Vinther1991 said:
You are so right. There's no good reason for them not to include it, it would cost so little more, but add quite some value. There might not be a lot of 4K blu-rays at the moment, but it's nice to know that when you have bought a new machine, you have future-proofed yourself. Even if the pool of potential consumers who would buy the pro for 4K blu-rays is only 10%, that's 10% costumers Sony potentially lose to Microsoft. That would be quite a loss. And what for? To gain 5 dollars more per console? And sorry folks, I really don't get the mentality among people who defend this decision. When talking about games, it's all about 4K, 60FPS, high quality graphics, teraflops, anti-aliasing, HDR etc. All that seems to be so important. But when it comes to movies, then the image quality suddenly doesn't matter at all, and Netflix-streaming is suddenly good enough. What??? |
Perhaps the added cost was closer to $15 as an early estimate of the bom suggested. Perhaps Sony expected less than 1% to actually use it to play 4K UHD discs. (They should know what percentage actively watches blu-ray on ps4)
Consoles sell at nice rounded prices. To get to 399 without a loss, $15 could make all the difference. The ps4 pro is rather cheap compared to the xbox one s. XBox One s perhaps had some headroom for it's 349 price point to absorb that extra $15 (comparing 1tb versions)
As for image quality between movies and games, movies on blu-ray look great on a 1080p projector. Games, full of aliasing issues, sub pixel noise, flickering power lines / fences etc. Of course movies don't have those problems when properly mastered, usually from higher quality sources. Properly downsampling games from higher render solutions will look great too (Baldur's gate dark alliance already did this on ps2), yet it's an easier sell to shout 4K.
HD Netflix isn't good enough, blu-ray is. Atm I can only think of a couple of movies I would like to see in 4K. Baraka, Samsara, and perhaps some other 70mm movies. I would have liked to get a 4K blu-ray player in the pro, yet since it lacks a second hdmi out for sound (to hdmi 1.4 receivers) it would have been of no use to me anyway until I spend another $1000 on a comparable hmdi 2.0 receiver. (That's something I don't get, go all out for image quality then use tv speakers, headphones or a cheap soundbar?)
It would have been nice though if the ps4 pro could downsample 4K UHD discs to 1080p full RGB, send it all over hdmi 1.4. That way you still get 4x the color resolution (1080p in 4:4:4 instead of chroma subsampled), less compression artifacts in fast scenes, and the exact same sound as through hdmi 2.0 That would finally use my projector to its full capabilities. I can't find any info on whether the xbox one s can do this.
At least then I would have some incentive to start buying 4K blu-ray discs in advance of projectors becoming affordable. Although I still wonder about the perceived benefits. As my avatar suggests my favorite movies won't benefit at all. Compared to DVD it's still a big upgrade, yet I doubt Spirited away will look any different on 4K UHD discs compared to blu-ray. Plus out of the 4 movies I have on my blu-ray watch list for the rest of the year (so few nowadays, I used to spend over $1000 on blu-rays a year) only 1 might be interesting in 4K and that one is mastered in 2K.
Actually so far only The revenant had me interested in a 4K version. I bought the blu-ray in the end for less than half the price of the 4K version, and it looks stunning. Out of my 500 blu-rays it ranks close to the very best in image quality. Downsampling a movie shot in 6K, mastered in 4K, to 1080p looks amazing. I'll be using the ps4 pro and Scorpio on my 1080p projector as well. Downsampling will put games a lot closer to movie quality.
