Some Xbox Series X Owners Are Having Major Problems With 4K Blu-Rays

I have like 8 4K blu rays and about half of them have playback issues. The XSX sucks for UHD discs. It’s really inexcusable.

I hope my hobbit discs will work whenever it is they arrive

Oh no! I've got a big movie collection including a couple dozen 4K discs. I've only had my Series X since just before Christmas and haven't had issues.

Yet a quick check on Blu-Ray.com shows that the couple I've watched so far have been 66gb, and not 100gb ones. Seems like Saving Private Ryan is a 100gb disc, and I've watched that before on my One S with no issue so I'll check it tonight and report back.

If this is the case then it's a massive blow for me as a 4K Blu ray Player is VERY important feature. I've traded in my One S so if this isn't something that's fixed soon I'll have a bunch of useless disks

I have, on two occasions, and for two different movies, been forced to remove the disc from my Series X and put it in my PS5 in order to watch it. I guess I'm fortunate that I do at least have that option...

Whilst we're on the topic it would be nice to have some aspect ratio options on the video software included with Xbox too. If a movie has old formatting I again have to put it in the PlayStation since there are just more options available to play with. Definitely the one area where Xbox is miles behind the competition.

Makes you wonder that if Microsoft had kept on the original focus of the XB One being an entertainment hub then maybe Blu Ray support wouldn't be an afterthought now 🤷‍♂️

I was tired of using consoles for 4K Blu-ray playback so I bought a Sony x800m2 Blu-ray player: worth it especially if you want to play DVD-Audio discs and SACD. It also supports Dolby Vision - which neither the Series X or PS5 support for BD playback.

A dedicated 4K player is the way to go over using either the Series X or the PS5. The 4K BD playback on these consoles is nothing more than a convenience. The PlayStation is better than the Xbox, but still not as good as a dedicated player.

The Microsoft BD player for Xbox also doesn't output certain audio tracks even if you are letting your receiver do all the work. It's good for casual viewing in a pinch, though.

I had the noisy disc drive issue, I sent the console back to MS for a warranty replacement. The replacement kept rebooting itself, so that was then replaced with another XSX that had a noisy disc drive. I've since rearranged my TV cabinet so the XSX can rest on its side, its cured the issue for now but it's still not good enough.

I did raise the noisy disc issue on the Pure Xbox forums but nobody else experienced my problem. Therefore I assumed I was just unlucky.

Haven't had any playback troubles, but the disc drive is LOUD. I have to use headphones when watching movies because the noise is so distracting.

One X…horrible audio!! Picture, okay on an OLED. Series X…absolutely ***** audio and decent picture.

I don’t watch many discs but it would be nice to not have to tinker with the audio delay on my receiver every time

Anyone who is serious about watching 4K UHD discs can tell you, the XBOX is just terrible at it. To begin with, it doesn't even offer Dolby Vision for discs like it does streaming - if your TV has Dolby Vision and you aren't using it on discs that have it (the majority of new ones - only really Disney doesn't use it), you are already missing out. Then the laundry list of issues goes on down from there.

If you are just using it occasionally, it's passable - but if you are actually investing money in 4K discs and watching them regularly, as much as I hate to say it (because otherwise I think the Series X is nearly perfect), you are wasting your money on the discs if you don't get yourself a stand-alone player.

Never used the feature in all honesty.
But if it is true then MS should be looking into this ASAP.

Maybe I was particulary lucky, but I never encountered any problem with a 4k movie whatsoever.

Saw The Suicide Squad, this morning, for example. The reading was flawless, the picture cristal-clear.

And the movie was so damn fun ! Even if it's not topic-related.

This has been a nightmare. One of the main reasons I got two Series Xs was because of the blu-ray player. Not worked since launch and they've still yet to fix it.

Being honest I have watched only about 3 4K blu rays on my series x.
They all played perfectly, picture quality was very good with standard HDR and Dolby Atmos sound came through on my system well, very good rear effects etc on Dunkirk blu ray.
Did not seem to load disc spinning on Xbox.
Have not had a single issue. UK by the way not sure that makes a difference country wise.

Haven't tried the feature out yet, tbh. It streams in 4K fine, tho.

That's disappointing. However, consoles have always been a lousy choice of BD player. After a BD player or two gave me tons of trouble, I'd settled on buying PS3 Slims for playback. They worked great, but not as great a picture as the dedicated players. Then one by one each and every PS3 suffered a disc drive failure. After that I finally broke down and bought an Oppo and it never gave me trouble. Sadly Oppo is gone now. And there really aren't that many BD players around since streaming took over. Most of them are cheap ones that I assume the drives fail every few years. Or exotic multi-thousand dollar ones meant for home theater enthusiasts with more money than sense. But I definitely wouldn't want to use a $500 PS5 or XSX as a dedicated BD player and wear down the parts on them. There's cheaper BD players that can be more safely disposable that do the job as well or better, or there's more expensive ones that'll last longer.

I do wonder though what percentage of the market even plays BD discs in the post-streaming world. I doubt it's a priority for any company except Sony, since they're the co-creator/owner of the format and get money on every disc sold. Logitech has finally discontinued Harmony remotes citing that the market is just too small since disc players and STBs are increasingly rare with Smart TVs and streaming rising.

Budget AV enthusiasts that still have complex chains and component systems that don't have tens of thousands to blow on in-wall theater equipment and $4000 Crestron automation systems now have no option but going back to the old 90's bag of 8 remotes hanging off the chair with a sequence on each remote to remember to power everything up. RIP DIY HT, 2005-2020. We're back to "A tv and a soundbar and that's all anyone needs" or "I have a $65,000 theater professionally installed, the HT guy's running a new feed to the spa room next week."

It’s not just 4K discs that cause problems, standard blu-rays also throw up errors. Specifically anything that is 1080p 50fps (BBC wildlife documentaries for example), these discs were completely crashing my series X last time I tried them. As soon as the disc loaded the console would shut down. Not sure if this has been fixed but it happened with anything that was 1080 50p, found a couple of threads with others reporting the issue too.

Ive tried using the series x for disc playback just once, and it was poor and noisy, so im not likely to try again.
I have a couple of ps5s too, and one of them plays discs silently and with no issues. The other ps5 is terrible, i cant even find the disc slot! Its a digital model, lol!
Its not good that these issues are not fixed, this is supposed to be made by one of the richest tech companies in the world, you think they might manage a little support occasionally?

Due to crap internet for streaming, we rely a lot on Blu Ray and 4K UHD disks. We have watched a lion's share of movies on my Series X since November 2020 and have not seen these issues. I do not know what the disks are for sizes. I just know my family has no issues with our large library. Heck, we just came through the Christmas season and watched a ton of movies.

@GamingFan4Lyf I'm with ya. Bought LG 4k Player and never looked back. Not sure if i ever put a 4k disc in the XBOX lol. I have like over 50 4K's so i need something i KNOW will work.

tween my ps5 and xsx, I only use the xsx for 4k movies and never had a problem.

I have yet to encounter a 4k movie disc that doesn't run well on my Series X. And I buy/watch 4K movies regularly.

It’s funny. I own about 25 4k blu rays and only 2 of them won’t play in the Series X- The Shining & Batman ‘89. Fortunately, the regular blu rays that come with them play just fine.

I’ve only watched 2 different 4K Blu-rays on my XSX so far, Thor Ragnarök and Black Panther, and there were no issues whatsoever for me.

If experience with buying discs a lot and with people who file "detailed lengthy complaints on features they dang well payed for dag nabit!!" holds true...
Most of the time they have hardware that is dirty as sin or have discs that have been treated like total crud.
I've used about fifteen 4K UHD Blu's (100gb black label/case discs) on my launch window Series X, with only Dark Knight skipping once and upon inspection there was a noticeable smudge. Cleaned that up, tried the same spot in payback 5 times, no more issue.

We only use the UHD drive for movies in the one x connected to 4K tv, and that performs superb, for example the Harry Potter 4k collection (which are 100gb discs) runs fluid, haven't tried it on Series X yet, it's connected to a 1440p monitor, gamediscs run fine btw, but gonna try it out tonight, see if I can replicate what people are reporting.

Ok so further to my comment yesterday I went and tried out two 100Gb 4k disks (the UK releases of Saving Private Ryan and Westworld Season 1, disk 1) and there were no issues there. Though they were much noisier than a regular blu ray while loading up.

So don't know if this is because of specific machines, specific disks, or some combo of both. I'll vote to having no issues as it's been fine so far on all the standard and 4k disks I've tried on it.

@rtr0GMR1 According to Blu-Ray.com those are both 100Gb 4k disks that have reported to have more issues (though not for me). Do you have other 100gb disks that work ok?

I have had issues playing some movies and also some games from disc. My son loves the minigames in Minecraft: Xbox One Edition that are not in the current digital build of the game. He used to play it all the time. For several months now the disc will not read even though it looks clean. I have found several other games do not work as well. It can be pretty frustrating. I've even resorted to buying digital copies of games that I already have physically when they are at a cheap price just to avoid the frustration. Anyone else seeing that and have any recommendations? Xbox website isn't much help (tried what they suggested multiple times). Some discs play just fine but there are many that just won't for some reason.

Watching blu-ray, at least 4ks, if pause or start up the movie, I do have step backwards in fear the Series X is about to take off.

@PhileasFragg good looking out! I’ll have to check as I honestly am not sure. I can say that those are the only two that I own that I have issues with. The strangest thing is that they both played one time in my Series X and then they never played again. To me, that is the most confusing part of all.

When an Xbox disc drive works, it works. But if you've had the same luck I've had with my Series X and Xbox One, then there is clearly an issue. I haven't used 4K Blue Rays, just normal Blue Rays and they work perfect. My problem is with older DVD type discs. At first, no problems but after not even a year the disc drive refuses to read older DVDs, I end up having to keep ejecting the disk to put it back in for it to try and read again. At first it would work but now it's a nightmare to get them working so I don't even bother no more. I just use a DVD player so I don't wreck my disk drive. What's worse is, my old 360 games don't work now since they are printed on older DVD type discs. Any Xbox One game or Series X game is fine. But If I was to buy some newer indie game which aren't large in file size and it's printed on a DVD type disk I'm out of luck. This is clearly a fault for certain Xbox disc drives as this happened to my Xbox One and Now my Series X and I take good care of them. The warranty on my Series X should have been extended to acknowledge this problem.

@PhileasFragg Had MS maintained the 'entertainment hub' direction of business we wouldn't be discussing the Series X at all. If you haven't already given the documentary a watch. Phil pulled Xbox as a platform from the brink of talks about closing that side of operations. The changes he made convinced the powers at be that Xbox would continue to be a success and not a 'meme' of MS.

@LegendOfPeach @GamingFan4Lyf the Series X supports Dolby Vision and Atmos. For Dolby Atmos with your blurays you have to set it to passthru to let your AVR decode it.

@BleedingDreamer It does NOT to Dolby Vision for Blu-ray playback - only Apps and Games are supported. Blu-ray playback is limited to HDR10 on Xbox (and PS5).

I also know for a fact that the passthrough doesn't pass through everything.

DTS 96kHz/24-bit does not work. DTS-ES 6.1 does not work. LPCM 96kHz/24-bit does not work. Sound comes through the speakers, but it's NOT correct - it comes through as PCM 5.1 48kHz/24-bit instead.

Regular Dolby Digital works. Regular DTS works. Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos work. DTS-HD Master and DTS:X work.

Now, MOST people wouldn't care about any of this - which is why I say that those looking for something that just works the Xbox/PlayStation are perfectly fine; but, if you want are more of a home theater enthusiast, you want something that does EVERYTHING without headache.

Microsoft have known about this issue from day one, the xbox one x was exactly the same.
They just choose to do nothing about it whatsoever.
The bluray app is not fit for purpose either but they won't allow any third party apps.