Why doesn't anyone make 4K Blu-ray players anymore?

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?

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukOPMEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      There’s a philosophical question and a half.

      • You don’t have to care about anything.
      • Some people may care a lot about this.
      • Others (like myself) are concerned enough about it to keep an weather eye on future developments.

      As it looks like only Panasonic are selling a reasonably-priced and widely-available full-featured 4k player, if they decided to stop production tomorrow, all the average consumer would be left with are the current generation of games machines (and the Xbox One). That’s an issue because they don’t support all the bells and whistles that people with home cinema set-ups are looking for and adding them to new releases when few people can see them. Less people will buy 4k releases if they don’t see the value in them (they are felt by some to be the final format for the time-being but downgraded will they justify their price?). This would have knock-on effects for sales of the electronic equipment that would have been used to show the films off to their best effect.

      It’s not a serious issue, questions won’t be asked in Parliament about it, but it is something some people do care about.