That would indeed seem to be the case (lack of 4k BD support) from what I can find online. Does seem a bit of an omission given the XBONE Scorpio (or whatever they're actually going to call it) has already been confirmed to be able to play back 4k BR disks (possibly with HDR as well). Still, I wouldn't really expect that many people with an investment in the PS4 platform ditching it for the XB just for that feature.
I guess it could also be important to consider how well the PS4 Pro deals with upscaling content to 4k. If it does a decent job with most existing content it's unlikely to be a major issue.

No 4K Blu-ray support in the PS4 Pro makes no sense, no matter how you look at it | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/video/blu ... it-1328208

Discs are dying, but so are many internet connections...

I guess the bit about them not having their own UHD BD hardware ready is plausible if they aren't going to be able to launch their own player until into 2017.
Given the amount of stuff that seems to get downloaded even when you've got a game on disc these days it's almost surprising they didn't ditch the optical drive entirely. Maybe with the PS5

There's a 4k tech demo of Mass Effect Andromeda here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1hBNALUk4w

Looks wonderful even at more regular resolutions (I'm honestly not sure what the 4k is actually going to bring), I'm just really hoping Bioware don't [LIFTED] it up.

Dear God, have you actually LOOKED at what's available on 4K BluRay? The best film available is Batman vs Superman. I'll say that again. The BEST film available is Batman vs Superman.

Furthermore, to take proper advantage of UHD Bluray you need

a) A 4K TV (and a pretty big one at that. And not a first gen one, because that won't do HDR or wide colour gamut)
b) A 4K BluRay player
c) A 4K Dolby Atmos compatible AV amplifier
d) At least a 6.1 speaker setup

That is, and will probably remain for some time, an incredibly niche setup to have. You aren't going to get Lossless supporting 7.1 soundbars any time soon. So basically you need... probably about £3'Ks worth of AV kit to actually make UHDBR worth the bother. And then you're playing twice the price for a UHDBR you are for a 'standard' BR at the mo, and the films you probably want to watch aren't actually even coming out on UHDBR anyway. You're properly into the 'less than 1% of the population" territory here.

PS4 pro is an interim product - it's PS4.5 for want of a better description. Whatever Sony has in mind next might have UHDBR, but I'd suggest that's 2-3 years from market, whatever it is. Feel free to buy an XBO S rather than a PS4 pro for the UHDBR if you want, but I would be very very surprised if any more than a tiny minority ever actually use it.

The point of the PS4 pro (and probably XBox Scorpio, frankly) for the vast majority is arguably not super high quality 4K film & gaming, it's super high graphic settings games at 1080/60.

I was under the impression the point for the PS4 Pro and Scorpio was to have enough power to do a decent job with VR content. 1080p/60 will be a very nice side benefit and, as you say, most useful for the vast majority of customers at the moment.
You're also correct about what you'd really need to make FULL use of UHD BD. Thing is a lot of people don't really care about making FULL use of BD either but they still have kit that can play it on their telly (like a PS3, PS4 or XBOne).

As you said the number of people who will actually make use of the functionality is going to be limited but Sony have very much handed MS an opportunity to make the PS4 Pro seem to be a bit crap compared to the One S let alone the Scorpio.

That's probably a fair point as well - You actually have to do a very high frame rate to make VR not make some people sick. Things I've seen suggest you need to do about 90FPS to each eye before you eliminate the 'motion sickness' style problems for most people.


I'd agree that as a 'tick box function' in marketing terms, having ti is better than not having it. I'm just not really convinced it's a tick box many people in reality are interested in. Exclusive content (both games and DLC) are much more likely to do that IMO. At the end of the day, yes, MS can say 'we can do UHDBR' but if the best way they can demo it in their adverts is showing a clip of a film nobody really cares about, is it going to have that much of an effect in total?

People aren't buying consoles asking 'which can I watch media I don't have?' on. They're buying consoles asking 'which console plays the best version of FIFA?'

IMO, the advantage will come if/when a really big film comes out on UHDBR that makes it a 'must have' thing for enough people. Say the next Star Wars movie maybe. if that comes out on UHDBR in the same 'window' - say within a few weeks - as the standard BR, people might start actually giving a crap about UHDBR in numbers.

I think what I was really getting at is that the PS4 Pro, while in reality is more powerful, doesn't seem to do much that the One S does, certainly in terms of 4k.
They both essentially upscale to output 4K content. If you have them side by side, I'd expect the more powerful hardware in the Pro to do a better job of it but on paper it looks, at best, as if the Pro is a response to the S at the same or higher price (depending on HD capacity) and without a major distinguishing feature.
Yes, people are more interested in the content and, as I said, I don't really expect either console to make people who've bought one or other of their predecessors to switch sides. It's really more for people who haven't already bought one.

PS4 update 4.0 changes | GamesRadar+
http://www.gamesradar.com/ps4s-next-big ... t-it-adds/

Well, no. They will both upscale existing 1080p content to 4K, yes. However (as far as I can tell) the PS4 Pro actually has the horsepower to render some games in 4K natively (provided you're OK with 30fps), whereas the Xbox S doesn't - the S isn't actually very much more powerful than the 1st revision XBO. It's much more akin to the PS4 Slim. PS4P is kind of half way between XBOS and Project Scorpio, from what I've heard of that so far.


Not sure which one was first but they've both been in development for quite some time. I do't think you can roll out a revision like the PS4P in a couple of months. More likely a case of parallel development just set up so MS get their 'slim' out earlier and Scorpio (=XBO Pro) out later, where as Sony have more 'middle weighted' both of theirs.


Indeed. Much like Android/iOS, existing PS4/XBO users probably have too much invested in proprietary digital content to shift at this point.

Xbox One S vs PS4 Slim: Price, 4K, performance comparison | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/xb ... on-1328629

RIP, PS3: Sony Japan prepares to lay the console to rest | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/rip-ps3-s ... le-to-rest

Who knows what [LIFTED] they'll dream up to piss off current owners when it comes to the store and purchases.

http://time.com/4804768/playstation-4-p ... svr-sales/

Quite interesting.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but I don't see anyone raving about the VR experience

Backwards compatibility is always awesome, though. He's probably working off PSN data with fcuking laughable decade-old games pricing. And it seems to work when they get re-rendered by 0.00001 of a smidge, cos otherwise it wouldn't happen at all.