4K Player

Yarmy

Hi,

I bought a new TV earlier in the year (LG 43" Nano80A6B) and had been thinking of getting a 4k disc player - I currently had an oldish blu ray player which I'm using with the TV.

I wondered if anyone knew much about them and if the combination of TV & player would be enough of a jump in quality to justify the cost of buying one ? I'd been looking at either a Sony or Panasonic 4K player.

Thanks Steve

flaneurs_lobster

Presumably you are able to view UHD content on your TV by streaming? That would give you a good appreciation of how much "better" UHD is when compared to your (HD) blu ray content.

I'd check it it out carefully if I were you, many sources suggest that you would be unlikely to see any/much improvement on a TV of 43", most suggest a minimum of 55" is needed to perceive the improvement of UHD over HD in a normal room setting.

Vitor

On a 43-inch screen, the improvement from 4K discs may be noticeable, particularly with HDR and better compression, but it probably won’t be a night-and-day difference unless you sit fairly close. I’d only buy a 4K player if you intend to start buying Ultra HD Blu-ray discs.

Yarmy

OK, thanks for letting me know. Perhaps I'm better sticking with the blu ray player until I can get a better quality TV

Neil_Jones

4k Players are quite expensive. The media is quite expensive.

4k is quite strange because its been around for a decade or so and its always been expensive compared to DVD and Blu-Ray. Normally you'd expect new technology to be expensive initially because its new or relatively unique, and then when every man and his dog is making a player the price tumbles. That hasn't happened for 4k which makes it relatively niche and relatively more expensive.

That being said, physical media looks like it might be on the rise again, having declined year on year since streaming was a thing.

MyRealNameToo

Physical media is always going to have the edge, most bluray disks use a higher bitrate than 4k streaming on the likes of Netflix however streamers use highly efficient compression so a direct bitrate comparison isnt a true comparison of results. UHD disks are up to 3 times the bit rate of blue ray so the difference is even more extreme.

Personally, having both streaming and UHD player (Panasonic) the difference is much bigger in the sound than the image… clearly the bigger the screen the more easy the difference in picture is to see. On our 55" TV is noticable but not massive, on our 120" projector its more noticable, particularly in fast action scenes and closeup shots

Yarmy

Hi,

I was watching a blu ray film at the weekend (Saving Private Ryan) and think I'll stick with the blu ray player for the time being. As mentioned above the 4k discs seem quite expensive when compared to the blu ray discs, so it perhaps isn't worth the cost at the moment.

Thanks