We probably all expected the PlayStation 4 Pro to have a 4K Blu-ray player – Sony's one of the founders of the physical media format, after all. But the supercharged system doesn't, with the Japanese giant favouring streaming ahead of the disc-based playback option. And it turns out even its main competitor Microsoft expected the company to slot one of the spangly disc drives into its impending device.
"I don't want to bait any sort of console war, I have a lot of respect for what Sony does, but analytically, I think they made some interesting decisions in their product that surprised me," lead Xbox planner Albert Penello told The Guardian. "The lack of a 4K disc player, given Sony's media background, was a surprise. Looking at what they've done historically, I don't think many people would have predicted that."
He's right, it is a surprise, and we're of the opinion that the platform holder probably should have included it just to ensure that the option's available for those who want it. When we really stop and think about it, though, we've fully switched to streaming for our television and movie consumption here at Push Square – and while we're in no way suggesting that we're indicative of the general market, the trends do seem to be moving in that direction.
[source theguardian.com, via vg247.com]
Comments 33
I never used my gaming consoles for anything else than gaming so to me its not a huge loss...
@AlejandroMora Like I said in my other article, I've put one Blu-ray in my PS4, and that was only to test it worked while writing the hardware review.
That said, people do use it, so the option's always better to have. Not sure I'd want to pay $50 more for something I'd never use, though...
Tough one.
Even the Man on the Moon is stumped on this one.
My hunch is the disc has had its day I have never been a fan good riddance I say .....
Now S D cards or something along them lines could replace not only the fiddly devices to play these discs but eliminate discs altogether by discs i mean the things that gather granny's finger prints because she aint got a clue what 1 is. they get Scratched they jump far more times than vinyl used to..
Secure Digital is the future http://www.gsmarena.com/sandisk_unveils_worlds_first_1tb_sd_card_just_a_prototype_for_now-blog-20609.php
Goodbye Discs
My PS3 was my bluray player. When I upgraded to the PS4, I kept using the PS3 while I waited for a true remote control for the PS4. I ended up picking up a standalone Bluray player, because I found a decent one that included 5.1 SACD playback, and didn't bother with the PS4 remote when it was finally released. If the Pro would have included a 4K Bluray drive, I would have started making plans to upgrade my TV and purchase a PS Pro, simply for the 4K Blu option.
That said, most of my watching is done by streaming. But, when it's a "family movie night", or something I really want to pay attention to and absorb, I automatically go for a disc. The quality difference between streaming (or, these days, cable, with it's ridiculous compression), and physical media is still too great to dismiss. A disc will give better video (by far), and much better audio.
I doubt I'll avoid the PS5 if it doesn't have the 4k Blu drive, but the Pro just isn't worth it to me without one.
@Longaway Im with you. Same situation. I stream 90% of he time but for family movie viewing i break out the good old PS3. Thing is i have 0 plans to upgrade to a 4K display and even less for 4k bluray. I think Sony tricked MS into making thier box more expensive. And now Scorpio HAS to have 4k Blu ray or MS will have egg on their face.
Personally i think 4K bluray GAMES not movies should be just for the next full generational jump. Dont really know why hey are pushibg it now when clearly the hardware cant do native 4k. Oh well. Im good with my standard PS4 so im not bothered by this.
Perhaps to stop trading in games
@Longaway Really you use a remote for the PS4. I think the controller is just as easy and there also is a PS4 remote. But to be fair I bought a remote for the PS3 never used it.
I agree with @get2sammyb while it's nice to have the option everyone I know including myself dont use discs anymore. All my friends, coworkers, family stream everything. The only one that still buys discs in the people I know is my mom and that's cause she likes having a physical copy. I don't even remember the last time I bought a movie on Blu-ray.
I could see Sony not wanting to add something that very few people would use and cause the price of the PS4 to go higher.
I cannot even stream HD movies so 4k would never happen for me on the PS Pro. I still rent all my bluray movies. 4k Playback in disc format is important for all those who do not have a decent internet connection. So many countries do not have good internet speeds. Even within well developed countries internet speed varies widely.
Sony obviously did the numbers and discovered that not enough people watch blu rays or dvd's to justify the cost so they took it out to make Pro's price compelling.
I dont think you gain that much from a movie by jumping from hd bluray to uhd bluray. Movies are passive and there's only so many wrinkles or spit flicking out of an actors mouths you want to see.
My experience of Blu ray suggests very few films come close to maximising the potential of that format so I don't really see the point in UHD for 95% of movies anyway, this added to the fact that I almost never watch anything on disc anymore and it's not that big a deal for me. A quick search suggests the market is moving to streaming anyway with disc sales dropping dramatically every year so we may look back on this sometime as a very good move from Sony to keep the costs down
I do use my PS4s Blu-Ray sometimes, thing is I hardly ever buy Blu-ray Discs for movies and such, not that I don't prefer the quality it's just streaming is easier and cheaper these days.
@dryrain The thing is, Blu-ray discs look better than what you get on Netflix or the BBC iPlayer, but for me personally, the quality is good enough given the convenience you get from streaming.
I stream mostly, but for the big stuff that I get excited about I go for Blu Ray just for the quality. HAs anybody watched a normal blu ray on a massive 4k tv yet? Any drops in quality or anything like that?
I stream, but can you imagine how much data it takes to stream 4K? It's gotta be through the roof, and this can only mean one thing- increasing rates soon as the larger population starts doing it. Both internet rate increases and Netflix premiums.
I was disappointed as well 4K Blu-Ray wasn't even addressed, let alone dropped. An explanation, even one steeped in marketing spiel, would have eased the frustration gamers like ourselves - and multimedia PS4 users in general - demand. I would immediately have switched to this superior format and evidently it seems to me a cost they were unwilling to swallow a la PS3 to keep the price point.
And Sony were more than just co-founders of Blu-Ray, they own the patent, don't they? Hence why Microsoft adopting it for their console felt like a symbolic victory for Sony. I could be wrong on that 😬
I prefer to only stream the odd film very now and again; there is a direct analogy with music from physical media like CD, to digital. To Galvatron, more and more people are proud streamers, but I still want the on-demand (😝) physical media, which Sammy has pointed out DOES look, sound and play better than streaming, further enhanced on a decent screen. Also, I like to own a collection in tangible terms. Ditto for my games.
Guess I'm still of the Cybertronian age of physical metal, you humans even have digital 'friends'....
Given that I also still tether my phone and hardly ever suffer lag in games where it counts - Destiny, Driveclub, Pro Evo, GTA Online - I'd prefer to swerve the standard broadband deals and still enjoy multimedia gaming on the fly.
4K BD won't make or break anything. It's like less than 1% of media sales.
As long as the Pro plays regular 1080p BD and 3D, that's good enough for movies.
I actually felt like buying 4K blu-rays since I got a 4K TV and there is barely any proper media out there. (e.g. Mad Max in 4K exists only on Blu-Ray), so I was pretty much ready to order a few blu-rays and now Sony killed it for me, and actually saved me a bit of money.
So I will buy the PS4 Pro anyway because of a few certain games (e.g. Horizon and FF15 for a performance boost), but now I am more interested in the XBox Scorpio and will probably buy that one as well, if Sony doesn't push out another competitive console by the end of next year WITH a 4K blu-ray player inside.
If the XBox One S had the same power like the PS4 Pro, I would have gone for that one.
The PS4 Pro doesn't have a basic 4k disclette reader thingy. Whaaa... how am I going to play all of those upscaled £20+ 4k Blu rays I was planning on buying? Oh, right, if I'm willing to pay insane amounts of money for a UHD disc then I may as well just buy a dedicated player. Or, just be sensible and make do.
If the industry stopped trying to rob us all and sold all discs new at 10 quid and ageing junk at a 5 then MS might have a point. As it is, £20 a disc. Do one.
For me not having a 4K player is not an issue. For adding any cost to the Pro i think a larger faster hdd and improved controller would currently be more usefull to most gamers.
My PS4 is for games my UHD Blue-Ray player & Sky Tv is obviously for films & TV, there not call a "Games" console for nothing.
It kept the price down. I think it was a good move.
4k this, uhd that. Hdr, gddr5, 1080p, cd-Rom?? Kids these days don't have any real values. Now it's all just Mario and computers, electronic pets and money on plastic cards. Why don't y'all go outside and play for a change?
While I think, for me, it would have been beneficial to have the drive to play Blu Rays since I do that sometimes, for Sony they're better off without it. It's more important to keep the price down so the casual market (who don't care either way) don't baulk at the price.
I still remember PS2 was my DVD player mostly for the first year I owned it. It is kind of funny that Sony didn't support a format that they themselves made, especially based on their history (PS3 being a bluray player was an extra reason to buy the system). I don't buy many physical discs anymore but the ones I do, I get because of special features included, 3D and now 4K UHD discs included. While streaming is the way I mostly consume films and television, 4K streaming can be problematic sometimes and the increase in data size can be an issue for me. If I actually started streaming 4K content on a regular basis, I could only imagine what my internet bill would look like at the end of the month.
Like was said at the end of the article, I think Sony should have had the feature in the console but it isn't necessarily a deal breaker for me. It just has made me take a wait and see approach with the Pro system. There is limited 4K content available right now, so why limit consumers. UHD is one way to watch true native 4K content and I would have liked that option. Especially since it was hard to see from the live stream of the Playstation Meeting event what the actual visual benefits of the PS4 Pro were (mainly because it was streamed at 1080p and even the 4K videos later released didn't support HDR), the inclusion of a UHD player would be an easy way to add value to the system. Since 4K Bluray players are still pretty expensive right now. Xbox One S is actually the most inexpensive option available and all the publicity that Microsoft is getting out of that feature being available on their console and not on Sony's looks a little bad. How much it actually affects people's decisions as to which system to buy this holiday, I'm not sure.
Personally I'd rather a lower price point than a drive I would never use.
If I get one, I very much doubt I would use it for UHD BD. I have watched one BD film on my PS4 and it was a friends that I had borrowed!
I used to be a bit of a DVD whore back in the day but the price of a BD movie and the massive price (to me) of UHD BD's means I would never buy them anyway. Sony should still have offered the option though, I reckon around £400 for the UHD drive version.
I use the PS3 as the blue ray player in the house, but other than that, I don't really use the PS4 as one. But I also don't have a 4K television...my guess is that they didn't include it to keep costs down for the time being...being that the holiday season is approaching, and they want their console to be a seller and have it be as cheap as possible to get the sales. My guess...Sony will add another Pro with 4K Blu ray after the holiday. Let's not forget how many times the PS3, PSP and all nintendo handhelds go through iterations.
As much as I'm not a fan of the Pro, I totally agree with Sony's decision to not put a 4K drive in the console. Looking back to E3 2013 when Microsoft was championing TV,TV,TV! and Sony focused on gaming, everyone agreed Sony did the right thing. There was barely even a murmur when the PS4 released without CD or 3D support because we all wanted console primarily for the games. This is just a continuation of that, keeping the price low by focusing on the primary use for the device.
Most people are only confused by the move because they are not factoring in the extra £50-100 they'd have to pay for the console if it did have this feature. The £350 price point is a pretty strong one, but when you start pushing into the £400+ price range it becomes a bit less of a price most people can comfortably spend on the occasional month. The only thing I might say could have been done different was maybe release a deluxe edition sporting the drive for people who want to pay that premium, but I guess that may just confuse the market more.
I am curious to ask to someone who has seen 4k footage on a tv: is the difference actually relevant from standard 1080p hd resolution?
I have quite a big tv and when I play on ps4 I cannot distinguish any pixel.
At what tv size do you start to see any difference?
How would you compare the passage from hd to 4k, and the passage to PAL/NTSC to hd?
I remember being very impressed by the first games in HD, that was such a huge leap.
Ive got a 4k tv and a 4k uhd bluray player and yes the quality is worth it and the difference is easy to see with the upgrade and image is better than streaming, also call me old fashioned but im still one of those people that like to physicaly own something. I am a massive ps4 fan always have been but il be hounist i think im going for the scorpio this time round, i want a machine that can be displayed at 4k and not just scale upto. I wanted sony to bring out the big guns but they flopped on this one to save on price.
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