Nope, Sony isn’t quite done with Blu-ray yet.
Barely two months after announcing that it’s exiting the recordable Blu-ray business, Sony has revealed something of a surprise: its first new Blu-ray player in roughly five years. Just keep your expectations in check as far as features go.
Slated to go on sale in Japan during the April-May timeframe, the Sony UBP-X700/K is 4K Blu-ray player that’s a variant of the older UBP-X700, the latter of which is a popular choice for budget-minded physical media aficionados. What’s different about the UBP-X700/K is what it doesn’t have, with FlatpanelsHD reporting that the player drops the bulk of the X700’s wireless networking abilities and services, including Spotify Connect, screen mirroring, and video streaming channels, such as Netflix.
The spec sheet for the X700/K says nothing about integrated Wi-Fi (a feature on the older player), but the new device does offer an ethernet port, likely for firmware updates. Otherwise, the X700/K has most of its predecessor’s video and audio features, including Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos, and DTS:X support.
It’s not clear if the UBP-X700/K will arrive in the U.S., but you never know. Curiously, FlatpanelsHD notes that the Japanese list price for the new player represents a 25 percent markup compared to the older X700. As a former owner of the UBP-X700, I can say from experience that losing the player’s networking abilities is no big loss. I never used them, instead opting for the streaming services on my Apple TV set-top box. And while I did (very rarely) update the player’s firmware via Wi-Fi, you can just as easily do so over ethernet.
A welcome (if unlikely) improvement on the UBP-X700/K would be automatic detection of Dolby Vision HDR on a UHD Blu-ray disc. The older UBP-X700 doesn’t auto-detect Dolby Vision, meaning you must remember to engage the setting before playing a Dolby Vision disc—or, conversely, turn it off before watching an HDR10-only disc. I can’t tell you how many times I’d forgotten to toggle the setting (or lost track of which discs offer Dolby Vision and which don’t), and getting the HDR setting wrong does make a different in image quality.
Another UBP-X700 issue that’s hopefully been addressed (again, don’t hold your breath) is how the player handles triple-layer UHD discs. My X700 player routinely froze when switching between the second and third disc layers—meaning, for example, my Top Gun: Maverick disc would always freeze on Tom Cruise’s eye as he lay in the snow after ejecting from his F/A-18 fighter jet. For that reason, I ultimately ditched the X700 for the much pricier Panasonic DP-UB820.
All that aside, the big news with Sony’s latest UHD Blu-ray player isn’t it’s feature set, but the fact that Sony is making a new Blu-ray player of any sort. Most of the other big players in this space, including LG, Oppo, and Samsung, departed the field long ago, leaving just Panny and Sony (which quit the recordable Blu-ray market back in January) as the lone big-name manufacturers still making Blu-ray boxes.
In other words, Blu-ray is still not dead. Long live Blu-ray!