I have had a 4K Blu-ray player for several years now, and every time I turn it on, it goes to a home screen packed with apps that I’ve never used. The big reason for this is that I have an Apple TV 4K in my living room that acts as my smart home hub, so there’s no reason for me to use my Blu-ray player for it. However, out of sheer curiosity, I plugged my 4K player into the internet and tried to navigate the apps.

As you might expect, this didn’t go well. For starters, I haven’t updated this Blu-ray player in years, and that means the apps that are included are completely out of date. What’s even worse is that there’s no app store, so newer apps that didn’t exist when this player came out, like HBO Max and Disney+, are completely unobtainable. I don’t know about you, but that’s not exactly a recipe for a good smart device.

Your 4K Blu-ray player isn’t a good streaming hub

Maybe it was in the past

I don’t really see much of a reason for people to go through the effort of even connecting their 4K player to the internet, and it would appear that Sony agrees with me. I have the Sony X700K player, and in a refresh, Sony dropped internet connectivity. This means the bare-bones apps on my player don’t exist on the updated model. The good news is that this doesn’t matter at all. There’s no reason to connect your 4K Blu-ray player to the internet with any sort of regularity, and Sony went the extra step of saying you don’t need to at all.

A decade ago, when smart TVs were still in their infancy, it made more sense for players to have apps, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Any TV worth its salt has streaming apps included, and while many TVs aren’t the snappiest in the world, they get the job done. I don’t see much of a reason to rely on aging technology for streaming when there are far better options available.

To be fair, I appreciate the effort of including apps in the first place because, for a while, this might’ve been the best way for somebody to watch Netflix. Smart TVs took a while to fully catch on, so people relied on game consoles and streaming sticks for their apps before that. I always used my Xbox for streaming apps, so the Blu-ray player apps never appealed to me, but I’m still glad they were there.

Today, it’s a fun thing to look back on and see how far we’ve come. While I won’t be using these apps at all, it’s cool to see them essentially frozen in time with old logos. It’s a bit like how I have the old HBO Max app installed on my phone with the purple logo still.

Use your 4K player for discs and enjoy it

Its bread and butter

If you buy a 4K Blu-ray player, the number one reason is to play your 4K Blu-ray discs. It’s why I have mine, and I’ve been enjoying it for several years now. You don’t even have to buy the fanciest one either. I wanted to get one with Dolby Vision, but if your TV doesn’t support that HDR format in the first place, you don’t have to worry about it. Your Xbox Series X and PS5 both work great as 4K Blu-ray players, and it’s a fine starting point for anybody looking to dip their toes in. However, it seems like the next iteration of both those consoles won’t include a disc drive, so you might have to consider getting a standalone player in the future.

Of course, this is only if you want to invest in physical media in the first place. It’s not exactly the cheapest hobby, and for a lot of people, streaming is just the more convenient way to experience things. It’s funny that a physical media player even had streaming apps installed since it felt like those two things were at odds with each other, but that’s a conversation for a different day. What I’m trying to say is that you need to address your own needs before you decide to invest in physical media. Decent 4K players still cost a few hundred dollars, and that’s obviously not worth it for everybody.

I actually built up a fair amount of 4K discs before buying a standalone player. This is because I upgraded to a TV with Dolby Vision, so I needed to get something that would take advantage of the format. I would say that if you don’t have a Dolby Vision-capable TV, there’s no reason to make the leap to a 4K Blu-ray player. There are other ways to play your discs, and I don’t think you’d be disappointed with the quality if you just used your PS5 for it. Your PS5 also makes for a far better streaming hub, but that’s neither here nor there.