Key Takeaways
These days, streaming is the king of movies. But a few of us still enjoy owning a physical Blu-ray disc. You used to need a Blu-ray player for them, but now gaming consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 can do that. Even so, it might be worth it to own a dedicated Blu-ray player.
To start, you don't need a Blu-ray player to play Blu-ray discs. Your Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 can play even 4K discs well. In fact, your gaming console is likely equivalent or better than a cheap or average Blu-ray player. However, they don't have the same chops as a high-quality Blu-ray player.
First off, your game console could face issues with certain Blu-ray discs, though this is rare. You won't often experience playback issues while using these platforms, but it doesn't take much internet searching to find plenty of people complaining about their Xbox Series X having trouble with 100GB "triple-layered" Blu-ray discs. It doesn't happen to everyone, but plenty of people have had playback issues with their Xbox.
Admittedly, the PlayStation 5 doesn't have many people complaining about this, but actual playback issues aren't the main reason you should consider a dedicated Blu-ray player over your console. It's the simple fact that Blu-ray movies can look better on a high-quality Blu-ray player, and there are several reasons why this is the case.
High-Quality Blu-ray Players Have Specialized Capabilities for Playing Video
While the Series X and PlayStation 5 are capable, multifaceted machines, they are primarily designed for gaming. They have more than enough processing power to play any Blu-ray disc, but processing power isn't everything when it comes to amazing visual fidelity.
Admittedly, what you're using to play your Blu-rays won't matter much to you unless you're already rocking some amazing hardware. If you don't have or plan to have a cutting edge TV, you probably don't need to invest in a quality Blu-ray player. After all, how good anything looks is still limited by what your display is capable of.
If you own or plan to own a high-quality 4K TV capable of producing the best image quality consumer technology can offer, then you owe it to yourself and your future enjoyment of movies to consider a top quality Blu-ray player. At the very least, you'll have an easier time managing your movie and its functions with a remote than with a gaming controller.
More importantly, a top quality Blu-ray player comes with some specific specs and capabilities that outshine a gaming console. This includes things like support for higher bit depth color modes and dedicated, finely-tuned video upscaling hardware.
Bit depth refers to the number of bits used to indicate the color of a pixel. More bit depth means a greater variety of colors that can be displayed. Think of it like this: a device with a low bit depth may only be able to display the color green. But a device with high depth may be able to display seafoam green, forest green, and gray-green.
High quality Blu-ray players, such as Ultra HD models with Dolby Vision, support a very high bit depth. Your gaming consoles have pretty decent bit depth themselves, but not as high as the best Blu-ray players, because they were designed for a wider array of functions and the manufacturers needed to keep costs reasonable, cutting back in areas where most customers would be unlikely to notice.
Dedicated 4K upscaling allows a Blu-ray player to run your video through a process that makes it look better on a 4K display and sends a 4K signal to your TV. Without this type of upscaling, your TV has to do the upscaling. While some higher-end TVs have excellent upscaling, the dedicated upscaler in your Blu-ray player is almost always better for this specific purpose. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 have upscaling hardware of their own, even quite nice upscaling, but a top-of-the-line Blu-ray player can usually do even better when it comes to upscaling DVD and Blu-rays specifically.
Now, admittedly, both the Series X and PlayStation 5 are still very capable 4K Blu-ray players. Unless you are using the most cutting edge displays available, the difference in quality between a dedicated Blu-ray player and these game consoles won't make much of an impact on you.
That said, there is one special feature that neither console has at all when it comes to Blu-rays, and that's Dolby Vision.
I won't talk too much about HDR: it stands for High-Dynamic Contrast, and it's a TV feature that improves the look of your visual content by controlling contrast, color, brightness, and more. There are different HDR formats, offering different improvements to your visual content.
What you need to know is that Dolby Vision is one of the most popular HDR formats used by studios and filmmakers, and considered one of the best looking HDR formats around right now. Many Blu-rays are being mastered in Dolby Vision today, and that's a problem if you're using your game consoles to play them.
Neither the Xbox Series X nor PlayStation 5 support Dolby Vision on disc. The Xbox Series X does support Dolby Vision, but only for streaming apps and digital games. For discs, the Xbox Series X can only provide support for HDR10. The PlayStation 5 has it even worse: it doesn't support Dolby Vision at all whether we're talking about games, streaming, or discs.
So, if you have a Blu-ray disc that was visually mastered via Dolby Vision and you play it on your Xbox Series X, the best you'll get is the consolation prize, which is HDR10. On a PlayStation 5, you won't even get that. Your movie will still look pretty good, but it won't look the way the filmmakers that used Dolby Vision wanted it to.
That said, this isn't a big deal if you don't also have a Blu-ray player and TV that supports Dolby Vision. As mentioned before, an expensive, high-quality UHD Dolby Vision Blu-ray player is superior to your Xbox Series X or your PlayStation 5, but it's only worth it if you want the absolute best cinematic experience possible.
Your game consoles will definitely still cut it as very good Blu-ray players. They just aren't the absolute best you can get. If "very good" is good enough for you, or you don't want to invest in an expensive Blu-ray player and TV combo, you're perfectly fine where you are right now.
Streaming is the way of the future, but there are plenty of reasons to start collecting Blu-rays. If you love owning physical media, or you just want to make sure your favorite movies will always be available to you, no matter what any company says, you should consider it.
Ultimately, your Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are good enough for playing Blu-ray discs. But there's just no denying that a top quality Blu-ray player is better if you want the best visual experience possible. If you're interested in getting one for yourself, 2024 has seen some amazing Blu-ray players, so you've got plenty of options to choose from.