So, I thought to myself, “Why not scope out a new 4K Blu-ray player?” My browsing quickly led me to the damning reality – no one makes them any more.
Well, no one might be a bit dramatic. Panasonic seems to be working overtime to keep the market afloat, and Sony seems to be offering some backup in the form of a couple of models, but that’s about it for the mainstream brands.
There are enthusiast brands, such as Magnetar, with its awesome reference 4K players that also happen to cost between £1700 and £3100 – so they will remain a pipe dream for now. Most of the manufacturers known for producing 4K Blu-ray players, such as Oppo, Pioneer, Samsung and LG, have all packed up production and stopped selling 4K players. Another sign of the streaming times?
Well, it doesn’t seem entirely so. 4K Blu-ray discs have seen record sales figures as of late. This jump, reported by Media Play News, was mostly due to the success of Top Gun: Maverick, which created a surge of interest in 4K Blu-ray back in November 2022.
But whether it’s new releases or 4K re-releases of classic movies, there’s an abundance of new films coming to 4K Blu-ray, so where are the players that we need to, you know, play the discs?
It’s a scaremongering title but I think the core of it is that the current generation games consoles (and the Xbox One) have 4k players and, while they can’t deliver the full 4k experience it’s good enough, especially if people don’t have the TVs to take advantage of the fancy HDR formats. The mass adoption of these consoles will have wrecked the market for standalone players.
As they state 4k discs seem to be doing well (I didn’t realise Top Gun: Maverick had such an impact) and I imagine there’ll always be a few 4k players available for the aficionado.
I play my 4K discs on my Xbox Series X. I’ve been planning to get a dedicated player but I want a modded region free one, and those tend to be quite pricey. Sounds like I need to act sooner rather than later.
I know very little about blu ray, and definitely don’t have the home cinema setup to make the most of them, but I’m interested nonetheless: what can the current consoles not do that a dedicated, fully-featured player can?
This is the first I’d heard about them being limited.
what can the current consoles not do that a dedicated, fully-featured player can?
TechRadar look at both, I’ll just extract the relevant bits but they go into a lot of detail.
First off, if you’ve been enjoying the additional brightness and contrast courtesy of the Xbox Series X supporting Dolby Vision for games and streaming video, that sadly doesn’t translate across to Blu-ray playback. Neither Dolby Vision or HDR10+ are supported for 4K Blu-rays so you’ll have to make do with just standard HDR10 high dynamic range.
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Soundwise, the Xbox Series X 4K Blu-ray player fares much better. It has support for both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X positional audio. The only thing you’ll need to remember is that they’re not there automatically out of the box.
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There are also entire Reddit threads dedicated to 4K titles that apparently don’t work with the console and while this does seem limited, it’s definitely something to take into consideration for your collection.
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However, compared to the PS5 or dedicated 4K Blu-ray players, our testers have noted that the Xbox’s overall image quality feels less precise and natural. Our colleages at What Hi-Fi? agree, noting that “4K images tend to look a little ‘rougher’ too, with slightly more dot crawl in areas of fine detail or subtle colour blends; a more jagged look to some curved or very thin lines; and even some faint but occasionally noticeable horizontal line structure over certain types of image elements - especially clouds and thin horizontal lines” in their PS5 vs Xbox Series X Blu-ray player comparison.
It’s definitely something you’ll want to consider if you’re planning to use this as your primary player. Plus, when it comes to playing standard Blu-rays, the 4K upscaling is a little fuzzier on the Xbox Series X than other players.
PS5:
there are compelling reasons to own both. What we have here is a classic case of convenience and value versus quality and ease of use. There are significant things that the PlayStation 5 simply cannot do when playing discs, and if you’ve invested in one of the best TVs, you want to get the most out of it, right?
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There’s no support for Dolby Vision HDR, and immersive audio playback is a mess.
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The Panasonic also supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ dynamic metadata support, alongside HDR10 and HLG. The PS5 only supports HDR10 and HLG.
Put simply, with a mid-range TV, the PS5’s image performance is almost certainly good enough, but if you’ve invested in a large, high-end TV for home theater thrills, a dedicated player will be a notable updrade.
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It’s also worth noting here that we rate the PS5 as a better Blu-ray player than the Xbox Series X. Its image quality is better – it’s that simple.
tl;dr: they both don’t support the premium HDR formats and getting the top quality sound out can be a bit of a hassle. The PS5 is the better 4k player compared to the Xbox Series X, which is a surprise as the Xbox One X has 4k support and you’d have thought that they’d have built on that to make it a competitor for dedicated players. It wouldn’t surprise me if both went for that in the next generation, although it could kill the dedicated player market.
