Sony launches its first new 4K Blu-ray player in over five years

[HDTV1080P]

Originally Posted by Robert Zohn

Since BD players do not need the streaming applications it was very good for Sony to remove the streaming applications and make the user menu focus on the playback of BD, DVD, & CD discs.

Sony's new UBP-X700U 4K HDR BD player has a very nicely improved user menu that has less clutter and loads and responds faster.

While all prior Blu-ray players from Panasonic and Sony for the last 15 years have had built in streaming apps, this is the new norm to remove streaming apps from all new Sony and Panasonic Blu-ray players introduced. OPPO Digital Inc had streaming apps until the day they introduced the new improved UDP-203 in 2016 and UDP-205 in 2017. Removing the streaming apps and removing WI-FI keeps the cost of the player lower because of inflation. The WI-FI module costs money and also WI-FI can add interference to the printed circuit board when enabled. It costs less money to pay a programmer to only write firmware updates to the player and no streaming apps to manage. But with at least with the OPPO we got a new and improved players back in 2016 and 2017 when they dropped the streaming features. Sony is just using a small amount of hardware modification to the existing 700 and 800 series players by making them cheaper to make with no streaming and WI-FI and then raising the cost because of inflation. But the street price difference might be only $10 or $20 more when compared to the old models.

Maybe Sony and Panasonic might surprise people and launch a new 8K optical disc format sometime in 2026-2028 timeframe. Then releasing entry level lower cost 4K Blu-ray players like these in 2025 would make perfect sense.