Home Gaming The PS4 Pro can’t play 4K Blu-Rays because users prefer streaming, says Sony

The PS4 Pro can’t play 4K Blu-Rays because users prefer streaming, says Sony

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PSpro

Sony’s new PlayStation 4 Pro is coming after this year, with an early November release for those in the Northern hemisphere. We have no real idea when it’s set for release locally, but we don’t expect it to take too long to hit our shores.

For somebody like me, who has a 1080p TV and is likely to stay with such outdated technology for the foreseeable future, there’s not too much impetus to upgrade – though there are a few reasons why it might be worthwhile. Ideally though, the PlayStation 4 Pro is meant to be great for showing off your shiny new UHD TV. That makes its lack of a 4K-capable Blu-Ray Drive so baffling. It’s worth noting that the recently released Xbox One S sports a drive capable of playing 4K Blu-Rays discs.

So why in the heck does the PlayStation 4 Pro not?

According to Sony’s Andrew House, the PS4 will make use of 4K streaming tech instead, because physical media is going the way of the dodo. Speaking to The Guardian, House said the PS4 user base has gravitated towards streaming when it comes to video.

“Our feeling is that while physical media continues to be a big part of the games business, we see a trend on video towards streaming,” he said. “Certainly with our user base, it’s the second biggest use case for people’s time on the system so we place more emphasis on that area.”

While I don’t disagree – I almost exclusively stream my video content these days – the bandwidth and speeds necessary to stream 4K video are prohibitive. Especially in places that don’t have the fastest connectivity or the cheapest data – like here. It’s also a blow to audio enthusiasts, who like physical media for their film, as it provides lossless audio – something you won’t find on a stream.

No matter how much spin they try and put on this, no matter how much they seem to think that embracing the future is all about courage it just seems like oversight to me.

Last Updated: September 9, 2016

63 Comments

  1. Pariah ???

    September 9, 2016 at 08:07

    What’s next? They’ll remove the bumper buttons on the controller and call it progress, because users prefer to use their thumbs? O_o

    Reply

    • The Order of the Banana

      September 9, 2016 at 11:29

      Users prefer only one button: The Awesome button!

      Reply

  2. Ottokie

    September 9, 2016 at 08:07

    Good thing the average line speed in SA is 4mbps. Otherwise we would have missed out on this feature 🙂

    Reply

    • Pariah ???

      September 9, 2016 at 08:19

      4mbps = 4k streaming right?

      Reply

      • Ottokie

        September 9, 2016 at 08:22

        As far as I know that’s correct 😛

        Reply

    • The Order of the Banana

      September 9, 2016 at 11:52

      Good ol’ 4Mbs! The gold standard of South African internet!

      Reply

  3. ??????? ????? ™

    September 9, 2016 at 08:21

    Did they take marketing lessons from Apple?

    Reply

    • Geoffrey Tim

      September 9, 2016 at 08:24

      CLick the bit where I talk about courage at the end of the article.

      Reply

      • Ottokie

        September 9, 2016 at 08:25

        lol

        “Nut shot” was effective!

        Reply

      • ??????? ????? ™

        September 9, 2016 at 08:46

        LOL I rarely click on Lagz links, you have Darryn working for you after all!

        Reply

    • The Order of the Banana

      September 9, 2016 at 11:53

      They must have attended the same seminar again… Damnit Sony executives… stop going to those crappy things.

      Reply

  4. miaau

    September 9, 2016 at 08:25

    Users use what is available on the product, in general. This is not a feature that is an outlier or not a common use feature.

    To not have that, in Geoff’s words, does seem an oversight. A deliberate one. Services is the name of the game, right?

    Reply

  5. HairyEwok

    September 9, 2016 at 08:26

    I struggle to even watch 1080p at 60fps on my 10 meg line…. 4k will be waaaay out of the average SA internet consumer. But then again, if you can afford a UHD-TV and the PS4 Pro then surely you can afford that 40 meg line…. oh wait that speeds are only available to like 14% of SA people.

    Reply

    • miaau

      September 9, 2016 at 08:30

      We stream a lot, at supposedly high res. fps, though? Not a clue. How do we even know?

      I know who we stream from make a a big difference. Netflix, for example, finds a way to work when our line is busted, coming in at <1mbs and high latency. It also scales up beautifully when our lines is perfect.

      Reply

      • Pariah ???

        September 9, 2016 at 08:38

        Twitch is really bad with that. A slight bit of any issue, where you otherwise wouldn’t notice? Yeah Twitch basically stops functioning. Even its tiny competitors don’t stumble.

        Reply

        • miaau

          September 9, 2016 at 08:41

          Yeah, but did Google not buy them? Youtube, while not as good as Netflix in low bandwidth, is streets ahead of where it was a few years ago and surely Google can leverage some of that tech into Twitch? You cannot have a company with a sole purpose is to live-stream have issues of that nature….

          Reply

          • Pariah ???

            September 9, 2016 at 08:42

          • miaau

            September 9, 2016 at 08:43

            Well, Amazon makes a crap-load money off of their Cloud Services company, so they should be getting this sort of thing right. They are back-end providers to a lot of companies. Surely, they should be making improvements to the tech Twitch is using. They have a very large R&D arm.

          • Pariah ???

            September 9, 2016 at 08:45

            But it’ll explain why Twitch support is so horribly horrid. Twitch support makes Steam support look efficient.

          • miaau

            September 9, 2016 at 08:47

            Ah, thanks. Yes, there we go.

            We measure ourselves not always against the best we could be, but against our perceived rivals.

    • Mark Treloar

      September 9, 2016 at 08:30

      Thing is in terms of market share, most of the people who spend money on the consoles live in countries which don’t have our internet issues.

      Reply

      • Ottokie

        September 9, 2016 at 08:32

        Yea, we can’t be outraged because of this. It’s our own country’s fault we are 20 years behind in time.

        Reply

        • miaau

          September 9, 2016 at 08:35

          Well, that is a deep and complex question.

          Reply

        • Pariah ???

          September 9, 2016 at 08:38

          Actually, our fibre is faster than the average American connects. The biggest issue is actually local servers.

          Reply

          • Ottokie

            September 9, 2016 at 08:39

            And rollout. Yes we have it. But only the top 1% has it already

          • Pariah ???

            September 9, 2016 at 08:40

            Rollout is getting better and better every month. In a few years at this rate, our cities will have on average better access to internet than most of Europe.

          • Ottokie

            September 9, 2016 at 08:49

            looking forward to it xD

          • miaau

            September 9, 2016 at 09:07

            Is geography, rather than economics (once lines are installed, of course), not the limiting factor here? I keep seeing, in the suburbs with Fibre, people paying, effectively less than I am for my premium speed unshaped 10mb line.

          • HairyEwok

            September 9, 2016 at 09:08

            Exactly. Last night while I was watching the Master match for CS the caster said that Telkom has 200 000km of fibre (and their closest competitor 40 000km)….. I guess 200 000km of fibre just covers some parts of JHB, PTA, PE and CPT.

          • miaau

            September 9, 2016 at 09:10

            Yeah. Our office, we can get Fibre if we get 3 others (in the building we own and work in alone) to sign up for 3 year contracts. Trick is: Fibre is 3 blocks away. 3, that costs tens of thousands to install, just that bit.

      • HairyEwok

        September 9, 2016 at 08:39

        Unfortunately this is the case, the biggest market share is based upon the US and EU countries. In gaming term were the filthy casuals and the other countries are the master race.

        Reply

    • miaau

      September 9, 2016 at 08:37

      Also,, I was quite shocked to see how the prices of the UHD-TV’s have come down. Sub R20 000, advert flyer from an appliance company. Not Samsung brand, but others, with good reputations.

      Reply

      • HairyEwok

        September 9, 2016 at 09:04

        You’re not alone on the matter. Last TV I purchased was nearly R15k and after that purchase I’ve decided that investing such a large amount in tech that is constantly changing and improving is just not worth it.

        Reply

    • Draco Lusus

      September 9, 2016 at 08:55

      *1.4%

      Reply

      • ??????? ????? ™

        September 9, 2016 at 08:58

        😀

        Reply

    • miaau

      September 9, 2016 at 09:04

      For interests sake, about two years ago a friend of mine moved to the Floirda, US, from England. He wanted the cheapest for things, to keep costs down. So the local cable company offered the cheapest internet: He got 65mbs (speedtest result he sent me) uncapped speed, through the cable already laid to his rental home.

      Reply

      • HairyEwok

        September 9, 2016 at 09:13

        Yeah, and i heard they pay a crazy low price of like $20 a month for those line speeds. Perhaps one day, well after were all dead, will SA be in that boat of affordable fast internet for everybody.

        Reply

        • miaau

          September 9, 2016 at 09:28

          yeah, but not all of the United States, some places, I am told, is like here in terms of Internet speed. Their cable TV infrastructure helped a LOT.

          Reply

          • The Order of the Banana

            September 9, 2016 at 11:31

            lol lots of rural parts of the US still uses dialup (primarily because of how large the states is) – it’s one of the reasons why they (the US) haven’t gone full cloud.

  6. Anon A Mouse

    September 9, 2016 at 08:32

    I actually wanted to buy a PS4 a week or so ago and then I went to have a look at the gaming titles. Most are PS3 games, so I didn’t bother. Maybe in a few years time there will be more titles.

    Reply

    • miaau

      September 9, 2016 at 08:39

      I must say, I bought my Xbox 360 in 2010, there was so much goodness to choose from in terms of games released on both PS3 and Xbox 360.

      There are a lot of titles out for both and I feel there is less “paddding” now, with more mainstream games in the fold, in year from now, it should be about the same as when I bought in 2010.

      Reply

      • Fox1 - Retro

        September 9, 2016 at 14:16

        This is true. Most of the good games I’m enjoying nowadays are from MS stable and just a few sports games from EA.

        Reply

  7. CypherGate

    September 9, 2016 at 08:37

    Sorry but Sony messed up on this one.

    Reply

    • The Order of the Banana

      September 9, 2016 at 11:31

      Yeah, they screwed the pooch, and the pooch aint happy!

      Reply

      • CypherGate

        September 9, 2016 at 11:49

        One would think sony would decide on a proper beast considering the large amounts of money they making on the console, but yet they going the ‘cheaper’ route compared to Microsofts Scorpio console. My only gripe with Microsofts beast is that it’s being released too late. Should have released this year. By end of next year the power of Scorpio won’t seem that powerful anymore considering the new gpus coming out so often. Dont get me started on Nintendo’s NX…. To me there are so many rumours that it feels like the NX is just that…. A rumour in itself…

        Reply

    • Fox1 - Retro

      September 9, 2016 at 14:17

      It’s funny that this is coming from a company that put Blu-Ray out there in the first place and they are a big manufacturer of Blu Rays.

      Reply

      • CypherGate

        September 9, 2016 at 14:31

        Forgot about that actually and so true. I wonder if they want to pull off an Apple. Less = charge more kinda thing.

        Reply

  8. Ghost In The Rift

    September 9, 2016 at 09:03

    Looks like i’m gonna be the owner of a Xbox in the future, which should pair up nicely with my PC since Sony dropped the ball, sorry let me rephrase, dropped their balls.

    Reply

  9. Skoobaz

    September 9, 2016 at 09:22

    Oversight? Not so much. Keeping production costs down and profits up 4 sure!

    Reply

    • miaau

      September 9, 2016 at 09:27

      Probably a software patch can fix it…….

      Reply

      • Skoobaz

        September 9, 2016 at 09:33

        I Lol’d!
        You mean like a “firmware” update??

        Reply

        • miaau

          September 9, 2016 at 14:39

          Um, yes. Why did LOL?

          Reply

          • Skoobaz

            September 9, 2016 at 14:44

            Cos man, that’s kuk funny. DL a bluray player. Reminds of that BS I heard of ppl downloading moar ram!

          • miaau

            September 9, 2016 at 14:50

            Nah, the extra money has gone into an extremely tiny and focused 3d printer, that can build the required device from pieces of lint and fluff floating in the air.

            OR, the hardware is more capable then they let on and they just “:de-tuned” it. BMW, for example, has done that in the past with some of the smaller engine-d 3 series, to keep the power down, else why buy the bigger engine one if the base model is so close to it anyway.

            OR, It is Friday, my brain is fried, I am up to elbows in design documents and have brain-itis, a totally communicable disease, caused by long meetings, with varied content.

          • Skoobaz

            September 9, 2016 at 14:55

            Oh, so say they wanna update the GFX board just push print and done then!

            Didn’t Nvidea do that with a range of cards recently? Where the mem on board was locked off and sold as a cheaper unit?

            It IS Friday and I’m about to check out so hell no, I don’t want no communicable diseases shot!

          • miaau

            September 9, 2016 at 15:01

            Have a good one

  10. Spy Master Tokashi

    September 9, 2016 at 09:39

    I really do not understand console peasant logic.

    You tell the PC gamers… (PS3 days) “We buy consoles because we just want to game and do not want to struggle with other crap. Graphics are not important, it is the game play” .

    (PS4) console gamers … “PS4 only can handle 1080p @ 30 dps … THIS IS BULLS***…, omf the graphics are bad, we demand better quality graphics games … blah blah blah…”

    (PS4 Neo) console gamers … “PS4 cannot run 4k Blu Rays … THIS IS BULLS***, WTF SONY NOW I HAVE TO BUY A 4k BLU RAY PLAYER … blah blah blah ..”

    <3 this console whiners, I thought the reason for a console is for gaming …. lol

    Reply

  11. Darren Peach

    September 9, 2016 at 09:53

    Thanks Sony, I never knew that about myself. Tell me, Do I like Chicken ?

    Reply

  12. Darren Peach

    September 9, 2016 at 09:58

    I sense a shift in the force. Didn’t Microsoft make similar judgment mistakes when they launched the Xbox one ? It would seem that the new Xbox might win this round………..I guess these places have huge research divisions that sometimes are as dependable as the weather man.

    Reply

  13. The Order of the Banana

    September 9, 2016 at 11:25

    Go to hell Sony, I like physical disks. All these online streaming nonsense is just a greedy excuse to take away my rights as a consumer!

    Don’t make me go Papa Kruger on you guys…. because I will! #shakesfist

    Reply

  14. The Order of the Banana

    September 9, 2016 at 11:26

    You will not take away my disks, you bastards!!

    *Glorious Banana Jim stands with a golden Ak47 in his hands

    Reply

  15. The Order of the Banana

    September 9, 2016 at 11:51

    Let me guess their next press release will be…. “we can’t just do a firmware update… you guys, because… like.. reasons…” – Don’t make the same arrogant mistakes Microsoft did with their always online BS, Sony.

    Reply

  16. RinceThis

    September 9, 2016 at 14:02

    lol

    Reply

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