In what may be the first bloody nose that Sony's sustained this generation, the PlayStation 4 Pro won't come with a 4K Blu-ray drive. The platform holder didn't mention Blu-ray once during its press conference this evening, and now a slew of senior reporters in New York are claiming that the console won't support Ultra High-Definition discs.
The manufacturer did announce that two new apps will launch for Netflix and YouTube, unlocking 4K streaming content on the new console, but the fact that it never commented on Blu-ray is telling. All of this information is fluid, with the platform holder failing to release any assets at the time of typing, so we'll update as soon as we learn more.
Update (22:00PM BST): Sony's now released the specs, which confirm that the PS4 Pro does not have an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive.
Comments 40
Seeing lots of tweets and articles about this, but no sources? Where's Richard's source from Sony?
Slightly odd decision, I wonder if that's to keep manufacturing costs down or they believe streaming is taking over physical sales
Absolutely braindead decision. I'm not sure it's something that will turn the worldwide market in MS' favor, but I expect last months NPDs to be the start of a long winning streak for MS in North America.
Darn, that was one of the main reasons I was going to get one. Ffffffff.
I'll still be getting one, but now I'll have to get a separate device for the once or twice a month I want to play a 4K BR. Bah.
Ah well, the XBO S has a UHD player and MS will remember Sony now and than about that.
Fail, Sony, fail.
Strange decision. However dont think I have ever played a dvd or blu ray in my ps4.
@stevie85 - I have, but only because my PS3 makes weird noises whenever I put a movie in it - game discs are fine, but movies always rattle. I don't know why.
Anyways, I got a brand new smart TV back in February, but without the 4K (it cost over $400 already, 4K would've doubled it! It's just a TV, no way am I paying that much), so unless they don't make a PS5 until 2025, this has no effect on me whatsoever.
WTF? You want people to buy 4K TVs and go full ultra HD yet you dont put in a drive even the Xbox S has???
I don't think most people would care, if X1S didn't have 1, but it does, so they do.
um, perhaps I can get clarification on that first, do all versions of the X1S have an ultra 4k blu ray drive? $299 500GB, $349 1TB and $399 2TB?
I know PS4 has mor epower than X1S, and therefore PS4 PRo (stupid name aside) has mor epower than X1S.
But...
Sony spent half that event talkng about 4k and 4k tvs and how great things look in 4k an dHDR. If PS4 Pro doesn't have a 4k player (and all 3 X1S do), well that's kind of stupid in light of all the time spent on 4k and HDR in that conference.
"4k is great, buy a Sony 4k tv, and an X1S to enjoy watching our Sony movies on 4k discs"
A 4k console which does not play 4k movie discs. Ok fine if you internet is speedy like F1 you can stream your 4k movie. But seems an obvious flaw in the product when they keep emphasing how good 4k content is. What always made the PS3/PS4 good was that it played blurays as HD TV's became affordable. Now as 4k become more affrdable and they have the opportunity to support it and choose not to.
If I wanted to watch Netflix and YouTube in 4k I could just use a cheap android box, 4k Blurays would have made a upgrade to ps4 pro a bit more attractive
I guarantee you the PS4 Pro has the hardware (BD drive and HDMI spec) to support 4K BD, but Sony has chosen to not enable it. Maybe due to licensing costs? They could turn this on with a patch if they chose to. It's the same reason the Wii U doesn't play movie BDs.
@rjejr Don't TVs come with disc players installed these days anyway?
I have pre-ordered the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro and I am really looking forward to receiving it on the 10th of November.
However I just need to ask people an honest question... Does HDR honestly matter? I have a 4K 3840 x 2160 UHD TV. But it doesn't come with HDR.
I am disappointed the Pro doesn't have a 4k HDR Bluray but I spend 99.999% of my time gaming on a console so I would rather spend £350 on something that does that better than any other console than £350 on a 4k HDR bluray player that can play games - sort of.... 720p upscaled to 2160p - woo...
I will just buy a dedicated 4k HDR Bluray player - after all it can output HD and Dolby Atmos sound - that's better than the 5.1 of the XB1s!. I'll stick with mu old XB1s for exclusives and upgrade when the Scorpio comes out but until then, I'll be playing mu PS4 Pro on my 55 4K HDR TV with games looking and playing better!
@Alundra-1998 HDR is a bigger difference than 4k is. Its Awesome! It makes SDR look so flat and pale by comparison. If you sit too far away, its nearly impossible to see the benefits of 4k but HDR is obviously better
@BAMozzy So... Should I feel disappointed then?
This a big oversight by sony, MS gone to a field day with this and all they have to do is mention xbox one s is the only console to have 4k player. Does the pro even have ext hdd support?
@Alundra-1998 I don't know - that's up to you but I got rid of my 4k TV when I saw HDR and replaced it...
@Octane Don't TVs come with disc players installed these days anyway?
There's a "Smart" tv joke in there somewhere.
I get your point, but come on, it's funny, Sony makes 4k movie discs and 4k tvs, MS makes a game console w/ a 4k disc drive. It's funny. Sony lead the way w/ CDs, DVDs and blu-rays in their game consoles, now they have a "Pro" console that lags behind 2 cheaper versions of the X1S. You can't make this stuff up.
@rjejr
100% agree everything you said. MS gone to kill it this holiday season.
No 4K playback, no ext Hdd support (from what i've read so far) and no increase CPU which means no improved framerates. What the hell is Sony doing or smoking?
why would they offer ext hdd support on pro, but not on the original? it's fundamentally the same system software. since PS4 is based on FreeBSD linux, it does not support the NTFS filesystem that windows does - this means your external hdd would need to be formatted with exFat - so if you have a drive with other stuff on it, that would get wiped. from memory, exFat is a bit slower to read/write over USB compared with NTFS.. and as somebody who has backed up the internal PS4 onto an external drive, it is painfully slow.. i can't imagine the installation to or performance from external drives is something sony wants to devote much resources at the minute, especially when they made it a 2 minute job to replace the internal one.
Doesn't that kind of, ya know, kill the selling point of your console? Yeah, there's 4K streaming, but people would still want to use their 4K discs if possible.
I'm no business expert, but that's a pretty dumb decision.
People are missing the point, ps4's slogan from day 1 is #ForThePlayers. If you want a gaming console get a ps4, if you want a multimedia console that plays games get an xbone. To add 4k bluray drive takes the emphasis away from games and focuses more on media as a whole. Something that ps4 never did. Yes, you could still stream from netflix etc, and still watch blurays. But the main selling point was the games. As is the case with the ps4 pro. It has to have some element of a 4k player as there's bound to be 4k games on the horizon (lol). Let's just enjoy it for what it is, an improved gaming console with extras.
@leucocyte
You offer external HDD support because it's a simple f**king feature that every other console has. There is no point not to offer it. You don't want to use it? You don't have to. There are plenty of others who would appreciate it and it's ridiculous for Sony to continue to ignore this.
Have you seen the crappy transfer speeds on freebsd it is not feasible to support it period god sake I don't care about external HDD support all my blu ray players that are not ps4 support external hard drives and they are only £40 blu ray players.
Honestly the real drop of the ball is no 4k blu ray drive but it's no biggy really the hdr support on all ps4s is amazing
Are their really that many UHD Blu rays out there? Probably not, besides most stream these days anyway.
The 4K-Blu-ray specification allows for three disc sizes, each with their own data rate: 50 GB with 82 Mbit/s, 66 GB with 108 Mbit/s, and 100 GB with 128 Mbit/s.
Lets see the average global network speed for Internet is around 6mbps, yea Netflix 4k requirement of 25mbps is a better option for movies on a PS4 Pro. NOT!!!!!!!!
Oh and i almost forgot about the Data caps most ISP's put on customers so you will watch a couple of movies and then down to modem speed for the month.
@Gamer83 I can assure you, it will not.
@DerMeister The selling point is to play games in 4k.
I guess Sony is saving the 4k Blu-ray player feature for the ps4 pro plus
really strange to not include that feature.
@wittypixel i was thinking that too but then i remembered that Sony is a electronics company and they have a line of 4K players so maybe they don't want to ruin their market
It's a shame, but I'm really not too bothered. Beung fabulously wealthy I have Netflix, Amazon and Sky Q and as a result haven't bought a DVD or Blu Ray in years (barring the odd obscure anime that would never make it to TV in a thousand years). All of these offer a range of content and films in UHD on demand so I wasn't planning on shelling out for any further discs. Now if you'll excuse me I need to light this cigar with a ten pound note.
@RawShark
Um... I can't afford £20-£25 UHD blu-ray nor will buy any movie at that price ever again! Happy to wait 2-3 years when brand new releases are retailing for £10 - £15. However... gut feeling my laziness will lead me to the VR headset, loafing on sofa, watching films on virtual super scale instead of a UHD 4K tv. (I'm loafing right now on my smartphone lol!)
@BAMozzy I know this is a looooooooooooooooooooong time since you replied to me, but I have finally saved up and I will be getting the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro quite soon.
Since your original comment a long time ago, I have received an update on my 4K TV that has allowed for it to have HDR.
@Alundra-1998 I don't know what TV you have but if its an update that has allowed you to play HDR, that doesn't mean that you will be getting a HDR picture. It just means that the TV will accept a HDR signal and downgarde it to the max capability of that screen so it actually plays rather than give you 'this is not supported' type error message.
Its like a 1080/1440p TV getting an update that allows it to receive a 4k but because the panel isn't 4K, you will not get a 4k image - it will have to be compressed to fit on the screen. It may look better as it has more pixels to sample from (super sampled) but is nowhere near as good as a Proper 4k TV will be displaying.
If your TV doesn't have the wider colour gamut, then will only get SDR colours. If it doesn't have the massive contrast ratio (for LCD's, that's 1000nit peak brightness or above and a 0.05nit Black level or darker) then it will have to compress that down and make do with the TV's much more limited Contrast. If its a low end 'HDR' or even a SDR TV that has been updated to accept a HDR signal, it may only look a bit brighter as I doubt you have your TV on Max backlight. It may even look a LOT worse than SDR because it was designed and mastered to play on 1000nit+ TV's and when its compressed down to 250-350nits max, the low and mid range has to be darkened or you end up with all the highlight detail being lost/clipped. Best case scenario is that the TV has decent tone mapping algorithms and HDR looks a bit better than SDR overall but it could also be unwatchable in some content.
@BAMozzy Sony Bravia KD-55XD7005 is the model of my TV.
I understand that it won't be HDR10 great, but hey, I am actually upgrading from the 1080p Nintendo Switch and Sony PS3.
@BAMozzy Just to tell the absolute truth to you, I am going in with this Sony PS4 Pro not really expecting absolutely amazing with my first ever 4K TV, but I know that I can easily upgrade in the future.
I know it will be far superior to Nintendo Switch regardless.
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