Samsung quits Blu-ray player market

Samsung Quits 4K Blu-ray Player Market

 

I wonder what the sales of 4k players is like? With the masses losing interest in owning physical media I'm guessing a number of folks will never bother with a 4K player and resort strictly to streaming. Every time I see one of those "10 Ways to Reduce Clutter" articles cds and dvds are near the top of the list. I happen to like physical media BTW.

 

Just another strike in an ongoing campaign to make you pay for something you can't actually hold in your hand.

 

4k is way too niche of a market. How many people have the proper tv and player set-up to tell the difference between 4k and regular blu ray? The difference is less than that between DVD and blu ray.

 

Entire generations will soon be groomed for nothing but pushing buttons or gesturing for whatever entertainment they want. No one wants to get up and physically have to manipulate any sort of media or item, quality be damned - regardless if it prevents any personal data from being shared. Really a remarkable step in the de-evolution of humankind.

 

About 10 generalizations in there based on loads of assumptions and not much else. Awesome.

 

I have to say - I picked up one of the Samsung 4k players relatively cheap - the picture was ok but the controls were terrible. Very difficult to use if you wanted to fast forward, rewind etc. The remote was useless. I picked up a cheap Sony player and it is just better and more convenient in every way. So regardless of why they are stopping making them, I don't think it's any great loss.

 

A bit satirical as well. I forgot how literal things get around here.

 

Great! Maybe that will allow them to focus on building better TVs and offering better customer support.

 

4K resolution for home viewing is pretty much for those that like to sit two rows back from their local cinema theater screen. Vision problems? Why sit that close? I'll never understand it.

As a digital photographer and someone who's spent a lifetime making "sharp" looking images I have a very good understanding of image resolution. I understand what distance does to perceived sharpness especially with lenses that can deliver resolved detail to a sensor.

The distance a viewer has to be to view a large screen 4K, the only size that can take advantage of such resolution is whatever living room size one has which, excluding furniture, needs to be at least ten feet away. Any closer and it's like watching your computer screen 1 ft from your nose and no one views screens like that comfortably. Computer screens are viewed at 2 ft. away and no one watches TV that close up. So 4K has to be appreciated on a much larger screen which forces the viewer to sit much farther back.

Better get a large living room for a 4K big screen. I'm using a used Sony Blu-ray I paid $20 at a thrift store. It plays my BD's very sharp sitting 7ft. from my 720p 32in. Samsung HDtv.

Why do I need Star Wars Blu-Ray to look more sharper and detailed than this even at 720p seven feet away?

 

They are probably dreaming how to get rid of TVs as well. Unfortunately streaming directly to our brains and charging for a subscription is probably far away.

 

Can someone here tell me how they can stream 4K content and not hog bandwidth? I'm having a hard time understanding how the streaming technology is going to manage pumping out that amount of data for all the masses and not have something break or slow down to a crawl.

 

That's what smileys are for.

 

I don't get this 4K stuff either. When we bought our current TV, everything was HD (1080p) and the big upgrade was 3D. We didn't care about the 3D, but our TV does it with passive glasses. The few 3D movies we have are fun, but not essential to my enjoyment.

Our Sony HFTV is 60" and with a Blu-ray playing, it's sharper than any movie screen I've ever witnessed. In fact, when I go to a theater, I actually long to see it on my own TV where the picture will be better.

Now I'm reading threads about 4K computer monitors. Seriously? OK, if you're a professional photographer or someone whose job is exacting graphics, what in the world does the average Joe need with a 4K monitor? And on a laptop yet!?

 

How far away are you sitting to view Blu-rays on your 60in. Sony screen? Distance makes the biggest difference on perceived sharpness over any added resolution.

 

Their panels are proven and used by about 80% of the models in the market, a big chunk of which are used by other brands.

 

Samsung quits Blu-ray player market
only 4K players, correct?

 

6, maybe 7 feet.

 

There is an intermediate and very achievable step. I'm pretty sure sometime soon we will have the option to view TV content through a VR-glasses setup. The video feed will be streamed to your immersive VR glasses where the picture can be made as big as a cinema screen, or any size, in your field of vision (in perfect focus). The image will be projected onto your retinas. This would also naturally lend itself to realistic 3D handling.

The drawback is you have to wear VR glasses, but you won't need a huge screen.

Better codecs. The current new format is H.265 which is very much more efficient than the previous H.264 standard - roughly half the bandwidth for same quality picture.

 

All the Samsung televisions and monitors I've purchased both for home and business in the past 7-10 years have issues that affect the display. The issues are most often due to faulty PCB components / circuit design. Their support sucks, I'm only buying LG and Sony sets now.

 

Generalizations and assumptions based on real world observation and common sense and not being a pollyanna with an emotional attachment to physical digital media if you ask me.

 

Much ado about nothing. When remote controls came out, the curmudgeons of yesteryear thought people had become lazy and the world was going down the tubes.

Just more of the same "things were better in my day" attitude that I see a lot around here. There are advantages and disadvantages to both setups. And no, I find the theory that because something is more easily accessible that it'll turn people into helpless clueless individuals to be *quite* a reach.

 

Fair enough...the last statement was an overreach. But everything leading up to it wasn’t.

 

Agree. I have a 4K TV and a 4K Sony player - I can definitely notice the difference between 4K UHDs and BDs, but it's not as easy as with the jump from DVDs to BDs, and a lot of the difference comes from HDR, not sharpness.

4Ks do look sharper in general, but not with the leap in quality we got from DVD to BD.

I'm happy with my 4Ks and wish they'd crank out more, but most are a decent step up over BD, not a massive improvement.

I can see why it'd be hard to convince the general public. It was tough enough to get them to go BD over DVD, so another even more incremental upgrade that pretty much only shows up on 60-inch or bigger screens will clearly be niche...

 

I may get a 4K when my TV dies, but I'm never going to do it for the sake of an upgrade.