Another blow for Blu-ray: Samsung will no longer manufacture Blu-ray players for the United States



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If you have not noticed any ads for Samsung Blu-ray players at CES this year, it's for a reason: the company told Forbes and CNET that it was pulling out of the Blu-ray player market in the USA.

The big chaebol conglomerate will no longer present any new Blu-ray players, it seems, and will stop making existing drives for the US market. This confirms the expectations of many observers, given that the company has released a new player in 2017. Samsung would have worked on a high-end Blu-ray player that will be released in 2019, according to Forbes, but these plans were put scum.

Samsung has not explained to one or the other publication the reason why it had decided to withdraw from the market, and there is probably no single, major reason to this change. But there are many small ones.

Samsung's Blu-ray players lacked support for Dolby Vision HDR and instead used Samsung-backed HDR-10 or HDR-10 +. This was an important omission for the target audience; Dolby Vision is appealing to home theater enthusiasts because of its theoretically superior specs and because it allows filmmakers to film a more accurate experience compared to the HDR-10.

Most people are probably not interested in the differences between HDR-10 and Dolby Vision, but those who want to buy UltraHD Blu-ray players who may feel that the flow of content from Netflix, Amazon or Apple is inadequate for their configurations.

In addition, streaming has dominated the viewing habits of Americans, particularly in high-income households that would be seduced by expensive 4K HDR Blu-ray players. Sales of physical media have declined at double-digit rates in recent years. Even within these sales, Blu-ray 4Ks represent only 5.3% of sales, compared to the aging DVD format, which still remains at 57.9%, according to Forbes.

Sony and Panasonic are currently leading the market for Blu-ray players and have not announced their intention to discontinue production. Samsung may have made this decision because of the dominance of its competitors' market, not just shrinking physical media market. And the fact that the well-known PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game consoles are also perfect Blu-ray players for most consumers does not help.

Samsung is not the only one to have abandoned the market. Last year, Oppo also left the Blu-ray players.

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