Competing standards are always a nightmare for consumers, with early adopters having to choose which standard they think will ultimately win out. Eventually, manufacturers catch up and release hardware that supports everything. LG decided to do that early with its new 4K Blu-ray player.
One core feature of 4K video is support for High Dynamic Range (HDR). There are actually four standards for HDR: HDR10, Dolby Vision, HLG, and HDR10+. Thankfully, you only need to worry about two of those in terms of owning compatible hardware: HDR10 and Dolby Vision.
HDR10 is an open standard and the most widely supported. Dolby Vision is a proprietary standard with several benefits over HDR10. The first is up to 12-bit color depth (HDR10 is 10-bit), and support for dynamic metadata compared to HDR10's static metadata. By supporting dynamic metadata, Dolby Vision allows the picture brightness curve to be optimized per scene, or even frame by frame.
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HDR10 is more widely supported right now, but having access to Dolby Vision's color depth and dynamic metadata is desirable if you have a compatible TV. More content will inevitably appear that includes Dolby Vision support, too. This is where LG comes in with its UP970 4K Blu-ray player.
The UP970 boasts support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision as standard, meaning you are future-proofing your viewing in terms of HDR support. The player also supports Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio, and offers two HDMI ports: an HDMI 2.0a port for Ultra HD output and a HDMI 1.4 port. Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and a USB port also come as standard.
The LG UP970 4K Blu-ray player is already available with a suggested price of $299.99. However, there's currently a promotional offer meaning you can pick the player up for $239.99.