphics adapter/hardware so it matches the actual framerate of the video file before the playback starts...) in my laptop that I have hooked up to my Google TV from Sony via HDMI to navigate through a movie is still 1000 times more convenient than using the player app in the TV. Similarly, once you have grown accustomed to navigating to video files with File Explorer in Windows and setting up playlists in this manner, etc., it become very difficult to go back to a file navigation menu system that uses the remote of a TV or of a standalone player like any Blu-ray player or Fire TV Stick or Roku or whatever the gimmick, or "stuff".

Especially in view (literally) of the fact that these typical kinds of playback devices/apps are always lacking some capability or feature so they don't always let you do what you want to do or if they do, then they still don't always let you do it how you want to do it. Moving away from MPC-HC + madVR on an HTPC (or on a desktop PC/laptop that doubles as an HTPC) easily compares to switching from Windows to Linux only to find out that you still need to boot back into Windows so frequently, that you stop bothering with it after all, eventually in the end, like, usually much sooner than later. It just leaves that "foul coin-in-mouth feeling". IME anyway...