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P&F’s Philips Brand Readies Its First 4K Blu-ray Player

P&F USA will become the second CE supplier to offer a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player in the U.S. with the June shipment of a model priced at a suggested $399, the same price as Samsung’s player.

The Philips-brand player will be available in two $399 versions. The BDP7501 will feature a brushed-aluminum chassis, and the BDP7301 will come with piano-black chassis.

Panasonic also plans to offer a 4K Blu-ray player later this year.

The Philips player features 4K upscaling of non-4K discs, playback of 3D Blu-ray discs, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio surround decoding, passthrough of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X object-based surround to AVRs, built-in HEVC and VP9 video decoders (the latter for 4K YouTube content), HDMI 2.0a output, and an HDMI 1.4a output, which is designed to connect to audio/video receivers whose legacy HDMI connections can’t pass through HDCP 2.2-protected 4K video.

Like the Samsung player, the Philips player supports the Open HDR high-dynamic range (HDR) format required by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) but not the optional Dolby Vision HDR format. Details of the features that 4K Blu-ray players are required to offer by the BDA are available here.

The Philips player also features Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Ethernet and USB support for HEVC, H.264, AVCHD, AAC, MP3, JPEG and other audio and video formats. Netflix and YouTube streaming services are included. It also plays CDs and DVDs.

The player lacks optional Digital Bridge capability.

The Samsung player has been certified by the UHD Alliance (UHDA) as meeting the group’s 4K player performance criteria, unveiled in April. In January, the alliance unveiled certification standards for TVs, 4K Blu-ray discs, and streaming 4K content. Products and content that meet alliance criteria for resolution, high dynamic range (HDR), peak luminance, black levels, wide color gamut, and other metrics are allowed to wear the Ultra HD Premium logo.

P&F USA, a subsidiary of Funai Electric Co., is the exclusive North American licensee for Philips TVs and home video products.

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