At the beginning of last year, one of the leaders of 4K Blu-ray player manufacturing, Oppo, announced its exit from the Blu-ray player market. It said that it would gradually stop manufacturing 4K UHD players after 14 years of intensive cultivation, and will no longer release new products. Today, South Korean manufacturing giant, Samsung also confirmed that it will withdraw from the Blu-ray player market, and will also stop updating its own Blu-ray player product line. Just like Oppo, it will also gradually stop the manufacturing of Blu-ray products including 1080P Blu-ray player and 4K UHD Blu-ray.
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The Samsung UBD-K8500 launched in 2017 may become its last Blu-ray player in the United States. According to media reports, Samsung’s announcement may be due to the fact that existing 4K players are not available for mainstream formats such as Dolby Vision. However, users of related products do not need to worry. Like OPPO, Samsung is still responsible for the Blu-ray products that were introduced before the product is stopped. Relevant maintenance and after-sales support will still be available.
The reason why so many manufacturers have repeatedly exited the Blu-ray player market in a short period of time is mainly related to the rapid development of current network streaming services. The demand for dedicated audio and video hardware such as 4K UHD is getting lower. It is worth mentioning that Sony has announced that it will launch the M2 player which supports Dolby Vision at the CES conference in 2019. Panasonic also recently released the high-end DP-UB9000 player in Europe and Australia. Though many manufacturers are pulling out of this market, there are still a couple of good names that are available