[miiiiiike]

I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away.

I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Purest Feeling?

[kuerbel]

>dedicated player from Sony blows it away

If I might give you a heads up here, they are not the best. For a reference player look at Magnetar.

My dream setup is a Magnetar UDP 900 MK II and a Leica Cine 1...

[Contax]

> Leica Cine 1

Didn't even know there was such a thing... Knowing Leica cameras, I'm afraid to ask about the price. Well, like they say: if you have to ask... :)

[kuerbel]

I think it was around 8500 euro for the 100''. They also have a smaller one for 3500!

[Contax]

Hey thanks. Not that I could afford even the "cheap" one, but that's less than I expected. I'm watching some videos of it and, at the very least, it's a beautiful machine.

[miiiiiike]

I know. The Sony UBP-X700U is $330 and the Magnetar UDP 900 MK II is $3,300. So I got the Sony.

[mghackerlady]

You can still buy CDs. They don't come with music videos usually but they sound greatr

[burningChrome]

Still have my 2014 Corolla which was the last year they included a CD player. My son is begging me to have it instead of trading it in when we get a new car this Fall. He's super into physical media which is crazy to see since he's a zoomer. I'm seeing a lot of kids in the zoomer generation coming back to physical media which is really cool. I play with two guys who are millennials and they're completely hooked on their Sony Minidisc players.

It gives me hope the future is not completely lost.

[mghackerlady]

I'm a zoomer. I use a flip phone and collect physical media. I play ripped CDs on my PS Vita while I'm on the go, though I would love minidisc if it was less expensive

[maherbeg]

What's better about the dedicated player out of curiosity?

[kuerbel]

(Not op)

it typically offers better video processing and upscaling, more accurate color reproduction, cleaner gradients, and superior HDR handling (including dynamic tone mapping on some models). Many also support Dolby Vision from UHD Blu rays, which the PS5 does not.

It won't show on a bad screen that much, but a dedicated player will squeeze out more of the disc.

[fg137]

Knowing nothing about the topic: what kind of processing and upscaling happens when I play a 4k movie on a 4k TV?

[kuerbel]

No upscaling as it's not necessary. (But better players have better 1080p to 4k upscaling too, as the algorithms are more sophisticated, e.g. edge-adaptive scaling, temporal filtering, etc.)

First, the player performs MPEG-4 HEVC decoding, reconstructing full video frames from heavily compressed data.

Once decoded, the signal is still not in a display-ready format.

UHD Blu-rays are almost always encoded in 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, meaning luma (brightness) has full resolution, but chroma (color) is spatially reduced. so one of the first steps in the pipeline is chroma upsampling (chroma reconstruction). After that, the player applies color space conversion and output formatting, usually converting to a HDMI-friendly format like YCbCr 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.

HDR handling is sometimes done on the player. The tv is doing a last stage processing that is fine tuned for it's display like contrast enhancement.

I hope that helps

[Kerrick]

Most blu-rays are 1080p, not 4K. The latter gets marketed as "UHD" and sold in a black case, to contrast the blue case of traditional FHD blu-rays.

[Night_Thastus]

There's a bit of misinformation here. At the end of the day, a blu-ray player is reading information from the disc and passing it onto the TV digitally - one player or another are going to do that identically. One can't have 'better color' or anything like that.

HOWEVER, there is an exception: Feature support. For example, not all blu-ray players support 4K blu rays. Not all players support Dolby Vision.

If you try to play a 4K blu ray disc in a non-4K blu ray player, it won't function at all (won't read). If you try to play a disc using Dolby Vision in a player that doesn't support it, it will fall back to HDR10.

But assuming 2 players both support the features a disc uses, the end output will be identical.

There's also upscaling, which some players can do differently.

[HelloMcFly]

The other commenter is spot-on. A blu-ray player is a computer decoding a compressed file on the fly as it sends the image to the TV, rather than just a passive pipe for digital bits.

Accordingly, different brands use different video processing hardware and software to rebuild that compressed data. This absolutely results in color accuracy variation, shadow detail, and overall picture differences.

[kuerbel]

Hu?

the final output is not guaranteed to be visually identical because parts of the processing pipeline (chroma reconstruction, tone mapping, scaling, and output formatting) are implementation-dependent. There is a spec, but multiple processing stages are not strictly defined to be identical. Higher end players also use a HDR Optimizer and the ps5 does not, which is visually noticeable.

[owlninja]

I just pre-ordered the 4K UHD remaster of The Sopranos, and while on the Gruv site I saw another UHD remaster of a movie I enjoy and ordered it. I am excited to experience this (haven't watched physical media in forever), but I was planning on using my PS5. My research also confirms that standalone players are legit, but they are more expnsive than I figured! I guess I'll give one a try and hope this isn't another addiction...

[wing-_-nuts]

Huh, I bought a ps5 specifically so i could have a up to date playstation console with a 4k blu ray player. Planet earth / blue planet are achingly beautiful on a 4k oled. Sadly the market for 4k blu ray seems to be pretty thin, but I do hunt for good docs in the format.