Top 10 Best Blu Ray Player For Mac
Search Wirecutter For: Search Reviews for the real world Browse Close. Browse Close. Updated June 27, 2018. Several of our picks have been discontinued, including the Sony BDP-S5500. Our former, the BDP-S1500, has been replaced by the similar. We’ve updated our guide below.
Show more. Several of our picks have been discontinued, including the Sony BDP-S5500. Our former, the BDP-S1500, has been replaced by the similar.
We’ve updated our guide below. Oppo Digital had previously its plans to stop making new products, so now that our former upgrade pick, the, is completely out of stock, we’ve removed it from our guide as well. If you already own any Oppo products, the company assures us that it will continue to honor warranties and provide customer support and occasional firmware updates for at least two years from the time of purchase. From 2010 to 2014, I handled almost all the Blu-ray player reviews for Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity; I had nearly 50 come through my hands over that time. Since then, I’ve tested dozens of players for Wirecutter using the same intensive methods of objective and subjective testing, using advanced test patterns that I helped to develop in order to better measure performance. I even to verify their image quality.
I know what makes a difference in a Blu-ray player and what you can ignore. I’m also ISF trained to evaluate image quality on all the current and future HDR standards, including the technical and aesthetic differences between contrast ratios and pixel rates from SD to 4K HDR. Who should get this. If you already have a Blu-ray player that works fine, you don’t need to upgrade.
The only features that have been added to Blu-ray players recently, such as screen mirroring and 4K upconversion, are inessential. Your 4K TV will already upconvert video as well as any inexpensive player, and there are better ways to get your mobile device’s screen to your TV. Some Blu-ray players, mostly from off-brand manufacturers, have stopped getting firmware updates.
This is an issue because Blu-ray copy protection is still evolving, and newer discs can have new forms of copy protection, meaning they won’t be viewable on older, non-updated players. If you have one of these older players, find you can’t watch a new Blu-ray you bought, and can’t update your player, you may need to upgrade. Most players continue to get upgrades, though, and we have players that are over five years old that still play all new releases. If you want to add streaming services (Netflix, etc), you’re better off getting. They support far more services, have a better user interface, and are faster to use than a Blu-ray player. The streaming features of a Blu-ray player should be considered a bonus rather than a reason to upgrade. Only having a DVD player is a good reason to upgrade.
Blu-ray discs offer far better picture (and audio) quality than DVDs or streaming services. For a second room, a Blu-ray player can do double-duty, providing disc playback and adding some basic streaming services to an existing TV. What about 4K Blu-ray? Simply put, most people don’t need to spend several hundred dollars more to buy a 4K Blu-ray player. If you already have a, it should automatically upconvert SD or HD video from your standard Blu-ray or DVD player, and unless that TV has capability built into it, you probably won’t notice the difference between 4K and a regular 1080p Blu-ray disc anyway. But if you do have a 4K television that’s fully compatible with and, the difference is outstanding, giving you rich, dynamic detail and color that’s as good as or better than what you’d find in most movie theatres.
If that’s the case, you’ll want to check out our separate, dedicated guide to (which also includes about things like Dolby Vision, HDR10, and 2K digital intermediates, if any of things apply to your home media goals or collection). How we picked. From top: Sony BDP-S3500, Sony BDP-S5500, LG BP550 and Samsung BD-J5100. The Blu-ray player market is shrinking. Companies like Toshiba no longer manufacture players, and these days, most of any given company’s models are nearly identical. They almost all have the same progression in features as you go up in price.
Base models are wired-only. The level above adds Wi-Fi, then 3D, and then you get 4K upconversion. Adding 4K usually means adding a faster processor, making the overall experience better—but not to a degree that you’d want to pay for it. Since most companies have stopped making players, it was easy to review the main models from the companies that still do: LG, Sony, and Samsung. Some other companies like Panasonic and Pioneer are making players, but their models were eliminated for reasons discussed below. We consider Wi-Fi to be essential for most people. As mentioned earlier, Blu-ray players receive firmware updates to let them play the most recent movies.
Movies also have special features that can require online access. Since most people use Wi-Fi around their house for connectivity, we assume you’ll want your player to have it as well. If you can easily run Ethernet to your BD player, you could save a few dollars with a wired player, but the price difference is minimal and cheaper players are also generally slower overall.
(You do want some kind of connectivity: while you can do firmware updates with a USB drive, that’s much harder than having the player automatically notify you and install the update when it’s available.) We wanted any player we picked to offer at least certain key streaming services. (Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu were considered essential in a player.) These services will look virtually identical across all Blu-ray players and have the same interface. As long as the player provides access to the services, it will work just fine for streaming. Beyond that, additional features are not nearly as necessary. When we asked more than 1,500 readers about what they want in their future TV, less than 2 percent said they cared about 3D. Even if adding 3D to a Blu-ray player only costs $10, most people don’t seem to care. If you might want 3D in the future, spending $10 for it might be worthwhile.
If not, pass. You do not need 4K upconversion, which converts 1080p Blu-ray discs to 4K resolution. Your 4K TV has this capability built-in, and it’s likely to do the job just as well as a $100 Blu-ray player. Unfortunately, most websites and magazines have stopped reviewing Blu-ray players.
CNET published a total of two reviews this year, and they each covered models that included 3D. Sound & Vision also published a total of two reviews, and the models reviewed cost $2,000 and $5,000. How we tested.
I rely heavily on test discs with objective test patterns. Flaws in players can show up on test discs that don’t show up (or are harder to see) on regular program material. The provided the majority of the key test patterns. I also watched a selection of DVDs and Blu-ray movies to verify what the test patterns showed.
Streaming services were utilized and tested, including load times. For the most part, Blu-ray discs played back through any Blu-ray player are going to look identical. You should know that for the most part, Blu-ray discs played back through any Blu-ray player are going to look identical, regardless of brand. If a player is described by a reviewer as having “blacker-blacks” or “extra sharpness” with a Blu-ray disc, then it (or the reviewer) is doing something wrong.
(That did knock a couple of players out of competition.) The ideal player sends the bits on the disc unmodified. Thankfully, almost all players do exactly this. Testing per-pixel color accuracy.
We’re able to verify this final claim using test patterns and a DVDO AVLabTPG test pattern generator. It lets me examine the output of a Blu-ray player on a per-pixel level and make sure it’s outputting the correct values. If a player didn’t pass this test, we would knock it off our list, but our picks all were perfect in this regard.
The important tests from the that all the players needed to pass were:. Clipping: Are all 1,920 by 1,080 pixels of a Blu-ray disc visible? Some players crop a few rows of pixels, but most are perfect. playback: Does it play back Blu-ray discs encoded at this popular cadence correctly?
(99% of Blu-ray discs run at 24p). 60i pulldown: Documentary, concert, and some TV discs are interlaced, so seeing how well the player handles 60i video is important. (DVD): All DVDs are interlaced, so films need to use 3:2 pulldown to get the 24p cadence correct again. Without this, DVD movies will look choppy and have artifacts.
Luma resolution: Is all the black-and-white detail there? Blu-ray and DVD discs actually have color overlaid on black-and-white data. If the luma information is incorrect, you’re losing detail. Chroma resolution: Is the color detail there? Some players rebuild the compressed color information incorrectly, losing details. Chroma upsampling error (CUE): Is chroma information scaled correctly?
If not, you get jagged edges with DVDs and streaming content. Diagonal filtering: Does the player reduce jagged edges when dealing with interlaced content correctly?. Color space decoding: The bits on a Blu-ray are converted to a format your TV can handle when they are output. Does it perform this conversion correctly? I do many, many more tests, but these are the key ones.
Top 10 Best Blu Ray Player For Mac Free
Our pick: Sony BDP-S3500 or Sony BDP-S3700. Note: The updated version of our favorite Blu-ray player, the, can now usually be found at a better price than the. Although we haven’t formally tested the S3700, we think getting the newer model is worth it for most people. The Sony BDP-S3500 is the Blu-ray player you should buy, because it has all essential features and the best interface while correctly outputting Blu-ray discs. Prior Sony players had a long, confusing list of services and features.
This year’s Sony models are clear and easy to use. The S3500 includes Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections for getting online, has a compact form factor, does not feel laggy when using the interface, and plays back content perfectly. Samsung’s interface Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections make it easy to get the BDP-S3500 online. The Wi-Fi only supports 2.4GHz bands but has a two-by-two MIMO antenna setup that allows for stronger signals and faster speeds than the more common one-by-one antenna designs. The extra speeds offered by 5GHz Wi-Fi aren’t needed for streaming content, since it maxes out around 8 Mbps. Though 5GHz would improve signal reception in some situations, we didn’t feel this lack was an issue. The BDP-S3500’s compact size makes it easy to put into an AV cabinet or smaller space.
Previous Sony Blu-ray players had an angled top that made it impossible to put a remote or other device on top of it. This year they went to a plain box design that solves this problem. Other players we tested had a texture to the top and weren’t as easy to place things on top of. The BSP-S3500 is relatively responsive to your actions when you use the remote.
On the cheapest Blu-ray players (the ones without Wi-Fi), the interface drags. Netflix images will be slow to load as you try to navigate. The time between button-press and an action is longer than we’d want, and load times for apps are slow. The BDP-S3500 isn’t as fast as the most expensive players (or a media streamer), but it’s fast enough to not make you annoyed while using it.
It does what every well-designed Blu-ray player should do: output the contents of the disc without harming them in any way. The BDP-S3500 is also accurate when playing back content.
The image output over HDMI is identical to what’s on the disc. Prior Sony players had an issue here, but they’ve fixed this and now it’s perfect.
It passed all the essential tests I gave it, so film and non-film content will look very good. It does what every well-designed Blu-ray player should do: output the contents of the disc without harming them in any way. DVD performance on the Sony is as good or better than the other players as well. It has no issues handling the 3:2 interlaced cadence of films on DVD and does not suffer from the CUE issue many old DVD players did. The LG and Sony both look virtually identical on DVDs, while the Samsung has a slight bit of edge enhancement and ringing and is not quite as good. Flaws but not dealbreakers. The Sony remote is nice and compact but not backlit.
Since we often watch movies in the dark, a backlit remote would have been nice. I also wish some of the featured apps on the main page could be removed. Some of these are for Sony’s PlayStation Now streaming service, which has been very laggy in our testing. Some of the feature channels are for streaming channels that might be sponsored. This isn’t as bad as the video ads Panasonic started including a couple years ago, but it still isn’t ideal. Sony (top) and Oppo (bottom) remotes in a lit room and dark room.
Blu Ray Player Software Mac
Sony also has a strange setup quirk where the player checks in to a Sony server for authorization every so often. A benefit is you can use their website to check the status of your player and revoke its online credentials for Netflix if necessary. The downside is that if the Sony servers are down, as has happened before, and you need to check in, you might not be able to watch Netflix.
This drawback makes the authorization process not worth its small potential benefit, though in reality it’s not a huge deal. I’ve been using a Sony Blu-ray player in one room for years and have never been unable to stream content, though for serious streaming we’d still recommend getting a Roku, where this wouldn’t be an issue. There’s also no longer a front panel interface on the BDP-S3500, just a single LED indicating if the player is turned on. Displaying the current time or status of a disc can only be done on-screen.
Maybe most people don’t care anymore, but some will miss the readout. Budget pick: Sony BDP-S1700. If you don’t care at all about streaming or you’re fine with wired Ethernet, the offers the same interface we like on the BDP-S3500.
However, it lacks Wi-Fi, which makes firmware updates harder for most people. It also has a slower processor, so the user interface can really lag at times. All the budget players we tested have this same issue, which applies mostly to streaming services. For most people, spending just a little bit more for the S3500 is the best option.
If only watching movies on discs, though, the BDP-S1700 will be fine. Care and maintenance. The is the successor to our pick last year. This year, the BP550 is virtually unchanged from its predecessor, while the Sony got an improved UI and design to make it our pick. The LG has support for most streaming apps and an okay interface; it just isn’t quite as good as the Sony.
The lacks many of the features of the BP550, and at press time, it was going to save you a few dollars at the most. The is their base-level player and costs more than the equivalent Sony or Samsung models. A version with Wi-Fi is almost the same price. The has 4K upconversion and every other feature, but is expensive, and most people don’t need its extra features (as we discussed).
The has a worse user interface than the Sony and a ridged top surface that makes it hard to place anything on it. The curved design is meant to match their curved TVs and sound bars, but it also looks funny in a cabinet. The is even slower to load images and icons than the Sony BDP-S1500 and lacks the Sony’s smooth user interface.
The is feature-packed, but most of those features aren’t things you need. It’s too expensive as well. All the Pioneer models cost too much. The doesn’t offer anything you need over the Sony models.
The and are meant to compete with the expensive players from Oppo. They offer better analog audio output, but most people don’t need that. The lacks Ethernet, which many people might want for streaming online content. The was considerably more expensive than most other players, but it was also universally recognized as the best Blu-ray player available—for good reason. It offered superior video processing that will provide the best picture from any disc, with better DVD scaling than competing players and better 4K scaling than most TVs. We used to recommend it as an upgrade pick, but the company has unfortunately discontinued its entire audio and video product line. The offers no improvement over the BDP-103D in picture quality—just better analog audio.
And like the 103D, it’s also no longer available.