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

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by Ruined

What is most sad, is that by and large most people simply don't care. It certainly was a convenient option that was taken away.



In order to legally playback a 4K UHD disc on PC, the requirements list now is almost insurmountable:
* Need to be a 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th generation Intel CPU *with* onboard GPU (not all Intel models, such as those that end with KF, have this)
* Motherboard needs to have an onboard video output, and you have to use this output when playing back discs (instead of your graphics card, for instance)
* Motherboard needs to support SGX and have a BIOS version where it is able to be enabled (not all do, even in above gens)
* Need to use a version of Windows that is old, out-of-date, and vulnerable to security exploits, that supports SGX and automatic updates disabled
* Need to use a monitor that supports exactly 3840x2160 resolution
* Both monitor input and motherboard video output need to support HDCP 2.2
* Need to use old version of PowerDVD that supports 4K UHD discs
* Need a BDROM drive that supports 4K UHD discs

As you can see, you might as well just forget about it because the laundry list is so long its not even worth it.

I would assume that the vast majority of non-Apple machines sold from 2016 to 2020 had the required computing hardware, such as the onboard GPU. All you would have needed was a UHD Blu-ray-capable disc drive. The only time you wouldn't have had an onboard GPU was if you either chose AMD instead of Intel or used or built a machine with a server-based CPU which not many people needed or wanted.

There was a video on YouTube of someone unboxing one of these disc drives and using it to play the UHD Blu-ray of Predator on a pretty typical higher-end laptop of the time, but it appears to have been taken down.