4K Blu-ray Player Buying: How to Choose a 4K Blu-ray Player

Max Wales

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Your home theatre is just incomplete without a 4K Blu-ray Player. Today’s USH Blu-Ray experience is incredibly impressive as compared to the standard blu-ray that was part of market years ago. With this latest technology, you can avail sharper details in every picture with impressive color distribution on UHD TV screen. You will love to way it delivers effortless motion with fast paced scenes at a rich dynamic range that maintains perfect balance between extremely dark and completely bright scenes. The increased storage space is another edge over old age technologies.

Indeed, you must buy a 4K Blu-Ray Player for your home theatre but the biggest question is which one? The market is currently loaded with several brands promising outstanding performance for Blu-Ray collections so buyers often get confused about which one will suit their needs and budget. If you are also facing trouble in this situation then it is good to go through the guide below. It will help you to collect complete details about how to choose best 4K Blu-ray Player.

How to Purchase Right 4k Blu-Ray Player?

Do you really need to invest on a Blu-ray Player? Definitely yes; it is the best solution to boost your home theatre experience. But note that it demands a 4K TV for display so you may plan your investment accordingly.

Before buying a UHD Blu-ray player you must know the major differences between the 4K and standard Blu-ray player. They may appear same but there is lots of difference in content delivery. Note that, a standard Blu-ray player can handle only 1920x1080 resolution level but in case if you want to have stunning playback experience of 3840x2160 resolution setting then UHD Blu-ray is must for you. It is almost four times higher than standard systems so you will find video clips much refined, sharper and with outstanding color distribution.

If you are using regular Blu-ray player from a long past then you must have collected several movies with 1080p resolution level so now you must be worried that for latest UHD Blu-Ray system you may have to collect them all from scratch with compatible resolution setting. But the fact is that the latest Blu-ray players offer easy scaling that means you can use the same collection on new system with up scaling from standard 1080p to 4K UHD range. You might have heard about the term HDR that stands for High Dynamic Range. It is the ability of a TV to display brightest highlights while maintaining perfect balance for the darker shadows. The older 4K TVs miss the HDR standard so if you want to enjoy the searing brightness on your home theatre then you may have to invest in modern 4K TV that provides an impressive display for Ultra HD Discs.

Probably, now you might have gained enough knowledge about benefits of buying a 4K UHD Blu-ray player. So the next task is the selection of a right device for your home theatre. In order to take right decision for your investment, you must go through the features of best 4K UHD Blu-ray player.

Features That Your New 4k UHD Blu-Ray Player Must Have:

There is a wide range of 4K UHD Brands available in the market, so most buyerer find it’s difficult to make a selection for the right device. The best idea is to search for the best feature set that can provide you complete benefits of 4K content. Below are some of the highly ranked features of 4K UHD Blu-Ray Players:

1. Analog Encoding:

It is possible to compress audio signals using lossless and lossy compression algorithms. In the case of lossy compression, some information from original content is thrown away; the best example is MP3 compression. On the other side, in the case of lossless compression just eliminates the redundant information from input signal. In this case, you can consider the example of ZIP file that contains all details in original form; indeed, lossless compression is far better than lossy one.

Commonly used lossy audio clip formats are WMA, OGG, M4A and MP3 etc. whereas the lossless audio files include FLAC and APE etc.

2. BD-Live:

This is a special blue ray feature that allows users to work on additional content; one can easily recognize it from the ability to make videos from the content that you watch on internet.

3. DLNA Compliance:

DLNA is a standard that works for streaming of media files and allows users to render photos, videos and audio content on Blu-Ray Player from other devices that are connected on your home network. This terminal is often called as computer or simply the network attached storage box.

4. DSD Audio Decoding:

DSD here stands for Direct Stream Digital. This technology was originally developed by Phillips and Sony to deliver high resolution audio content on super audio compact discs. The DSD technology works on the basis of single bit type sampling rates that range somewhere between 2.8 to 5.6 MHz. Some DSD files are also rated as DSD128 or DSD64 etc. Note that, if a Blu-ray device is DSD capable then it doesn’t mean that it will read SACD content too but yes one can purchase DSD format music content online and get it stored on NAS box for easy playback.

5. HDMI Audio Out:

It is the matter of great flexibility to have a separate HDMI output in your device. IN case when you need to make a connection between player and a video project without using TV then this HDMI audio out can be easily connected to a sound bar or A/V receiver while connecting HDMI video out for video signal transfers.

6. Image File Support:

There are few Blu-Ray players that can simply stream digital photographs from network storage or USB whereas few advanced ones can even handle audio signals during show. In some of the most common cases, it works on JPEG image file format but at the same time it also extends support to PNG, TIFF and GIF file formats.

7. Coaxial /Optical Digital Output:

Everyone demands flexibility for handling digital information. Those who are working on older A/V receivers that lack in HDMI port can attach it to their TV screen at HDMI port option by using any other port available for handling digital audio outputs. However, such types of connections are not much capable of handling wide bandwidths offered by Dolby Atmos, DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby Tru

8. Remote Control:

There is no doubt to say that type of remote control used with Blu-ray player can leave major impact on its overall performance. First of all, it must have a standard collection of buttons so that you can execute all tasks easily; at the same time, buttons are required to be added with proper labelling that assists users in easy operation. Having a remote control unit that can also handle operations on A/V receiver or TV is another big advantage. The best option is to buy a remote control with backlit buttons that assists in easy operation even when you are sitting in a darker room.

9. DVD- Audio and SACD Discs:

These classic audio disk formats were introduced to market years back in 1999 and out of both these SACD wins the race of quality delivery. But none of these formats were able to achieve great success in the market.

10. SD Card Slot:

It is quite good to have extendable memory space with Secure Digital or High Capacity SDHC cards. Most of the Blu-Ray players these days are designed to handle SD cards so that stored collection of images and videos can be easily transferred to TV screen.

11. USB Ports:

Few Blu-Ray Players support USB Mouse and Keyboard that assists in easy operations and less mess of wires. However, most of the BluRay devices extend support to NTFS, FAT32 and FAT files. Note that, USB ports at the front side of device are much easier to access as compared to those that stay on back side.

12. Wi-Fi

It is definitely an important feature for your Blu-Ray player that allows users to stream 4K videos directly from internet with much smoother details. Most of these players work on 2.4GHz standard that is much crowded whereas few allow 5GHz frequency band.

13. Smart TV Functionality:

As most of people these days want to stay tuned to online content via YouTube and Netfix etc so it is desired to buy a Blu-Ray device that offers seamless support to streaming applications. It will help you to open several 4K libraries with ease to access your favourite content online.

With all these incredible features, you can expect to buy a great Blu-Ray Player. Those who are crazier to install a home theatre system must go for top notch quality by choosing a system that contains all classic features. However, the price range of Blu-Ray players will also vary as per collection of features but it will not be so far from your budget range. After all you can easily tune to high quality content on your big home screen.

Max Wales

Max Wales is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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