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Sony says: 'No 4K Blu-ray player, have a premium 1080p model instead'

In the absence of a 4K player, Sony has announced a high-end 1080p Blu-ray player it says is its first "hi-res" model.

Ty Pendlebury Editor

Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.

Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials

Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.

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Ty Pendlebury

Jan. 5, 2016 5:00 p.m. PT

With Ultra HD Blu-ray almost here it seems that the sun has almost set on regular old Blu-ray. The manufacturers that still make players tend to opt for display-free plastic boxes that can be easily piled in mesh bins at your local Best Buy. It would be crazy for a company to release a high-end HD Blu-ray player now wouldn't it?

Always the company with the impish, contrary streak, Sony has chosen 2016 -- after years of making those same plastic boxes -- to release a flagship 1080p Blu-ray player again. And hey, it has a display!

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The reason why now? Unlike Samsung and Panasonic, Sony is not announcing an Ultra HD Blu-ray player here at CES 2016, and so its UHP-H1 is relying on that other Sony stand-by: hi-res.

The UHP-H1 is a premium video player which purports to be a premium audio player with support for all your existing audio disk formats -- CD, DVD-Audio, SACD -- in addition to streaming music in 24bit/192kHz.

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It offers Bluetooth streaming to LDAC-compatible headphones or speakers (read: Sony branded) as well as offering streaming from Sony's PlayStation Now gaming service.

The player can be connected via SongPal to other Sony audio products to playback CDs and other music files stored on USB memory for wireless Multi-room listening.

The Sony UHP-H1 will be available in the US in Spring 2016 for $350.

1080p resolution with 4K upscaler
Dual band 802.11n wi-fi and Ethernet
Dual HDMI outputs