By the trailer that looks an awful lot like the old NES game, Solstice. And by 'awful lot', I mean identical.

You can try ebay, too.

Sony guy at Best Buy tried to argue with me that not putting a 4K player in the PS4 Pro was a smart move. Well, not really. To them it might be as they are trying to push streaming rather than physical but will still release what I am guessing to be at least a 400 dollar standalone player for 4K discs. We all know they dropped the ball with that one.

If their strategy was to put out a premium 4K player, they were wise not to undercut it by including it with the PS4 at cost. The dumb thing is that the Xbox One S or whatever already exists.

They have a premium UHD BD player on the way, but it'll presumably be incredibly expensive and definitely won't even be released at retail: it'll be available exclusively to installers. Presumably they'll have a widely available UHD BD player at some point, but it's nowhere on the immediate horizon.

Personally, I don't think Sony is trying to protect standalone UHD BD player sales from another arm of the company. There was a price tag Sony wanted to reach, they didn't want to take a loss, and the extra however many bucks to support UHD BD would've meant a compromise somewhere else. So, out it went.

And out went a lot of sales for people that were going to potentially upgrade their PS4 because of it. Let's be honest here and say that the average customer looking to get a PS4 for the first time and seeing a 300 dollar price tag on one and a 400 dollar tag on the other will go for the cheaper one 9 out of 10 times. The people really aimed at here for the Pro are the current users. I just don't think that upgrades to graphics for 4k owners, and we really don't know just how much of an actual upgrade it is just yet, along with the ability to stream 4k content is enough to sway many of the already installed base to buy another console. The guy flat out told me that the investment these days is to get people to go streaming only. I see that but I don't necessarily agree with that position.

Oh, I'm not defending 'em. The idea of pitching the PS4 Pro as a premium device for the 4K crowd, only to exclude the highest quality UHD content available...I get how they arrived at that decision, at least if my assumptions are on-point, but I think it was a mistake. Probably the best choice they could've made if they were hellbent on keeping the price at $399 and staying in the black-ish, but...

I have no idea how much of an impact this'll have, though. I haven't really gotten the sense from the message boards I read that there's a tremendous amount of excitement for the PS4 Pro in general, with or without UHD BD. It's only a few weeks away, but it doesn't feel like there's a major hardware release just off on the horizon.

I'm a little excited for the Pro but not exactly sure what we will be getting and if those supposedly marked improvements will be as apparent to us as Sony says they will. I guess I will have to wait and see. I would just like to be able to use the full capacity of my new (lower end of the HDR spectrum) 4k tv.

I think it was smart of them to patch in HDR support with all PS4 models, but that might have lost them some potential sales with the PS4 Pro. If I had to buy a replacement PS4 now, it would still be hard to justify spending the extra $100 knowing that it can't play UHD discs. I guess we'll see soon enough if the extra performance is enough to blow people away. If they can improve games like Fallout 4 and make them run that much smoother, it might be worth it to some people to upgrade.

I wanted to throw this out there to see if anyone has experienced this with their PS4. Usually after an hour or so being on, my PS4 will beep a couple times. It's the same beeping noise the system makes right before it powers down. Other than the noise though, it doesn't do anything. No hitching or freezing, no shutting down, etc. Any ideas?

Rumor has it that my ISP is going to institute capacity limits, which would suck for 4K streaming possibilities.

Which ISP?

^ Not sure about him, but mine is Comcast/XFinity, and I got a notice from them that they're upping my cap to 1TB. It was 500GB before, but they previously had a 'no penalties for going over' policy in my area. So now, if I go over 1TB, I have to pay extra. Luckily, I've never gone over 500GB, so I'm pretty safe for now. I don't do a ton of 4K streaming, though. Barely any, really, after downgrading my Netflix back to 2 HD streams only. I still stream 4K on Amazon once in awhile.

Question. Where are all the demos? There's some games I'd love to try but this is very pathetic compared to how there seemed to be constant demos for the PS3. What up?

For some reason this generation there aren't really any demos any more. Not really sure why other then companies not feeling that it's worth the time with all the videos out there.

I actually might prefer that over what my ISP (Cox) has been doing which is raising their prices by a few dollars every other month. My regular cable-internet was $69 just a year ago, and now it's $79 for the same exact speed/service.

After the lukewarm response to Doom's Multiplayer Beta and a rather strong response to its single player demo, there may be a comeback in the near future. Hopefully.

Solstice does appear to be it's main inspiration.

Yep, Comcast.

That would suck--so you pay whether you use the capacity or not.

Your assumption about price increases doesn't make much sense. I imagine whatever discounted deal you signed up for (after 1 year) simply expired.

And your assumption would be incorrect. As I've been with them for far longer than one year. Yes, that first year was cheap ($40), then it went up to $50, and it's been steadily inching upwards ever since. I was only talking about this past year - and I know the increase doesn't make much sense, as that's why it's bothering me. But it is most likely due to increased capacity over the last few years with everyone streaming so much content.

If it makes you guys feel any better, at least they're within range. AT&T hasn't yet figured out how much to charge me.



Mind you, it's a full cable package and 1gbps internet, the price is supposed to be roughly $160, on contract, and I have to fight them call 7 people every month to get credited back.

How long have you been with them? More then 2 years? The way Cox handles their service promotions these days is basically 1 and 2 year price locks, so the only way I can see gradual increases every other month like you describe is if you're out of that promotional period. A simple call to Cox would lock in a new lower rate.

I've used Cox off an on for about 15 years (alternating between various forms of AT&T) in Orange County. They've always been pretty good about offering promotions and avoiding major price hikes for me. This might be a topic better suited elsewhere I suppose.

Been with Cox right around 5 years. Maybe I'll call and complain about the constant price hikes and see if they give me a new deal. Thing is, they have all sorts of bundle deals, but I only want them for cable internet, no landline, no TV, etc.

I guess I'm lucky then. No data caps with 100 mbps. Regular price is $60 a month and I'm on a $50 rate currently.