Answered Which one is better as a blu ray player? Xbox one X or S?

nadeeja

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Hi guys,:hiya:
I'm planning to upgrade my Home Cinema set with a OLED TV. So along with it I'm going to buy either Xbox one X or S as a blu ray player. I like to go with S since it's cheaper and I'm not planning to do any gaming with this console. But If I can obtain better picture quality with X compared to S when playing blu ray discs then I would go for X.
Main reason I'm going for a Xbox instead of a dedicated blu ray player is because Xbox supports Kodi. And I currently have a huge media library stored in a NAS that I access through Kodi installed in a MiBox which I'm hoping to replace with this Xbox.
So my main concerns are;
  1. Best UHD blu ray playback quality
  2. Best Kodi playback support
  3. Best Dolby Atmos/ Sound support
  4. Possible Dolby Vision support in the future
So which Xbox one should I pick?
 
The S and X models are effectively the same output wise with the BD player, the X model consumes a lot more power due to it's beefier hardware even idle so the S would be the smarter choice.

Xbox Dolby Vision support is coming to streaming services first and maybe BD's disc down the road but there is no guarantee. Xbox already supports Dolby Atmos for BD's.

As to Kodi on Xbox keep in mind this is an in development version so there are a bunch of caveats;
* 24Hz output for Xbox apps is supported but Kodi does not support it yet, devs are aware.
* NFS shares are necessary for connecting to a NAS, SMB shares are being worked on.
* The Xbox app system limits audio output up to PCM 7.1 or Dolby/DTS 5.1, no Dolby Atmos output.

See the Kodi UWP forum for more info. I can't think of any other Blu-ray disc player with the means to run Kodi.
 
Personally if you have zero interest in gaming I'd get a full fledged UHD Blu-Ray player and just use the Tvs own software to play your NAS files. For one you'll get a much better UHD Blu-Ray experience, better picture and sound quality, it will consume less power, make less noise and have a better UI. On the downsides the Tv's UI won't look as good while browsing your NAS files but I think the positives would out weigh the negatives by some margin.
 
Personally if you have zero interest in gaming I'd get a full fledged UHD Blu-Ray player and just use the Tvs own software to play your NAS files. For one you'll get a much better UHD Blu-Ray experience, better picture and sound quality, it will consume less power, make less noise and have a better UI. On the downsides the Tv's UI won't look as good while browsing your NAS files but I think the positives would out weigh the negatives by some margin.
Can LG Web OS handle NAS files?
 
Yes I use my LG E7 for playing all sorts of files from a NAS and it handles them without issue. This includes high bit rate x264 as well as more modern codecs like x265 with HDR support.
 
Personally if you have zero interest in gaming I'd get a full fledged UHD Blu-Ray player and just use the Tvs own software to play your NAS files. For one you'll get a much better UHD Blu-Ray experience, better picture and sound quality, it will consume less power, make less noise and have a better UI. On the downsides the Tv's UI won't look as good while browsing your NAS files but I think the positives would out weigh the negatives by some margin.
How does it do better picture and sound quality ? I always assumed 1s and 0s in 1s and 0s out ?
 
How does it do better picture and sound quality ? I always assumed 1s and 0s in 1s and 0s out ?
Better drive meaning less error correction and less jitter perhaps. Whether a drive reads a 0 as a 1, or a 1 as a 0 may make a difference especially if it does that multiple times.

But certainly less stutters, lockups and freezes if the X Box Last Jedi problems is anything to go by.
 
My Xbox hasn't missed a beat as far as I can tell, unlike my last lg blu spinner
 
My Xbox hasn't missed a beat as far as I can tell, unlike my last lg blu spinner
Are you saying that it might be changing 1s to 0s then ?
It a serious question, I don't spend much time up here but I always went by the assumption it's digital, it works . Its the proceessing at the end of the chain that makes the difference
 
Are you saying that it might be changing 1s to 0s then ?
It a serious question, I don't spend much time up here but I always went by the assumption it's digital, it works . Its the proceessing at the end of the chain that makes the difference
If it's digital it works, except when it doesn't.
You must have a seen a DVD, blu-ray player etc having problem reading a disc with wrong pixel blocks etc appearing on the screen before the drive either gives up completely or manages to get through. And whether it will or not, will be down to the drive and the quality of it's error correction.
Then add in the quality of the laser, how well it is focused and its alignment.

So on a perfect disc Player A and Player B will playback identically without problems. On a less than perfect disc Player A may 'change', or rather, not accurately read the data while Player B does.
Player A may stutter, throw up a few wrong pixel blocks/artifacts or just give up. On the exact same disc player B may sail through.

Also as it's a media playback system rather than critical data I'm going out on a limb here and guessing the players have some built in discretion as to what they do with uncorrectable read errors. From the one error stop transfer (PC data approach) to ignore 10, 100 etc errors.

Anyway what I'm trying to get to; is that with a 24 frames a second movie disc and each frame being many megabits of data the odd bit error here and there is not an issue in the scheme of things and could possibly just manifest itself as very transitory random noise or artifacts.

Theoretically then, a player which gets 1 read error over a period of time vs a player which gets say 10 or 100 read errors over the same period of time (both with the exact same disc) would produce a 'better' picture. Whether that would be discernable to a viewer is another issue....

PS The above is based on a how things could work approach rather than how things do work one.
 
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There is a reason the high end players like the OPPO UDP-203 are reviewed so highly vs cheap players. They may be dealing with the same digital signal from the same discs as cheap players but it is how they decompress, process and then output the signals that makes the difference. The make, model and quality of the internal components are big factors as is the quality control of the completed unit and the processing methods used. There are a huge number of variables so unfortunately it isn't as simple as all the 1's and 0's being the same.

It does however go without saying that different people notice different things due to the sensitivity to detail, their pickiness and how good their range of hearing is etc etc. So not everyone will see the same marked change in these picture quality and sound quality. Regardless I still think a stand alone player (even a budget model) will be better than a XBox if you are not gaming. The XBox's are power hungry noisy players with clunky interfaces which if you are gaming as well is fine as you have a UHD player tacked on but for the purist it isn't a great experience. Not to mention the more singular focused UI on stand alone players designed around a few similar tasks rather than based around many very different uses is going to be much nicer to use over a long period of time.

There are plenty of reviews about on the XBox One S and X as Blu-Ray players and they all pretty much come to the same conclusion; as a bonus extra for gamers the UHD player included is a great addition, but as a dedicated player there are better options out there (especially now the prices have dropped) and you'd be better getting a stand alone unit.
 
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