Samsung Stops Producing Blu-Ray Players

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

There was an article in Forbes a couple days ago that said Samsung is getting out of the 4K Blu-Ray market

Samsung Quits 4K Blu-ray Player Market

However now Samsung has issued a statement that not only will they no longer make 4K players they are abandoning the 1080p Blu-Ray players too.

https://gizmodo.com/samsung-gives-up-on-blu-ray-will-not-release-any-new-p-1832677471

Will this be the beginning of the end soon for Blu-Ray discs and players. I have a Sony Blu-Ray player BDP-S5100 it’s not a 4K but I really like it. I would hate to see this format eventually die but there saying Blu-Ray disc sales are down. I guess streaming is killing the format?

 

[Rudy]

Downloads and streaming probably contributed to it. I don't follow video much anymore (I have little interest in it), but it likely parallels what has happened to CDs. At least with music, though, the CD is actually an outdated digital format, and most new releases are coming out as high-res files in addition to CD-resolution, along with the poor sounding lossy downloads from places like itunes, Amazon and Google Play (who IMHO are several years behind the curve in terms of technology). The only way to get this better quality on disc is either via the long-dead DVD-Audio format, release them on SACD, or release on BluRay discs. It's hard to convey the number of high-res titles available now, but Qobuz alone has over two million high-res tracks in their library.

As video technology changes, they will outgrow the capacity of physical discs. 4K has barely caught on--there is still very little programming for it, whereas 1080p and 720p are still the standard for "HD" (based on antenna and cable broadcasting, as well as BluRay) and a pretty much widely accepted standard. Yet now they are talking about 8K, and have already been showing prototypes of a format nobody really has an interest in. I think 4K is taking off primarily due to the manufacturers not offering 1080p sets like they used to. But we still have precious little programming for it.

Oppo sadly stopped production on their players as well--granted they are higher end, but few others had 4K players like the UDP-203 and UDP-205 that could also stream and play back just about every video and audio format available. (I knew many who have purchased both of these players for the audio portion only.) Reading between the lines, it seems as though they felt that 4K was not worth pursuing even on the higher end of the scale.

The best thing might be to find a good, reliable 4K player or two and stash them away for a rainy day. Samsung is more about TVs and smartphones though, so it's possible others will hang on longer in the market.

Any 4K video here, I would play through my NVidia Shield, either from files on my server or streaming (if I had a streaming service subscription). Other companies (like broadcasting networks and movie studios like Disney) are looking into launching their own streaming services in the near future, so that is likely how this will all play out long-term. I would think there are ways to download video now as well. I've found a few 4K videos on YouTube, including one that is a 70 minute mandelbrot set (which is pretty wild to watch).

 

[Harry]

Regular HD streaming from places like Amazon is STILL not as good as a Blu-ray disc on an HDTV. And 4K streaming - or beyond - will require so much bandwidth that most services will find ways of compressing it down.

If I ever get a 4K TV, it will be because I cannot find a decent 1080p television, which is way good enough for me.

 

[Bobberman]

Sadly technology just continues to pile up on top of each other and every few years something is made obsolete to me it's not always a good thing and folks like myself just can't afford to buy everything all over again. I can't even find a good VHS player anymore so my vintage Panasonic VCR is all I have left to play my tapes until I can find a way to transfer them to some kind of digital form to my laptop or similar high capacity device all my tapes were recorded the 6 hour ep mode and I have over 400 tapes from a almost a 20 year span of time but I see everything changing so fast it's not just audio or video But it seems Everything.

 

[Rudy]

If I ever get a 4K TV, it will be because I cannot find a decent 1080p television, which is way good enough for me.

I am glad I waited, as prices have dropped on 4K and it seems that it's mostly the smaller TVs (under 40 inches) that are 1080p now, at least in the couple of brands I looked into. I ended up with a mid-line LG 4K, and the smaller 43" LG in the front room that was a less expensive 4K model was only $250-ish during the holidays. The larger one here in the family room works well enough for our gaming and the occasional hockey game. One thing I do like is that it uses so little power, I can leave it on to display travel photos in full resolution, although I do turn it off when doing serious listening as LED TVs put a lot of "noise" into the household power grid (due to the switching mode power supplies they use).

I'd have preferred an OLED, of course, but given that they still haven't licked the burn-in issue, I'd wait a few more years until they cure that and the prices drop. I've never seen a better picture than on an OLED. It is that impressive.

I've seen a few 4K streaming programs that looked perfectly fine to me. I sampled one on Amazon when I had Prime for a month and saw no issues. Even YouTube has gotten their act together, and a couple of the videos I've watched there have been crystal clear (no artifacts). These Mandelbrot sets on a large screen at 4K/60fps are stunning.

I can't even find a good VHS player anymore so my vintage Panasonic VCR is all I have left to play my tapes

The thrift stores around here are full of old VHS decks. They're nearing the disposable level at this point. I know the thrifts here won't even take CRT TVs anymore. Which is a shame, as I still have a few at the house that work fine, but nobody wants them anymore!

 

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

Sadly technology just continues to pile up on top of each other and every few years something is made obsolete to me it's not always a good thing and folks like myself just can't afford to buy everything all over again. I can't even find a good VHS player anymore so my vintage Panasonic VCR is all I have left to play my tapes until I can find a way to transfer them to some kind of digital form to my laptop or similar high capacity device all my tapes were recorded the 6 hour ep mode and I have over 400 tapes from a almost a 20 year span of time but I see everything changing so fast it's not just audio or video But it seems Everything.

I was in this same spot quite a few years ago...I had a bunch of old VHS tapes that I was hanging on to and finally got around to converting them all to DVD-R (took forever) but I finally got it done. Then as soon as I was finished my Panasonic DVD-R recorder DMR-EH50 crashed and no longer will make a DVD-R disc. I must have burned it out with all the converting I did.

The way that Panasonic worked was it had a HDD inside so everything I captured from my VHS tapes was on the HDD and then I burned what was on the HDD (separated programs) to a DVD-R. So I can still turn on the machine and see all my programs on the HDD I dubbed from my old VHS tapes. I just can't burn anything anymore to a DVD-R because it won't record to a DVD-R anymore.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

When VHS was in its heyday I "subscribed" to a few of the old classic TV shows on tape. They would come once a month with four episodes on a tape for about $24 per tape. I amassed a pretty big library over the years. Then along came DVD box sets where you could buy whole seasons for about $25, rendering all my old tapes obsolete. I collected most of those shows on box sets and heaved the tapes into the trash.

I hate to see BluRay go away....not just for the picture quality but for the "extras" they would put in. I enjoy watching a movie with a good commentary track or a "making-of" feature.

 

[Harry]

I've not experienced this yet - but I have read of others' discovering that their new 4K TV makes their old DVDs look like crap. In other words, the newer the TV technology gets, the worse the older technology appears on it. Right now, I feel like we're in the sweet spot, where DVDs still look pretty darned good on an HDTV, and Blu-rays look really close to perfect.

Why muck that up? (I know, planned obsolescence.) I selectively buy my real favorite movies on Blu-ray and am resigned to leaving a lot of the other material on DVD. It looks decent enough on the occasions that I need to watch it. And there are still so many TV series out there that have only ever been released as DVDs - even today.

If I ultimately get a 4K TV, I'll be happy if it doesn't totally mess up the way a DVD appears on it through a Blu-ray player.

 

[Rudy]

Then as soon as I was finished my Panasonic DVD-R recorder DMR-EH50 crashed and no longer will make a DVD-R disc. I must have burned it out with all the converting I did.

Is it worth getting it fixed? Thing is, it might cost as much as buying another one. One idea might be to find the same player, maybe with the DVD-R drive still good but the hard disk bad, and swap the good parts for the bad. A donor player is probably a lot cheaper than buying parts, and if it lasts long enough to get all your video to DVD-R, that's a good thing.

I hate to see BluRay go away....not just for the picture quality but for the "extras" they would put in. I enjoy watching a movie with a good commentary track or a "making-of" feature.

There must be a way they could offer that. Even if they did it via YouTube as freebies. But on the other hand, those extras cost money to produce, and the studios might think they can save a few bucks.

I've not experienced this yet - but I have read of others' discovering that their new 4K TV makes their old DVDs look like crap.

The upscaling must work fairly well on my end--it doesn't bother me and is certainly watchable.

 

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

Why would that be the case? Is the 4K trying to upscale the resolution of the DVD and then causing distortion? I didn’t know about that...I’d be pretty angry if I had spent all that money on a 4K tv to find my DVD’s look worse than on a HD tv.

I still have one of Sony’s first HD TVs, I’m waiting for the day when it craps out but so far still working perfectly. It’s a Sony KDL-V40XBR1 that I got in 2005 and it weighs about 65 lbs. it’s only a 720p but I’ll never forget when I first used it and experienced HD for the first time. I was watching one of those programs on Discovery of the Grand Canyon and it was like I was there traveling through all these majestic scenes high in the air to down below in the rivers. Awesome.

This model came with a Cablecard and I saved a lot of money from Comcast as the card only cost $1.50 a month vs $9.99 for their cable box. However that all stopped a couple years ago when they passed something about converting digital channels and soon got a ltr from Comcast that the Cablecard would not be picking up all the channels like it was before. Sure enough I lost a ton of channels so I was forced into getting a cable box for $9.99 a month.

Before I took the plunge though I research cutting the cord and going with Hulu, PlayStation Vu, YouTube and all the other streaming services but none of them offered all the channels I got from cable. Either they were missing critical channels I wanted or to get them I had to bump up to a higher tier and it ended up that it was only going to be saving $20.00 to $40 less but I was still losing a bunch of cable channels.

When I ordered the new X1 box from Comcast they told me I was out of contract so they locked me in for a lower monthly rate (amazing how low they will go when you tell them you want to cut the cord and go streaming, got transferred 3 times to a mgr lol)

So I’m happy now, much lower monthly rate, new X1 cable box works pretty cool there’s even a free app for YouTube that I can watch you tube on my tv which I couldn’t do before. It also has this awesome remote that I can speak into and say CNN and it goes there automatically. Sure beats getting up off the couch to go and change the tv channel, huh? Lol

 

[Rudy]

It's different here--fast Internet is something I need for my jobs, so that's where the money goes. My other half has Netflix and occasionally gets Hulu if there's something she wants to see, so monthly costs are minimal. (My Qobuz subscription costs more than her video, so, there's that. ) I'm just not a TV watcher. We get good reception from Canada (I point the antenna south towards Amherstburg), so that is where I get my NHL fix. Our local team is pretty lousy lately, but I'm open to watching good games from other teams around the league, especially since Hockey Night in Canada features games that feature at least one Canadian team in the matchup for both the early and late games. During the playoffs, they televise many of the games, including the semi-finals and finals.

I think what drives many people to cord cutting is that they have to subscribe to these big 140+ channel packages to get the half dozen or so stations that they regularly watch. And with so many cord cutters out there now, subscriber rates are falling, and the cable companies further have to jack up their prices to cover lost revenues. I am thinking that what will happen is that we will hit a tipping point where many of these cable networks will realize that cable subscriptions are a losing game, and they will serve up their own a la carte offerings as streaming. (And if they're smart, they will stick to the monthly subscription and not tie users in for a year.) I'm betting some are waiting to see what Disney does with their forthcoming streaming services. Especially with their ties to ABC and ESPN.

And many are learning that they get by in life by missing a few channels. I've actually never had a cable TV connection. I did have DSS satellite (which was programmed by DirecTV and USSB back in the early days) and was one of those early adopters out on a ladder aiming the dish. I miss it. It was cheap at $29.99/month and covered every basic channel. DirecTV absorbed USSB (who carried the "big four" movie channels), and soon their prices escalated to cable TV rates, sadly.

I do hope that downloadable movies will become more commonplace. It only makes sense. Companies like Netflix offer only the most popular titles, on a rotating basis. A deep library of downloads we can purchase would be ideal.

 

[tomswift2002]

I had a Samsung Blu-Ray player once about 10 years ago. It only lasted about 2 years (got it when Star Trek TOS was being released on Blu) and then I had to get a PS3 as the Samsung started skipping on every disc of any kind (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray). I had had 2 Samsung DVD Recorders in the previous 4 years that only lasted about 1.5 years each, and one I even got fixed while under warranty and the same problem occurred a year after getting it “fixed”. Samsung used to be good, but their quality really slipped in the 2000’s.

But I’m still watching stuff in 1080p. I’ve seen some stuff at 4K from the original camera files, but when it comes to streaming, I might as well be watching VHS at SLP. And 4K Blu Ray is a little better, but really I find it’s about as good as a regular 1080p Blu-Ray, and I chock that upto the compression. The stuff coming out of high end camera’s is coming out with bitrates between 500Mbps and 10Gbps whereas UHD Blu-Ray can only do 128 Mbps max. Really, it’s like the 90’s where you could shoot on Digital Betacam, but most people would only see VHS quality copies. Yeah both were Standard Definition, but one was really great and the other was ok.

And with cable, satellite and antennae, here in Canada, 1080i is the max as that is what in the ATSC standards. If you want a 1080p or higher channel then your cable/satellite box needs to have an internet connection as 1080p and 4K can only be distributed over internet. But I don’t even subscribe to HD, as the bit rates are very low, even in SD. I know that the ATSC standard allows for upto 38Mbps, however that can be used is 19Mbps, as stations have to send 2 streams for error correction (unlike DVD and Blu-Ray players that have built in error correction for dealing with data damage, TV’s and cable/satellite boxes do not, so if there are errors with one stream, then there needs to be a second stream that the tuner can switch to to, hopefully, present an image that plays fine with no sign of error), but even then most stations compress their HD signals to around 10-13Mbps and their SD signals to 4-5Mbps so that they can send more sub channels. Then with cable/satellite those companies recompress the signal so they can send more channels on their satellites and cable lines, to where for HD you are anywhere from 8-11 Mbps, and SD you are around 2 Mbps. And that’s variable-but-rate, so you end up with pixelated images during high-action scenes (I’ve seen quite a few sports like Hockey where all you see is a collection of Pixelated squares chasing the pixelated black square puck, because the bitrate dropped to where the image could not be sustained, in both HD & SD) because the channel you’re watching and another channel are both showing high-action scenes and there’s not enough bits on the band for both channels.

But, for me, I’ve even gone back to tape to record stuff off of TV, especially programs that I’ve worked on and cannot get a copy any other way. I’ve got a D-VHS that I can use to record at 28.8Mbps or 14.4 Mbps for SD material (and really I can only record SD on it, as it only accepts HD by FireWire and I haven’t been able to find any TV boxes with FireWire out) and it gives a much better quality picture than even my DVD Recorder, especially for programs longer than 2-hours (I’ve got some ST-180 SVHS tapes that I can use on the 28.8 setting and record 3 hours in that without worrying about pixelated images or “floating” colours due to low bit rate). Or I can switch the machine to S-VHS mode and record in S-VHS SP.

 

[Rudy]

I’ve seen quite a few sports like Hockey where all you see is a collection of Pixelated squares chasing the pixelated black square puck ...

Isn't that like a huge crime in Canada? The only NHL hockey I watch comes from the CBC affiliate in Windsor, Ontario (CBET), over the air. (I have a second antenna set up pointing south to Amherstburg, with my other pointed southwest towards Southfield for our local affiliates). There are rare times during really bad weather that I might get some pixelation and dropouts on CBET but otherwise, it comes through really nicely here. I'm not sure if their maximum resolution is 720p, 1080i or 1080p but everything comes through nice and clear.

I have streamed some 4K/60fps via YouTube that looks excellent (the Mandelbrot sets, like the one I posted above) and have also watched a few of the recent "Ask Paul" videos from PS Audio that are also posted in 4K. I sampled one on Amazon's service when I briefly had Prime, and it looked fairly good as well. But for sure, I don't expect the same out of a cable box. My main concern now is for the few video programs I do collect here--mainly, how to store them, since they take up a lot of room on the server.

 

[tomswift2002]

Isn't that like a huge crime in Canada? The only NHL hockey I watch comes from the CBC affiliate in Windsor, Ontario (CBET), over the air. (I have a second antenna set up pointing south to Amherstburg, with my other pointed southwest towards Southfield for our local affiliates). There are rare times during really bad weather that I might get some pixelation and dropouts on CBET but otherwise, it comes through really nicely here. I'm not sure if their maximum resolution is 720p, 1080i or 1080p but everything comes through nice and clear.

I have streamed some 4K/60fps via YouTube that looks excellent (the Mandelbrot sets, like the one I posted above) and have also watched a few of the recent "Ask Paul" videos from PS Audio that are also posted in 4K. I sampled one on Amazon's service when I briefly had Prime, and it looked fairly good as well. But for sure, I don't expect the same out of a cable box. My main concern now is for the few video programs I do collect here--mainly, how to store them, since they take up a lot of room on the server.

CBC is 720p (they used to be 1080i, but they dropped to 720p a few years ago which helps with quality). I’ve seen CBC Ottawa on antennae, and while it looks better than on cable/satellite, it looks only as good as an unconverted DVD. But no channel uses the full 19Mbs. Most sports channels send out a 14-17Mbps HD signal because of the high action in sports, but once the cable and satellite companies recompress the signal, you are lucky to get 11Mbps. And your regular broadcast channel like CBC usually sends out about 10-11Mbps, but on cable your are lucky to see 9.0Mbps. Years ago I was told a rule of thumb in regards to broadcast vs. Blu-Ray comparison: broadcast is comparable to one level lower than Blu-Ray. So if you have a 1080i Broadcast, it’s only comparable to 720p on Blu-Ray.

I’ve also seen low bitrates on DVD’s (I can think of the live-action “Bordertown” from Alliance on Echo Bridge—-the average bitrate is about 2.3Mbps, so I can make out the people but background details like leaves on trees look like nothing more than squares quivering in the breeze).

As for YouTube, from what I’ve seen online, 4K is only streamed at 51Mbps or lower which is lower than UHD Blu-Ray’s lowest bitrate of 82Mbps. Netflix, from what I can tell, compresses 4K movies down to around 25Mbps, which what your average 1080p Blu-Ray is encoded at.

 

[GDBY2LV]

I have a lg hd/blu-Ray, Sony blu-Ray all regions and the Samsung 4K with the Samsung 55”4K 3-d curved screen. I can’t tell much difference in the movies between blu-ray and 4K in quality. The 4K are a few more dollars, but I buy so few anymore. I think most people are downloading or streaming online and Netflix etc. now, sales declining year to year. Now Samsung is pushing 8k, but only in huge screen models that most of us can’t afford or want. I certainly don’t have room for an 80” or 72” screen or $5,000-$20,000 to spend. It was hard enough at $2,000 in 2016 for the tv, and $300 for the 4K player. I love the television, but feel I wasted the money on the 4K player that won’t even play the sacd format, but the Sony blu-Ray will.