Samsung Quits 4K Blu-ray Player Market

[tripplej]

from forbes,

"Samsung has confirmed to me today that it is no longer going to be making any new models of 4K Blu-ray player. "

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Sorry to see a manufacturer leave but I suspect it has to do more with streaming taking a huge bite out of dvd's.. Any thoughts?

 

[tesseract]

Saw that yesterday, too. There are investing heavily into car/smartphone interfacing, and I suspect streaming is going to finally bury most physical media.

 

[JBrax]

The end of physical media continues to progress sadly. I enjoy renting 4K movies from my local Family Video but I don’t see that option remaining much longer. On the bright side everything I’ve streamed via my AppleTV 4K has been outstanding on both audio and video. Once the update released to stream Dolby Atmos the gap has become quite minimal from streaming and physical disc.

 

[GFOviedo]

About time, the majority does not care for physical media anymore.

 

[JBrax]

About time, the majority does not care for physical media anymore.

I would imagine most of us in this small minority of A/V enthusiasts does care.

 

[GFOviedo]

I would imagine most of us in this small minority of A/V enthusiasts does care.

I stopped caring after my 4th kid. That little evil brat uses the BD disks as hockey pucks! I’ve stopped buying physical media since. I’ve sold most of my BD movies. The last couple of boxes full of BDs were donated to our local library.

 

[tripplej]

We still use dvd's for the car on road trips. Kids have plenty of dvd's to play in the car to keep them occupied. We don't have portable blu ray for the car so it is all dvd.

Streaming is great but so far, I haven't been that impressed but then again, I don't have any 4K stuff. lol.

Sony is still there for blu ray so there is hope the format will still stay a bit longer.

 

[GFOviedo]

We still use dvd's for the car on road trips. Kids have plenty of dvd's to play in the car to keep them occupied. We don't have portable blu ray for the car so it is all dvd.

Streaming is great but so far, I haven't been that impressed but then again, I don't have any 4K stuff. lol.

Sony is still there for blu ray so there is hope the format will still stay a bit longer.

I’ve ripped all of my movies and TV shows and use Plex to stream them to my HT via HTPC and I can also streaming to all of our wireless devices within and outside my network. The audio and video will vary depending on signal strength, but it’s the same or better than DVD outside the network.

 

[Asere]

There is nothing like having the disc right in your hands and know that it is not going anywhere.There is no guarantee when you buy a movie to stream that the site will never go out of business. And yes sure there is no guarantee with physical media but what you already own is yours to keep.

 

[GFOviedo]

There is nothing like having the disc right in your hands and know that it is not going anywhere.There is no guarantee when you buy a movie to stream that the site will never go out of business. And yes sure there is no guarantee with physical media but what you already own is yours to keep.

I’ve been streaming my movies for over 6 years now. Since, I haven’t need no DVD or BD disk to play my movies. It takes me about 20 to 45 min to rip and transfer a movie to my server. The only thing I’ve got to keep an eye is on is on my server’s hard drive. Every two years or so I update the hard drives.

 

[Asere]

I’ve been streaming my movies for over 6 years now. Since, I haven’t need no DVD or BD disk to play my movies. It takes me about 20 to 45 min to rip and transfer a movie to my server. The only thing I’ve got to keep an eye is on is on my server’s hard drive. Every two years or so I update the hard drives.

That's good but you run the risk of the harddrive crashing. That's too much for me though. I rather have the actual media with cover and all and take pride looking at them on my movie shelf. I do respect what you do/ like. That is what makes this hobby so fun that we are all so different.

 

[GFOviedo]

That's good but you run the risk of the harddrive crashing. That's too much for me though. I rather have the actual media with cover and all and take pride looking at them on my movie shelf. I do respect what you do/ like. That is what makes this hobby so fun that we are all so different.

My server has back up disks. No worries about losing anything.

 

[Grayson Dere]

Regarding streaming video quality compared to discs...I do notice banding/blocking a lot in shadow areas in my Netflix streams when at 1080p. What bandwidth do I need to clear it all up? I'm at 5mbps. So far the video I get from blu-ray destroys what I get from Netflix.

 

[AudiocRaver]

Streaming here, except for the rare surround mix (gotta be lossless) or concert video in 5.1.

 

[JBrax]

Regarding streaming video quality compared to discs...I do notice banding/blocking a lot in shadow areas in my Netflix streams when at 1080p. What bandwidth do I need to clear it all up? I'm at 5mbps. So far the video I get from blu-ray destroys what I get from Netflix.

I ran a speed test and this is what I have.

 

[Grayson Dere]

View attachment 12388
I ran a speed test and this is what I have.

That's blazing fast! nice!

 

[GFOviedo]

View attachment 12388
I ran a speed test and this is what I have.

Man I wish I could have the option to run those speeds. I’ve got at&t u-verse and the fastest I’ve gotten is 120 Mbps up and 25 Mbps down, which is enough to stream my movies from my server and Netflix/Hulu without any issues. I don’t have 4K yet.

 

[mechman]

There are definitely issues with streaming still. Compression leads to artifacts and as Grayson noted, banding/blocking is prevalent on most services. I haven't noticed it as much on Vudu with my digital copies but I've seen it on YouTubeTV, Playstation Vue, Netflix, Hulu, Philo and several others. I haven't kept up to date on it but hopefully someone is working on a better compression scheme that eliminates these issues.

FYI - I get 150Mbps down and 15Mbps up.

 

[JBrax]

I honestly don’t see any difference streaming with my AppleTV 4K. Tonight we’ll be streaming Free Solo and Crazy Rich Asians. The trailer for Crazy Rich Asians looked just as good as my physical media discs. My internet speeds are crazy fast and I think that’s the difference.

 

[Grayson Dere]

I honestly don’t see any difference streaming with my AppleTV 4K. Tonight we’ll be streaming Free Solo and Crazy Rich Asians. The trailer for Crazy Rich Asians looked just as good as my physical media discs. My internet speeds are crazy fast and I think that’s the difference.

Wow! Your experience with streaming quality is very encouraging!

 

[Grayson Dere]

Perhaps I'm asking too much from streaming but does Netflix now offer Dolby trueHD listening?
*crosses fingers* : )

 

[JBrax]

Perhaps I'm asking too much from streaming but does Netflix now offer Dolby trueHD listening?
*crosses fingers* : )

Yes, and with my AppleTV 4K I can also stream Dolby Atmos.

 

[mechman]

From my experience it's the venue and the content. Digital movies that I've purchased never seem to have artifact issues. HBO content rarely has any issues. TV programs from a variety of channels almost always exhibit some type of artifacts. The ones that stick out to me are Gotham and Vikings. These issues were present when I used DirecTV satellite as well but they weren't as prevalent.

The other thing that really drives me nuts is the graininess that Netflix adds to some shows. But that is for a different thread.

 

[JBrax]

I find almost all content streamed via my AppleTV looks much better than my cable provider which is Google Fiber.