This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Pioneer announced a brace of new UHD Blu-ray burners today, the first we've seen debut for the PC market. Currently, if you want UHD playback, y'all need to option up either a dedicated thespian or an Xbox I Southward — Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro lacks UHD Blu-ray back up, even though the Japanese visitor was instrumental to the development of Blu-ray itself.

The new BDR-S11J-BK and the BDR-S11J-Ten are both 5.25-inch drives that back up nearly every optical read/write standard ever devised, including: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD±R, DVD±R DL, DVD±RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R SL/DL/TL/QL, BD-RE SL/DL/TL, BD-R LTH). They also read CDs, DVDs, BDs, and UHD Blu-ray films. Both drives feature a 4MB buffer for underrun protection and support 16x called-for speeds on standard Blu-ray media.

Pioneer claims that the BDR-S11J-X contains some boosted hardware for ensuring high-quality audio playback, just both drives back up Pioneer's PureRead 4+ and existent Fourth dimension PureRead software. Exact specifications on either standard are hard to come by since the native language is Japanese, only Pioneer claims both technologies are specifically useful when reading damaged sound discs.

4K UHD Blu-ray playback… if you meet the requirements

If you've followed our coverage of Netflix streaming requirements for 4K video and the pregnant hardware upgrades most systems would require, y'all know that content creators take gone out of their way to brand 4K streaming every bit difficult every bit possible. Only seventh-generation Intel Kaby Lake hardware is 4K streaming capable, and it looks like a like set of requirements are in identify for UHD Blu-ray back up.

pioneer_BDRs

In society to play UHD Blu-rays, your arrangement must back up AACS 2.0 and Intel'due south Software Baby-sit Extensions (SGX). Yous'll need software to play the disc itself (CyberLink has an updated software solution gear up to ship in the most future), and a GPU with HDMI two.0a and HDCP 2.2 support. AACS 2.0 also has to exist implemented within the GPU driver, and no current stand-alone GPU drivers take this functionality. Finally, you need a 4K TV with both HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2 support likewise.

This is a alpine order. No Intel chips before Skylake back up SGX, and merely owning a Skylake board isn't plenty — many desktop boards never implemented the feature and don't support it in UEFI. The HDCP ii.ii support requirement is also dodgy, since not every Intel board supports that standard, either.

In theory, the UHD Blu-ray playback state of affairs should exist better than the 4K streaming state of affairs, since at least 6th and 7th-generation Core chips are both supported. In practice, information technology seems to exist every bit as much of a muddle and a problem. Back up is limited to specific SKUs and motherboards with particular features, and the dependence on integrated graphics for decode support means that y'all can't utilise UHD Blu-ray with whatsoever Intel HEDT system (HEDT refers to Intel'south E-form chips — Sandy Span-E, Ivy Bridge-E, Haswell-E, etc).

For years, there's been a push-pull between content pirates and the content production manufacture, with police-constant fans generally defenseless in the centre. For years, the content consumption side of the business has warned that if technology became likewise draconian, people simply wouldn't employ it. That seems to be the betoken at which we've arrived. Given the snail-like speed of PC refresh cycles these days, 4K streaming back up will have three-v years to establish itself in the market place, while UHD Blu-ray playback may never happen at all, thanks to ridiculously strict requirements that block out unabridged swathes of the hardware market.

The BDR-SJ11-BK is expected to be priced at $193, while the BDR-S11J-Ten will be a $307 function. Both drives will be available in Japan in late February, and will likely make their way to the US thereafter.