
When we tested the Sony UBP-X800, we noticed that DVD and Blu-ray content was shown with smoother curves, and text that was clear and legible.
#4K VIDEO PLAYERS CNET FULL#
We outline some of the best picks in our full 4K TV on a Budget guide. If you aren’t watching DVDs or Blu-ray content, you may be better off considering a 4K TV. Its upscaled content also surpasses the scaling capabilities offered by most 4K TVs. The Sony UBP-X800 is the best 4K Blu-ray player because it makes non-4K content look better than most other players. If largely you have a collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs that aren’t 4K, you won’t feel like the quality is worse when you watch them with this 4K Blu-ray player. It’s Wi-Fi enabled and supports upwards of 20 built-in streaming services, including Netflix and YouTube. Its metal frame gives it more weight and makes it feel more stable than competitors. As 4K discs aren’t the most popular just yet, the capability to upconvert significantly contributes to overall performance.Īside from the fact that it has a solid build, we like the Sony UBP-X800 because its Blu-ray and DVD upscaling is top notch, its discs load quickly, and it has an interface that’s responsive. Because of this, we also focused on the players’ ability to upconvert non-4K content formats. With the majority of 4K Blu-ray players that we tested, there wasn’t much variance in their presentations of 4K content. The combination of WCG and HDR support is what enables non-4K DVDs, non-4K Blu-ray discs, and other HD content to be upconverted to 4K quality. TVs, streaming boxes, and Blu-ray players with these supported features will offer the best overall image quality. A wide color gamut feature allows a wider range of colors to be shown on screen. HDR deals with contrast ratio and the techniques that are used to showcase dark and bright screen areas.
#4K VIDEO PLAYERS CNET 1080P#
While a 1080p HDTV offers 1,080 lines of resolution, you’re getting twice as many lines of resolution with 4K Blu-ray players. While 4K resolution isn’t a brand new concept, the combination of High Dynamic Range (HDR), a wide color gamut (WCG), and 4K or Ultra HD, is a newer offering. This ensures that our picks can be used with older receivers that don’t have the ability to pass 4K signals via audio. In searching for quality 4K Blu-ray players, we made sure that contenders came equipped with dual HDMI outputs. Its disc loading speed is just as fast and it comes equipped with streaming services that can accessed via Wi-Fi. The Samsung UBD-M8500 doesn’t support 3D Blu-ray discs and it doesn’t perform as well as our top pick with non-4K discs, but it gets very close. Our runner-up pick, the Samsung UBD-M8500, offers a sharp, user-friendly interface and is a good choice for an alternative should the Sony UBP-X800 go out of stock. The Sony UBP-X800 ’s menus are highly responsive and its disc-loading speed is solid which makes it the best 4K Blu-ray player for most people. However, with our pick, the Sony UBP-X800, non-4K Blu-ray discs and non-4K DVDs are given a noticeable boost in clarity and quality because of the player’s image scaling feature. Throughout the process of conducting research, and through spending over 20 hours testing 4K Blu-ray players, we found that many showcase the same picture and image quality when viewing 4K content.
