Sony’s first Ultra HD Blu-rays will be released in early 2016

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced the first titles to be released in the Ultra HD Blu-ray format in early 2016. A UHD Blu-ray player is required to play the movies.

The first titles to enjoy the extra image quality that UHD Blu-ray should provide are The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Salt, Hancock, Chappie, Pineapple Express and The Smurfs 2. The UHD Blu-ray format was previously set by the Blu-Ray Disc Association in May this year. Initially, the UHD Blu-ray standard was supposed to be ready by the end of 2014, but that didn’t work out.

In addition to a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, the standard offers support for video with frame rates higher than 24fps and HDR. The new format also supports 10bit color and the color space is larger. Normal blu-rays use the rec.709 standard, while the uhd blu-ray discs support the rec.2020 standard.

Also, more sound formats will be supported, such as object-based surround sound data instead of sound separation via channels. The drives themselves have a storage capacity of 66 or 100GB. The UHD Blu-ray players are compatible with the old discs and can play ‘old’ Blu-ray discs if desired.

Little is known about other titles, except that Sony states in the message that it has a ‘large library of 4k films’, such as Fury, Captain Phillips, Men in Black, Ghostbusters, The Fifth Element, Bad Boys, Leon: The Professional, Lawrence of Arabia and many others.