Should I buy a 4K blu-ray player?

[elephantine]

Hello everyone,

I am looking to buy a new TV, perhaps a mid-range 55" LG OLED. I am pondering whether to also buy a £200-£300 4K blu-ray player to go with it.
I have some questions before deciding what to do.

1) How does disc quality picture compare to streaming for 4K and HD content via Neflix and Amazon Video Prime? I have a fast internet connection.
2) Does playing a DVD via a 4K player improve the picture compared to an upscaling DVD player?

Thank you.

 

[two2midnight]

Hello everyone,

I am looking to buy a new TV, perhaps a mid-range 55" LG OLED. I am pondering whether to also buy a £200-£300 4K blu-ray player to go with it.
I have some questions before deciding what to do.

1) How does disc quality picture compare to streaming for 4K and HD content via Neflix and Amazon Video Prime? I have a fast internet connection.
2) Does playing a DVD via a 4K player improve the picture compared to an upscaling DVD player?

Thank you.

1. UHD player PQ is better for 4K content but not by a huge amount.
2. Depends on the DVD player but a 4K Oled itself can upscale as good as most 4K players. Results from DVD from any of them is poor by comparison with blu-ray, UHD or 4K streaming imo. Upscaling a mere 414K pixels from DVD to the 8294K pixels of 4K means every DVD pixel has to become just over 20 4K pixels. The data just isn't available to produce good results.

 

[Sloppy Bob]

At 55", unless you're sitting very close to the TV, there won't really be much of a difference over 1080p Bluray as far as the resolution is concerned.

The real difference is in HDR and its formats you don't get with 1080p Bluray but you do get with UHD discs and relevant Netflix, Amazon, etc streams.

UHD discs have better quality video than 4K streams, but again, probably not that noticeable at 55". The main reason is the difference in audio, but that's only relevant if you have or plan to get some kind of AVR and surround speakers or a high-end soundbar.

DVD on a 4K screen can look passable to very poor depending upon how well or badly the DVD was mastered.

 

[gibbsy]

Standard blu rays will look very good on OLEDs. Apart from HDR the upscaled image to 2160 is certainly better than 4K non HDR streaming. Leave your TV do the upscaling.

 

[rccarguy2]

DVD NTSC region 1 can look great on 4K OLED I watched Starship Tropers Region 1 DVD and lots of detail, no sign of compression.

Video compression reduces picture quality, not resolution.