While Sony might be pioneers of the Blu-Ray disc, the company seems to have fallen behind a bit when it comes to 4K/UHD Blu-Ray players. While several manufacturers have already shown off upcoming models for release this year, with Samsung launching its own UHD player earlier this week, Sony won't have a 4K Blu-Ray player of its own on the market until next year according to reports.
This information comes from Twice, and according to them, Sony has a few reasons for being so late to the Ultra-HD Blu-Ray player party. Firstly, Sony wants to wait until there is a healthy amount of 4K Blu-Ray movies on the market so people actually have a reason to pick up a new player and secondly, Sony wants to do things “the right way”.
Back at CES, Sony's CEO did state at one point that the company would only launch a 4K Blu-Ray player if the platform is successful, fearing that UHD streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video may diminish Blu-Ray popularity.
Another thing that may hinder UHD Blu-Ray adoption is price, Samsung's first player comes in at $400, while the first movies are said to release at over $40 in the US, so content is going to be quite expensive for a while.
KitGuru Says: 4K/UHD TVs have rapidly taken the market by storm and plenty of people have bought in already, now we are just waiting for the content to catch up. Do any of you own a 4K TV already?
Pff these players need to be <$200 and movies need to be <$25. Regular Blurays can drop to $15 and people really shouldn't be on DVD anymore but i guess those can drop to under $10
Meh $400 for a player isn’t the issue. The $40 a movie is. But give it a year and they will all start to drop as it becomes more common. The thing that is really holding it back is stuff like Sky TV, BBC etc where they charge extra for HD or don’t even offer that let alone 4k options. Until we move away from SD to HD as standard and 4k as the premium option then we will be held back.
Dropping those truth bombs like this disqus chat is Hiroshima.
I don’t understand why it’s going to be so expensive. I have had a quad layer blu ray rom burner in my pc for 5 years, and can burn on 128GB disks. I upgraded to a faster drive 2 years ago. These drivers range from one to two hundred dollars. The tech has been around for a while.
It’s not the size only that we need to consider, it’s the bit rate that the disc will transfer also as they will be playing at maximum 60fps at 4k which current players and discs can’t do.