Jay G.

I assume it's the UBD-K8500.
http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-ubd-k8500/

E Unit

If you want to buy 4K from Vudu, you need to via computer. Then you'll be able to stream from your Samsung. But the player widgets are rather limited.

EDIT: Nevermind, looks like Jay's comments confirm you can't stream in 4K with the Samsung.

TheBang

No, you don't need gold-plated cables or even the official "Premium HDMI Certified" cables. All you need is a High Speed HDMI cable.

Sgtsnake

ok thanks for the info guys. Now I need to go grab a few movies. I hear The Revenant looks great ( i thought it looked fantastic at the theater) and I hear Sicario is good as well

DthRdrX

With regard to the HDMI cable, some displays have been showing difficulty with 4K Blu-ray using older HDMI cables over 25ft long. That would be the only time I would advise trying a more expensive cable.

mattysemo247

The title everyone was waiting for before jumping in

Showgirls in 4K coming 9/14! (at least to France, anyways)

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=19549

E Unit

Well - that's reason enough to have 4k. I'm guessing 4k porn is not far behind, if not already.

Adam Tyner

Astonishingly, it's been confirmed today that the newly-announced PlayStation 4 Pro (coming November 10th) will not have Ultra HD Blu-ray support, unlike the recently released Xbox One S and Xbox's forthcoming Scorpio.

Sony talked up UHD streaming, but as far as 4K media goes, that's it.

E Unit

I wonder if not having UHD capability will affect sales. So they're putting all their eggs in one basket by assuming gamers will go digital only. Lame move, but we'll see. Nice job Sony ditching to format you created.

Coral

Well it would only be "digital only" for 4k movies. It'll still have a regular BD player, so it can still play 1080p movies and deliver 1080p and 4k games via a disc.

Josh-da-man

It might be because UHD-BR would add too much to the production costs of the console and push the sticker price above the $400 they were aiming for.

I would think game manufacturers would love to ditch physical media and go online distribution only. It would kill the used market, eliminate manufacturing and distribution costs, prevent trading games, and give them full control over everything.

There's probably also an assumption that the type of people who are going to buy the PS4P are the types who have ditched physical media for watching movies, so there's not benefit for them to include a UHD-BR player.

Jay G.

Except MS managed to put a UHD-BD player in their $300 Xbox One S. the same price as the base PS4.

Adam Tyner

...or to make it easier for Sony to push their UHD streaming/downloads. Or a little from Column A and a little from Column B. I really don't know.

I still have one preordered, but this definitely did surprise me, especially from a console with "Pro" in the name that's 4K this and 4K that.

bruceames

A little surprised at this. They should at least have offered a model with UHD BD playback, but there not doing so certainly confirms their indifference towards a format that they helped create and their ambitions to get consumer to transition to Digital HD.

Now ironically Microsoft will be playing the Trojan Horse role for UHD BD. Never would have seen that coming.

milo bloom

That's very surprising about the PS4.

We've been reassessing our household video game systems and we'd recently been thinking that the PS3 will be the last Sony device for us (sticking to Nintendo consoles/handhelds and the PC for Steam). Had the PS4 Pro included a UHD drive, that might have nudged us back that way but the lack of it seals the deal for sure. (And we've never been an Xbox home, so that's out too.)


And as for upgrading to UHD in general, I still have tons of both Blurays and DVDs that we've never watched. I just don't see bothering with a new format (unless there's a killer title, I mean it would have to be the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy type of release) at this point in time.

Maybe if my Bluray player were to die in the next couple years and a UHD player (that could also play Blu and DVD) were at a good price I'd probably get a player and then watch for cheap UHD titles here and there.

PhantomStranger

UHD is primarily not intended for catalog titles. Hollywood isn't that dumb. It's meant as a way to charge more for new movies. They were hoping 3-D Blu-rays were the answer but general apathy by consumers forced them to turn to UHD.

Coral

I'm not one to defend Sony, but the PS4 Pro has beefier hardware than the XBOX One S... so it's not an apples-to-oranges comparison. Adding a UHD-BD drive on top of the already more expensive CPU/GPU/etc would've priced the console too high - something they learned the hard way when they initially released the PS3.

Jay G.

It really can't be that expensive though. The XB1S is $299 for the 500GB model, the same as the PS4 Slim. So MS was able to add a UHD-BD drive to their lower end model without increasing the price any.

fumanstan

I saw this over at a gaming forum NeoGAF, but they sited this breakdown of the XBox One that had the price of the UHD player pretty low. I'm not sure how accurate it is though or know anything about the company doing the evaluation.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...9s-Xbox-Brings

jjcool

Seems like many people are of this same opinion. Maybe Sony saw the writing on the wall, and figured "Why bother?"

Jay G.

Hell, you can get a BDXL burner for a PC for only $50:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136250

A UHD-BD disc is basically BDXL single/dual/triple layer. So $33.50 for a reader drive component doesn't seem far off.

Coral

Well if it really only costs an additional $15.50 to add a UHD-BD over a standard BD drive - then Sony really has their head up their ass. And greed is the first thing that comes to mind. Sony has always been known to price their products higher than competitors even if it offered the same quality (or even lower quality).

I was never going to purchase a PS4 Pro anyway. I was already looking at a XBOX One S - even if it didn't have the UHD-BD drive. The inclusion of one is an added bonus. Although even if there were UHD titles that I were interested in (there aren't), it's insane that titles in the first batch of releases 6 months ago are still priced at $34.99 CAD or higher. Ridiculous, especially when BDs of the same titles start off at just $7.99+ CAD.

PerryD

Perhaps Sony also didn't want to invest in the software required to playback the video. If Sony doesn't have a dedicated 4k player, then creating all of the drivers/codecs/apps or whatever is needed may be too daunting in time for the PS4 Pro launch.

Jay G.

And yet, MS managed to do it for the XB1S, which is already out.

PhantomStranger

I'm guessing that Sony didn't want the PS4 cannibalizing their possible UHD player sales. They sold a lot of PS3s in the beginning that were never used for gaming. No one in gaming makes money on hardware.

It doesn't show a lot of faith in physical media but I could see why Sony didn't include UHD support.