Sign of the times: Samsung has stopped making new Blu-ray players
Like you, I have a couple of DVD and Blu-ray players in the house. I haven’t touched any of them in–let me see…years.
Let’s face it. Between iTunes, YouTube, and Netflix (not to mention BritBox, and a ton of premium cable channels that offer on-demand access to programming), why would most people bother with a DVD/Blu-ray player anymore? Even if you have a collection of discs, it’s sometimes just easier to call those films/TV shows up on your remote.
In another sign that spinning discs for media storage is reaching an end, Samsung has announced that they’re finished with production new Blu-ray players. Those new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray players? That’s it. There won’t be anything beyond them.
As far as anyone can tell, Samsung will continue to manufacture DVD/Blu-ray players for various markets, but just don’t expect them to spend any effort advancing the technology.
Why? The Verge points to this graph from Nielsen. Notice how much time the average US adult spends with DVD and Blu-ray devices on any given day.
And while we’re on the subject, have you noticed how quickly CD players are disappearing from new vehicles?
Like vinyl LPs some of us just want physical copies of our favourite films. I also use my Blue Ray player to play CDs. What will you do when you want something and it’s no longer available on streaming services?
Speak for yourself man I love 4k Blu Ray films it’s the best picture quality and perfect lossless sound not Atmos with a lossy Dolby digital track found on netfNet and iTunes. Do I like to stream yes but I also love physical media … Samsung suck this is a dumb move
My first blu-ray player was a Samsung. It died about 3 weeks after the warranty expired, a search of the internet revealed that particular model had issues. Some people it dies 3 weeks out of the box, others a bit longer. Replaced it with a Panasonic, which would have been my first choice but the Samsung was given as a gift from my in-laws. Have a small Sony one elsewhere in the house with no issues either.
So if Samsung exits the game, so be it, there’s other more reliable brands still making them.
Samsung makes great TVs and phones (aside from the Note7 and it’s issues), but my experience hasn’t been great beyond that.
Not entirely surprised by this move, I’ve heard the new Samsung Smart TVs will incorporate Apple features so you can access your library without a separate AppleTV.
I still have an HD/DVD player but I can’t remember the last time i watched anything on it. It was far superior to BluRay with Dolby TrueHD and DolbyDigital+. I also had a Samsung BluRay player because I wasn’t sure which would be the standard. I managed to buy both for the price of one of the players, which was good becuase they were nearly $500 each in the beginning!
My first BR player was a Samsung and it was a POS. Every new movie that was released, required a firmware update from Samsung to keep up with the software technology on the discs. Unfortunately Samsung was very very slow to update their firmware. Sometime I had 2-3 unwatchable BD discs, waiting for Samsung. Players were expensive back then so It took a while before I could justify dumping the Samsung.
I bought an LG and more recently a Sony and the support has been very good.
I still have the Sony but more and more, I find myself streaming my PleX Server to the Bluray or to my AppleTV.
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I think its time to go to a dvd/bd reseller and trade all my disks in for a years worth of Netflix.