Samsung is bowing out of Blu-ray in the US, with the electronics behemoth confirming that it will no longer be offering the disc-based media players. The company's last new Blu-ray players were released in 2017, with 4K Ultra HD support as well as apps for streaming services.
Take a quick peek at this newest last-ditch effort to get you to spend money on Deadpool 2. It's a plastic box with four different fancy disks inside it. One each for each of the most important characters other than Domino inside it. Because Domino was lucky enough to avoid getting her face plastered on a disk some poor goofball went out and bought from 20th Century Fox - lucky her!
Amazon has mildly annoyed some consumers by locking Star Wars and Marvel physical movie discs behind a Prime paywall. Anyone who tries to order DVDs and Blu-ray discs from either franchise via the online retailer must subscribe to Prime, otherwise the purchase is unavailable. The good news is that Amazon is only one of many online retailers and you don't need it to get any of these movies.
On the 13th of March, 2018, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released in its digital form with one pretty strange feature. Included with the purchase of the digital format was a music score-only version of the film, completely devoid of effects sounds or dialogue of any sort. This version required only one extra action after the film was purchased.
While retro has always been a thing, nostalgia can only take you so far down memory lane before you have to backtrack to present day reality. Not unless you’re able to take something old and something new and put them in one glorious and totally working nod to the past. That’s exactly RetroConnector on Etsy is doing for used and pre-loved Apple Disk II boxes. But don’t bother trying to push in one of those flexible 5 1/4-inch floppies. This one only accepts CDs and DVDs.
Batman fans will be able to buy Batman: The Animated Series on Blu-ray starting next year. The disc set will be released by Warner Bros some time late in 2018, though a specific release date hasn't yet been provided. The series, which first aired during the 1990s, will be remastered for the upcoming box set, giving fans a way to watch it in high-definition on modern televisions.
If you're a massive South Park fan, you may be excited at the chance to get some of the earliest seasons on Blu-ray. This will mark the first time these seasons have been made available on Blu-ray, though the release will be staggered following up through the holiday shopping season. Rather than arriving in one giant boxset, the seasons will each be available to buy individually on a pair of discs.
Samsung's 2017 QLED TVs have hit shelves, with the super-skinny Ultra HD sets that wowed back at CES in January also joined by a new digital picture frame. Priced from $2,799 (MRSP), the QLED TVs use Samsung's Quantum dot display technology for 100-percent color volume along with broader viewing angles than before. A new sound bar and Blu-ray player complete the 2017 line-up.
Remember Blu-ray? While streaming services may be hitting 4K resolution these days, there's nothing like physical media for the best quality visuals, and Sony's UBP-X800 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player is pulling out all the stops. Hitting pre-sale today, it's the company's first 4K Ultra HD model, and joins a set of brand-new TVs from the company that are also hoping you open your wallet.
It’s a 4K age these days. We’ve got 4K video streaming, 4K TVs, 4K monitors, 4K consoles, and, if you’re a Sony fan, even 4K smartphones. What we don’t have yet are 4K PCs, that is, PCs capable of reading and writing 4K content into 4K-compatible discs. That all changes with Pioneer’s introduction of two new Blu-ray drives meant for computers and computers alone. Not only are they able to read from Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, they can also write into BD-R discs for safe keeping.
Samsung has unveiled its new M9500 Ultra HD Blu-ray Player, a sophisticated device as far as disc players go. The model is HDR optimized and supports Bluetooth Wireless Streaming, says Samsung, as well as the Samsung Smart Remote and Ultra HD televisions. This is one of multiple media products Samsung unveiled recently, the others including a sound bar and wireless speaker.
These days, 2K just ain’t enough. Unless you’re talking about smartphones. Heck, even plain 4K might not be! If TV makers are to be asked, 4K HDR is where it’s at, combining the promises of ultra high def resolutions with an ultra high gamut of colors. Of course, that works well for entertainment equipment manufacturers like Sony, who, coincidentally, just announced its first 4K UHD HDR Blu-ray Player, the X1000ES, as well as a brand new 4K UHD HDR Home Theater Projector, the VPL-VW675ES, both taking advantage of the slow but growing number of available 4K content, both on disk and on the Internet.