Sony introduces budget Ultra HD Blu-ray player

Sony has introduced the UBP-X500, a budget 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player capable of high-definition audio and video output with a MSRP of €200/£200 ($230). Besides support of the usual optical discs formats, the device is also compatible with HDR10 and Dolby Atmos. The device seems to lack support for Dolby Vision.

The compact and slim UBP-X500 should become available mid-August, according to Sony in the press release. It will be able to playback Ultra HD Blu-ray discs but also older optical disc formats such CDs, DVDs, SACD and regular Blu-ray discs. Non-4K content can be upscaled to the 4K resolution. The UBP-X500 also has a USB port on the front that can be used to playback video from a USB drive. Amongst others, music formats like DSD, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AAC, OGG and MP3 are supported, as well as video formats such as XVID, WMV, AVCHD, MPEG2 and MPEG4. It's also possible to view pictures from the device. Supported image formats are JPEG, PNG, MPO and BMP.

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The device has a limited number of connectors, it features a single HDMI out and an Ethernet connector for the internet connection, Wi-Fi is not built-in and it appears the device also doesn't support online services like Netflix and YouTube.

It's unclear why Sony has decided to not add Dolby Vision support to the UBP-X500. The Sony UBP-X700 has been on the market for a while and is currently available at a similar price of the UBP-X500 and does support the HDR format, just like most high-end Sony TVs. The HDR format is also increasingly used on Ultra HD Blu-ray movies and Microsoft previously announced it would add Dolby Vision support to  the Xbox One S/X will receive updates to add Dolby Vision support.

It's possible however, that Sony will add Dolby Vision support with a feature update.

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