Panasonic to Launch Japan-Only DMR-4X1010 4K Blu-ray Player on October 22

The Magnetar Ultima costs $12,000, about £8,895 or AU$16,687, making the Panasonic cheaper but still a niche product. TechRadar said September brought news of two new 4K Blu-ray players, not one, though neither is aimed at the average movie enthusiast.

The DMR-4X1010 plays 4K Blu-rays, regular Blu-rays and DVDs. It also includes 4K broadcast tuners and a 10TB hard drive for recording shows and movies. According to TechRadar, users can record to cloud storage of up to 10TB through Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, allowing recordings to be accessed on a phone or Blu-ray disc images to be stored in the cloud.

The unit can also record to BD-R/RE discs with capacities up to 100GB. TechRadar noted that recording from live broadcast is not widely popular worldwide, but it is popular enough in Japan for Panasonic to market the player as a way to own copies of content. The player uses an AVC encoder for high-definition recording. Panasonic says the encoder can compress 24Mbps signals to around 1.6Mbps to maximize recording space, although the player already carries 10 terabytes of local storage.

The DMR-4X1010 also works with Panasonic's AI Viera system. According to TechRadar, the AI can automatically adjust picture quality to fit the scene, producing bright and vivid images for sports and richer contrast for noir movies. It can also adjust audio to make it more immersive.

TechRadar reported that the launch comes amid concerns about the future of 4K Blu-ray and whether companies remain interested in producing new players. Existing models have been on the market for a long time, and Panasonic recently increased prices for its options. The publication said the release of the DMR-4X1010 and the Magnetar Ultima shows companies are not blind to demand for new choices, while adding that it hoped more affordable and mainstream players might arrive at some point.