What Hi-Fi? ask "Why doesn't anyone make 4K Blu-ray players anymore?"

[blueman_Richie]

Brief but interesting feature at What Hi-Fi? asking why there are so few manufacturers of 4K hardware.

https://www.whathifi.com/features/4k...-seems-to-care

I do find this a tad worrying as when was the last "new" 4K player that hit the market? There is a dearth of choice in machines, isn't there? It seems if you want a decent player you get to choose between a couple of Sony and Panasonic models and that's pretty much it? And it seems (based on posts in this forum) that they all have bugs and/or issues that affect most users in one way or another? If I'm about to spend £1000 on a player I want to know it's going to a) last and b) actually work properly.

[David M]

I do find this a tad worrying as when was the last "new" 4K player that hit the market?

Quite recently I think. When did the Magnetor UDP-800 launch?
They're not the only company to step into the enthusiast void left by Oppo.

And it seems (based on posts in this forum) that they all have bugs and/or issues that affect most users in one way or another?

They all have their quirks, but none that seriously detract from enjoyment. The performance of all BD players is a lot more consistent than Progressive/upscaling DVD players were.

[oddbox83]

What the market lost in 4K are the ten a penny cheap machines.

The 4K player market is focused on the higher end, even more extremely than BD. There is stronger percentage of players from the boutique end of the market with even the big name manufacturers following that model and having a smaller, more defined range of players that stick around for more than one year. We still get a few relatively cheaper machines, which quite deservedly get bashed quite often. 4K needs a higher level of reliability in hardware and processing capability than BD, and that comes at a cost. Look at LG players, one of the few budget 4K player options and they're noisy bits of plastic tat IMHO.

With 4K, you should be looking to pay more upfront, but have a player that lasts for years. That's where I am with my Oppo, over 5 years old and touch wood, it's still going strong.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by David M

They all have their quirks, but none that seriously detract from enjoyment. The performance of all BD players is a lot more consistent than Progressive/upscaling DVD players were.

The only real differences are in user experience (the Sonys have absolutely terrible user interfaces), how consistently they play BD-100 discs (obviously quite an important quirk, so buy a Panasonic) and, of course, HDR format support.

[blueman_Richie]

Originally Posted by David M

Quite recently I think. When did the Magnetor UDP-800 launch?
They're not the only company to step into the enthusiast void left by Oppo.

That article and your comment are the first time I've ever heard of Magnetor, so thanks for flagging that!

Now to raid the piggy bank and find a supplier!

[oddbox83]

While you're checking out Magentar, have a look at Reavon too. And Pioneer.

[Misioon_Odisea]

Originally Posted by oddbox83

While you're checking out Magentar, have a look at Reavon too. And Pioneer.

Pioneer already abandoned us, that's part of the problem. Huge shame too, as their LX500 and LX800 were the only players that were actually on par with the Oppos and the better Panasonics.

They still make the best optical disc drives for personal computers, though. I will definitely get one of their Blu-ray drives for my next build.

[oddbox83]

Oh, I hadn’t realised Pioneer players had also gone the way of Oppo.

[blueman_Richie]

Originally Posted by oddbox83

While you're checking out Magentar, have a look at Reavon too. And Pioneer.

Aaand I just realised I've been spelling Magentar wrong!

[teddyballgame]

Probably because it's a niche market and Panasonic already solved the puzzle. Why spend your resources there

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by blueman_Richie

Aaand I just realised I've been spelling Magentar wrong!

It’s Magnetar. And you have to yell it.

[mkozlows]

Not exactly a highly researched article. Like, when it says "4K Blu-ray discs have seen record sales figures as of late." it links to an article saying that (for one week) 4K had a record market share among discs sold... but we know that overall disc market has been shrinking like 20% y/y, so even in that one week, we're talking about a larger share of a smaller market.

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by Naiera

It’s Magnetar. And you have to yell it.

Yeah, Magnetar and get the letter in the right order when you type it, unlike me.

[LexInHD]

By design, TV makers - specifically, those who offered disc players at any time - make more money and profit off of their Smart TV offerings than they do from selling disc players. The customer/marketing data they get from the Smart TV is monetized by selling it to third-parties. One of the little-known industry facts from the Blu-Ray era was that the "Smart" players often weren't connected to the Internet or weren't used for streaming in the later 2010's, due to the proliferation of Smart TVs and streaming players like the Fire TV and Roku, which began to go wide in the early 2010s, when people really started buying the modern HDTVs and 3D HDTVs. Many of the 2010's vintage BD players I pick up at the local thrift stores haven't had their firmware upgraded to the last release, until I connect them to the Internet, so it's something I picked up on.

[blueman_Richie]

Originally Posted by mkozlows

Not exactly a highly researched article. Like, when it says "4K Blu-ray discs have seen record sales figures as of late." it links to an article saying that (for one week) 4K had a record market share among discs sold... but we know that overall disc market has been shrinking like 20% y/y, so even in that one week, we're talking about a larger share of a smaller market.

I agree. It's kind of why I wanted to post a thread about it because it seemed like it could just be a post from here! It interested me but was so brief with scant information, thought I'd get some expert opinions!

[CatBus]

IMO, Blu-ray players were always getting new models because disc authorship was sort of a wild west, and specs that were perfectly adequate for Year 1 Blu-rays were woefully inadequate for Year 6 Blu-rays. They HAD to release new models or new releases either flat-out wouldn't play (seamless branching as copy-protection shenanigans), or would be missing some bolted-on-afterward feature (Atmos).

But Year 1 4K players can still play today's discs. Yeah, there's quirks, but it's no longer necessary for there to be new models every few years. For a shrinking niche market, they're not going to invest unless, as they did with Blu-ray, they have a better reason.

[LexInHD]

As long as you have a (minimum) BD 2.0 player and disable BD-Live, there should be no issues playing any non-3D titles, bar the occasional weird disc that just doesn't seem to be compatible with what you have. BD 3.0 was simply an addendum for the never-caught-on Blu-Ray audio format and has no bearing on 99.9999999999% of titles. BD 5.0 was 3D and brought a bitrate increase. Atmos was never something that came with a BD hardware upgrade, as it's simply meta-data baked into Dolby TrueHD tracks.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by CatBus

IMO, Blu-ray players were always getting new models because disc authorship was sort of a wild west, and specs that were perfectly adequate for Year 1 Blu-rays were woefully inadequate for Year 6 Blu-rays. They HAD to release new models or new releases either flat-out wouldn't play (seamless branching as copy-protection shenanigans), or would be missing some bolted-on-afterward feature (Atmos).

But Year 1 4K players can still play today's discs. Yeah, there's quirks, but it's no longer necessary for there to be new models every few years. For a shrinking niche market, they're not going to invest unless, as they did with Blu-ray, they have a better reason.

EXACTLY this. HD DVD was born fully formed but Blu was a work in progress, it took a few rounds just to get the full spec executed. Then there came streaming with all the new services that were being added year on year, then there came 4K upscaling, all reasons for the manufacturers to keep updating. But the streaming thing has quietened down (OPPO didn't even put any on the 203/205, good job too), 8K upscaling is dead as a dodo (as big an indicator as any that people don't give a shit about 8K, as HD upscaling then 4K upscaling was jumped on back in the day) and as the 4K spec is complete with the addition of DV and HDR10+ there literally isn't anything else they can add.

Yes, we'd all like updated SoCs that run faster, and drives with much greater error tolerances (or at least betterer calibration out of the factory) but players are not going to get updated just for that.

[CatBus]

Originally Posted by LexInHD

As long as you have a (minimum) BD 2.0 player and disable BD-Live, there should be no issues playing any non-3D titles, bar the occasional weird disc that just doesn't seem to be compatible with what you have. BD 3.0 was simply an addendum for the never-caught-on Blu-Ray audio format and has no bearing on 99.9999999999% of titles. BD 5.0 was 3D and brought a bitrate increase. Atmos was never something that came with a BD hardware upgrade, as it's simply meta-data baked into Dolby TrueHD tracks.

You're quoting specs, but what was missing was horsepower. Yes, assuming a big beefy SoC or disc authors who didn't do anything inadvisable, BD2.0 can play any non-3D disc. But manufacturers cheap out, and disc authors don't stay in their lane.

For example: seamless branching. In itself, not a big deal. As intended, you can use this for localized credits and such. A small number of branches, maybe less than 5 per film, and it works, even on the old hardware. But somebody says, "Hey I noticed that pirates are having a harder time ripping discs with seamless branching", and you suddenly start seeing films with hundreds of branches. Then Atmos comes along. Sure, it's just metadata that the player can and should ignore. But it also inflates the stream size. Unexpectedly large stream size, plus an unexpectedly large number of branches, and suddenly quite a lot of BD2.0 players are choking on discs -- they met the BD specs to play the discs, what they lacked was the power to keep up. And that triggered a new generation of players from manufacturers.

Now the PlayStation was always an outlier. It always had beefier specs than the competition because it doubled as a gaming platform, it had to. So when this wave of new Blu-rays started breaking players left and right, PlayStation owners didn't notice. Their player could deal with the nonsense. This gave the PlayStation the reputation as the most compatible player -- and it was, because it was overpowered and could handle the sort of wild west nonsense that was breaking all the other players out there.

Eventually new players were released that had the power to deal with all the stupid authoring tricks anyone had thought of for Blu-ray. By the time UHD came out, that was a settled issue. Nobody's done something like that since.

[dcx4610]

It's definitely concerning to me. If Panasonic pulls out, we are screwed. With PS5 and Xbox being 4K players, I think those are the mainstream options and will obviously give us a way to play our movies for the rest of our lives but if there aren't any players being made any more, will studios bother even releasing movies physically?

It would be like selling Laserdiscs and hoping that people that still have the players buy them.

My hope is that Panasonic sticks around and we have a few boutique manufacturers like Magnetar pop up to keep everything afloat.

My concern is the mainstream crowd. I really wish companies would promote the format and try to win over new consumers. That's the only way you are going to see a real boom.