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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

"Most people I know have bluray players and streaming services, but almost always stream now. I prefer Blu-ray for quality reasons, and also I find some comfort in owning a physical disc"

Many years ago it was accepted wisdom that the very best blu-ray player you could buy was actually the PS3.

I am mildy interested in a blu-ray player and I wonder if, in 2018, the PS4 is the best option - in the same way that the PS3 was at that earlier time ?

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The PS4/PS4 Pro isn't quite as good a bluray player as the PS3 AFAIK, but it's fine. The main issue is that it doesn't play 4k bluray. The Xbox One S & Xbox One X do, though, and the S is one of the most affordable 4k bluray players.

I don’t understand how a 4K Blu-ray movie with 4x the pixel data can fit on a disc that’s only 2x a 1080 Blu-ray. They must compromise the bitrate? HDR must add overhead also?

The codec moved from h.264 to h.265, which is a big boost in efficiency, plus the extra pixels don't require as much information to describe as the original ones. 128mbit seems pretty good given that

Wow. Mind blown. I never thought of the extra pixel density as carrying less marginal data.

It's a great option, but definitely get the proper remote control for it— navigating the menus and stuff with a game controller is really not great.

OTOH, you can get a regular old dirt cheap blu-ray player for <$100 now.

All Blu-ray players have the same problem because there is only a single source for the transports. The transports are all really loud! Kinda ruins the experience for me.

Now there's 4K Blu-ray (which even the PS4 Pro doesn't support). I'm a big fan of the PS3 media remote but the PS4 remote is much worse.

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