Pioneer is Manufacturing the First 4K Blu-Ray Drive for PCs

Ultra HD Blu-Ray will become available for PC soon.

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Pioneer are attempting to become the first to have an Ultra HD 4K Blu-Ray player on the PC market with the BDR-S11J-BK and BDR-S11J-X. Unfortunately, these players will only debut in Japan, but that's at least some progress. These Ultra HD Blu-ray players require some beefy equipment to power them, though.

Unfortunately, the only CPU that can currently decode PlayReady 3.0 DRM needed for 4K Blu-Ray viewing are Intel's Kaby Lake processors. You'll also need at least 6GB of RAM and a GPU with an HDMI 2.0a port, not to mention a 4K monitor or TV.

The two different Pioneer Ultra HD 4K Blu-Ray drive models will have slightly different features. The BDR-S11K-BK is the standard model, and the BDR-S11J-X is a quieter, high-end model with improved CD playback. Pioneer plans to release these new Blu-Ray drives near the end of next month in Japan. Unfortunately, there has been no plans to release the drives in the U.S. market announced as of yet.

Contributing Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 30, 2017 10:30 AM

    Jason Faulkner posted a new article, Pioneer is Manufacturing the First 4K Blu-ray Driver for PCs

    • reply
      January 30, 2017 10:59 AM

      In article: Blu-Ray, not Blue-Ray.

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      January 30, 2017 11:03 AM

      Cool stuff. Hoping these come down in price soon

    • reply
      January 30, 2017 12:18 PM

      Think you mean drive, not driver though maybe they're making one of those as well.

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        January 30, 2017 12:47 PM

        One would hope they'd make both. I seem to recall there were USB BD drives that worked on the Mac but you couldn't play movies from them because the drivers/concepts simply didn't exist on the Mac. That "bag of hurt" Steve Jobs would talk about.

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          January 30, 2017 1:40 PM

          Legal Hdcp 2.2 decoding software apparrently doesnt exist for pc/mac platforms. I read cyberlink just recently got the permission to make software that can decode hdcp 2.2, so im sure thats coming anytime now.

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      January 30, 2017 12:51 PM

      Oh good, requires hardware DRM. What a mess.

    • ArB legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      January 30, 2017 1:08 PM

      What a time to be alive.

    • reply
      January 30, 2017 1:33 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      January 30, 2017 1:38 PM

      This with cyberlink software, hdcp 2.2 will be finally cracked.

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