4K UHD Blu-ray Playback on PC Desktop is officially dead in 2021?

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by mande2013

I was just wondering. Would having PowerDVD 20 and an external UHD drive nullify the need for a set-top box UHD player if I could just connect my laptop to a 4K television and watch discs that way? Besides, PowerDVD is de facto region free since one can reset the number of allowed region code changes for 'regular' blu-ray very easily. I'd need to spend about 350 bucks for a set-top box UHD player that allows region free 1080p blu-ray playback whereas an external UHD drive along with PowerDVD 20 would altogether cost about 250. For the record, I currently have a mid-2015, 15 inch MacBook Pro retina and would be using PowerDVD 20 via Windows. It doesn't have a native 4K display but is compatible with external 4K displays as far as I'm aware.

Ultra HD Blu-ray requires a 7th generation or later Intel Core i5/i7/i9 processor and currently requires SGX. Apple's hardware doesn't support SGX so you can't even watch Ultra HD Blu-rays on a 2020 Mac until the Blu-ray Disc Association and the player software companies figure out a solution. Besides, I doubt that it would output HDR10+ or Dolby Vision, or even output at 24Hz. Oh, and Apple is transitioning to their own ARM-based Apple Silicon, so the companies will have to figure out a way to make it work on an ARM machine (maybe using the Apple Secure Enclave?)