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The best Blu-ray players in 2024 make it easy to catch up on your favorite shows
Physical media is far from dead. In fact, it’s a better time than ever to own your favorite TV series and movies, given that they often disappear from streaming services in the blink of an eye. So if you’re someone who collects Blu-ray discs for your home theater setup, you’re going to want to start with a great Blu-ray player first.
A great Blu-ray player can make all the difference when it comes to getting the most out of what you watch. With the advent of 4K and HDR, they’ve evolved to deliver crisp, crystal clear picture and sound quality. So no matter what you buy on Blu-ray, you can enjoy it to the fullest at home with the right player.
But which Blu-ray player should you bring home? Whether you’re a casual viewer or a dedicated film fan, we’ve rounded up some picks.
The best Blu-ray players in 2024
Best Blu-ray player: Panasonic DP-UB820
If you’re looking for the best Blu-ray player for most users, look no further than the Panasonic DMP-UB820. This player has a nice balance of features, performance and value. That makes it the best choice for just about everyone who needs a Blu-ray player.
It has full HDR support for vibrant colors, sharp textures and accurate black tones. Even when you play standard, non-4K Blu-ray or DVD discs, this player’s upscaling ability sharpens and enhances picture quality so it’s almost like seeing your favorites come to life in a new way. It also has Dolby Atmos support so it can fill your room with loud, clear sound.
Aside from connecting it directly to your TV or stereo system, it can use Wi-Fi for video streaming and even has a dedicated HDMI audio output for even higher-quality sound. That means it should mesh well with just about any setup you have going on in your living room with little muss or fuss.
Best premium Blu-ray player: Panasonic DP-UB9000
If you want the absolute best in home entertainment and have an elite home theater setup, the Panasonic DP-UB9000 is the ultimate 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player. Yes, it’s pricey, and that’s because it’s for the most elite cinephile. That’s why everything about it says “luxury” in many ways.
The heavy metal build and premium design make it clear that this player is in a class of its own. It supports all the key HDR formats, including HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision. You can also count on it for fantastic audio quality. With high-quality DACs, two-channel and 7.1-channel analogue outputs as well as support for Hi-Res Audio, this player has you covered in terms of audio. To top it all off, the DP-UB9000 comes packed with plenty of smart features.
This level of performance doesn’t come cheap, so you’ll absolutely be paying a pretty penny. But if quality is of the utmost importance to you, this is the Blu-ray player of your dreams.
Best budget Blu-ray player: Sony UBP-X700
Don’t want to spend an entire paycheck on a Blu-ray player? You don’t need to. The Sony UBP-X700 is an affordable player offers an impressive array of features and performance that belies its budget-friendly price point.
Its exceptional picture quality may come as a surprise, given that this player is so afforable. But whether you’re watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster or a classic film, this Blu-ray player can offer a great-looking picture that you can be proud of, even if you’re watching only top-of-the-line 4K releases.
It supports multiple HDR formats, including Dolby Vision and HDR10, ensuring that you can enjoy the widest possible range of 4K content. While it doesn’t support HDR10+, this omission is hardly a dealbreaker considering the player’s affordable price point. Despite not being marketed as a hi-res audio player, the UBP-X700 can even play high-resolution audio files and supports various formats such as WAV and FLAC.
For less than $200, you really can’t do better than this Blu-ray player, so be sure to grab it if you want to have high quality at a low price.
Best Blu-ray player and console combo: PlayStation 5 Slim
If you need to play Blu-ray discs but want a multifunction player to handle it, you can’t go wrong with a PlayStation 5, namely the PS5 Slim, which means you can play movies as well as video games from the same device.
As a 4K Blu-ray player, the PS5 Slim is a great space-saving option for anyone who loves video games, movies and TV. It lets you enjoy your favorite movies and TV shows in high definition, then switch over to the latest and greatest games without having to get up and change the disc out given the PS5 Slim’s spacious hard drive.
You don’t need a remote since you can use the included DualSense controller, and given that there are tons of new games always releasing in tandem with films and TV, you can kill two birds with one stone with this device. Plus, you’ll have more space free, without having to have both gaming console and Blu-ray player.
CBS News
Foreign adversary was likely behind Havana Syndrome, House Intelligence leaders say
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said in an unclassified report released Thursday that it “appears increasingly likely that a foreign adversary is behind some” cases of what officials refer to as “anomalous health incidents” – mysterious illnesses suffered by U.S. national security officials.
The House Intelligence Committee concluded in the report that an intelligence community assessment from 2023 of anomalous health incidents (AHI), commonly called Havana Syndrome, “lacked analytic integrity and was highly irregular in its formulation.”
That 2023 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had deemed it “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was behind the mysterious injuries, though it did acknowledge that some intelligence agencies had only “low” or “moderate” confidence in that conclusion. Until now that has been the government’s leading assessment of what’s behind the Havana Syndrome.
Thursday’s report also accused the intelligence community of interfering with the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing investigation.
“Sadly, the [intelligence community] has actively attempted to impede our investigation, but we have nonetheless been able to gather significant evidence, and I have reason to believe that its claims of environmental or social factors explaining AHIs are false,” said Rep. Rick Crawford, the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Central Intelligence Agency, who led the investigation.
What is Havana Syndrome?
A total of 334 American officials have qualified for AHI care in the military health system as of January 2024, according to Thursday’s report. They have symptoms that scientists say could be caused by a beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. White House staff, CIA officers, FBI agents, and military officers and their families are among those who say they were wounded by a secret weapon.
A March 31 60 Minutes report on Havana Syndrome, based on a five-year investigation, revealed new evidence of a potential Russian nexus tied to mysterious illnesses suffered by U.S. national security officials.
Calls for a new Intelligence Community Assessment
After the 60 Minutes report in March, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to President Biden calling for a “renewed assessment by the U.S. government” of what officials call “anomalous health incidents.”
In the unclassified report released Thursday, House officials called for the Intelligence Community to release a new report on anomalous health incidents.
“The Subcommittee is aware that the IC (intelligence community) continues to withhold valuable information from the Subcommittee,” House leaders wrote. “For this reason, a final unclassified report cannot be issued at this time. In addition, the Subcommittee plans to issue a classified report that explains why the Subcommittee finds the conclusions reached in the ICA (intelligence community assessment) dubious at best, and misleading at worst.”
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said it conducted 48 interviews of current and former members of the CIA, FBI, ODNI, Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military, as well as interviews of non-government officials. Committee members reviewed more than 7,500 pages of official records and more than 3,400 pages of records provided by whistleblowers.
Based on their review, committee members said they believe the intelligence community was involved in “stonewalling, slow-walking, and cherry-picking of information” in its Havana Syndrome investigation.
“The Biden Administration and IC (intelligence community) leadership has sought to hinder the Subcommittee’s investigation into AHIs to keep the truth about AHIs from Congress and, by extension, the American public,” committee members wrote in Thursday’s report. “This is unacceptable.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it disagreed with many of the Committee’s interim findings. An ODNI spokesman said, “Most IC agencies assess that it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs, and the assertion that we are withholding information that contradicts this analysis or would otherwise illuminate this complex subject is unfounded.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer who was injured in Moscow in December 2017, spoke out about the Thursday report.
“The report indicates to me that not only was there incompetence on the part of CIA, but also willful malfeasance,” Polymeropoulos said.
He was the first CIA officer to go public about his experience.
“They failed to properly investigate the attacks, then cooked the books analytically, while also launching a campaign to belittle the victims as well, denying them medical care. In totality, this ultimately is a staggering betrayal of the CIA’s own people. That is very hard to stomach, from an organization that I dedicated my life to. This report seems to open the door for Congress to fully investigate what looks like a truly historic scandal at CIA. I am both angry, but also feel vindicated, in what has been a very long seven year battle,” Polymeropoulos told 60 Minutes.
The 60 Minutes Havana Syndrome investigation
Greg Edgreen, a now-retired Army lieutenant colonel who ran the Pentagon investigation into anomalous health incidents, previously told 60 Minutes that the bar for proof was set impossibly high. He said it was set so high because the country didn’t want to face hard truths, like the existence of possible failures to protect Americans.
After speaking with 60 Minutes, Edgreen testified before the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence.
CBS News
NASA delays next 2 Artemis moon missions to address heat shield, other issues
Less than a year after announcing major delays for the next two Artemis moon missions, NASA managers said Thursday the projected flight dates are slipping once again, with the first piloted voyage around the moon now expected in the April 2026 timeframe, and the first lunar landing in mid 2027.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the delays are needed to revise the Orion crew capsule’s re-entry trajectory to reduce stress and prevent the sort of unexpected heat shield damage seen after an unpiloted 2021 test flight — and to complete extensive testing of the capsule’s environmental control and life support systems.
“Based on the data, we have decided, unanimously, to move forward with the current Artemis 2/Orion capsule and heat shield with a modified entry trajectory…to lessen the heat coming back into the Earth’s atmosphere,” Nelson said.
“Additionally, we need to complete our updates to the Orion environmental controls and the life support systems that were identified earlier this year.”
Future heat shields for the Artemis 3 moon landing mission and subsequent flights will use essentially the same materials but with modifications to improve their performance during re-entry.
In the meantime, Nelson said, “We are planning for Artemis 2 to launch in April of ’26 and we’re going to do all in our power, with our commercial partners, to launch earlier.”
The Artemis program aims to send astronauts to the moon’s south polar region where ice deposits may allow crews to one day extract oxygen and hydrogen to produce air, water and rocket propellants that would not have to be carried up, at great expense, from Earth.
Following the launch of Artemis 2, Nelson said NASA is going “to make (any) adjustments that are necessary, and we plan to launch Artemis 3, the first landing on the moon in over a half century. Assuming the SpaceX lander is ready, we plan to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027. That will be well ahead of the Chinese government’s announced intention (of sending taikonauts to the moon in) 2030…We need to get this Artemis 2 test flight right to ensure the success of our return to the moon.”
NASA launched the Artemis program’s first test flight, Artemis 1, in November 2022, using the agency’s new Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket to send an unpiloted Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule on a looping flight around the moon and back.
NASA had planned to launch the Artemis 2 mission at the end of this year to carry a three-man one-woman crew around the moon to thoroughly test the spacecraft’s life support, propulsion and other systems.
But after the Artemis 1 flight, engineers discovered the Orion capsule’s 16-foot-wide heat shield suffered unexpected damage during it’s high-speed return from the moon using a technique called a “skip entry.”
In a skip entry, the capsule dips into the atmosphere, slows and rises back up before dropping back into the atmosphere for the final descent. The idea is similar to how a flat rock can skip across a still pond. Skip entries provide a number of benefits, including a wider range of splashdown targets.
The Orion heat shield is designed to ablate, or char, during re-entry when the spacecraft enters Earth’s atmosphere at more than 25,000 mph. But the charred material is intended to stay in place, providing a layer of insulation. During the Artemis 1 re-entry, more charred material separated from the heat shield than computer models predicted.
While the unexpected “liberation” had no impact on the spacecraft — NASA said astronauts would not have even noticed had any been on board — engineers wanted to make sure they understood the underlying cause so they could update computer models to accurately predict re-entry effects across multiple trajectories.
After hundreds of tests and an exhaustive engineering analysis, NASA has “since determined that while the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield’s outer layer,” said Pam Melroy, a former shuttle commander and now deputy administrator of NASA.
That heat build up led to “gases forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield,” she said. “This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer.”
While the same type of heat shield will be used for the Artemis 2 mission in April 2026, the crew will use a modified re-entry trajectory to reduce the sort of heating that damaged the Artemis 1 heat shield.
As for the Artemis 3 lunar landing flight, the new mid-2027 target launch date assumes SpaceX’s lunar lander, a variant of the upper stage used by the company’s new Super Heavy-Starship rocket, completes multiple test flights in Earth orbit, along with at least one unpiloted lunar landing.
On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he was selecting billionaire Jared Isaacman, a space veteran with strong ties to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, to serve as NASA’s next administrator.
During the news conference Thursday, Nelson was asked whether he was concerned that the next administration might make major changes to the Artemis program given SpaceX’s development of the new Super Heavy-Starship rocket.
“First of all, there is one human-rated spacecraft that is flying and that has already flown beyond the moon, and that’s the SLS (Space Launch System) combined with Orion,” Nelson said. “Secondly, this is a partnership. It’s a commercial partnership. It’s an international partnership.
“I think what is going to happen over time is you’re going to have a number of years that we’re going to have the partners flying with NASA, and then whatever the technologies that are developed later on will dictate what is going to be the system that’s flying.”
He concluded by saying, “I don’t see the concern that your question raises, although it’s a legitimate question, that you’re suddenly going to have Starship take over everything.”
CBS News
Data centers proliferate nationwide, encroaching on cities, suburbs
The sprawling, windowless warehouses that hold rows of high-speed servers powering almost everything the world does on phones and computers are increasingly becoming fixtures of the American landscape, popping up in towns, cities and suburbs across the United States.
Demand for data centers ballooned in recent years due to the rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and urban and rural governments alike are competing for lucrative deals with big tech companies.
But as data centers begin to move into more densely populated areas, abutting homes and schools, parks and recreation centers, some residents are pushing back against the world’s most powerful corporations over concerns about the economic, social and environmental health of their communities.
In Northern Virginia, more than 300 data centers dot the rolling hills of the area’s westernmost counties and butt up against wooded bike trails winding through the suburbs. But one of the latest proposals in the area, Plaza 500, would see a 466,000-square-foot facility and adjacent electrical substation built a few hundred feet from townhomes, playgrounds and a community center.
The pitch from Starwood Capital Group, the private investment firm founded by billionaire Barry Sternlicht, to Fairfax County officials promised jobs and a significant property tax boost. But data center critics say the incentives aren’t enough to counteract the consequences of building the facilities so close to homes.
Tyler Ray, a leader in the fight against the Virginia project, worries that more data centers in the area could compromise the already stressed power grid: Over 25% of all power produced in Virginia in 2023 went to data centers, a figure that could rise as high as 46% by 2030 if data center growth continues at its current pace. Some estimates also show a mid-sized data center commands the same water usage every day as 1,000 households, prompting concerns over the cost of water. Ray also frets over air quality, as the massive diesel generators that help power the data centers’ hardware send plumes of toxic pollutants into the atmosphere.
Ray and his neighbors tried to stop the development, but their efforts were largely unsuccessful. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in September said all newly proposed data centers must adhere to stricter zoning rules, but the Plaza 500 project was exempt.
“I don’t know how a general resident, even someone who has been engaging intently on an issue, has any chance to go up against the data center industry,” Ray said the night the supervisors voted.
For local governments, attracting data centers to their municipalities means a financial boon: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in 2024 that Virginia’s current data centers brought in $1 billion in tax revenue.
For average-sized facilities, data centers offer a small number of direct jobs – often fewer than 100 positions. Google announced recently that its investment in nearby Loudoun County, which included two data centers, created around 150 direct jobs, a figure that data center opponents say isn’t worth the hassle. But data center advocates argue that the number of indirect jobs like construction, technology support and electrical work make the projects worthwhile. In that same announcement, Google said their investment spurred 2,730 indirect jobs.
Kathy Smith, the vice chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, voted in favor of the Plaza 500 proposal because, in her estimation, data center growth is inevitable in the region, and Fairfax County should reap the benefits.
“I have a responsibility to step back from what we do and look at the big picture,” Smith said. “Data centers are not going away.”
On the other side of the country, in Morrow County, Oregon, Amazon Web Services has built at least five data centers surrounding the 4,200-person town of Boardman, nestled among vast stretches of farmland flecked with mint patches and wind turbines, next to the Columbia river.
Last year, AWS paid roughly $34 million in property taxes and fees stipulated in the agreements after receiving a $66 million tax break. Those payments, in addition to $1.7 in charitable donations from the company in 2023, have been instrumental in updating infrastructure and bolstering services. These funds have gone toward a new ladder fire engine, a school resource officer and $5,000 grants for homebuyers so far totaling at least $2.8 million.
“This road right here? Wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for AWS,” said Boardman Mayor Paul Keefer, riding in the passenger seat of Police Chief Rick Stokoe’s cruiser, pointing out the window at construction workers shifting dirt and laying pavement.
AWS has cultivated relationships with local officials including Keefer and Stokoe, who have both been in positions to vote on whether to authorize tax breaks with the company. Some former county commissioners and residents worry that those relationships are too cozy.
Kevin Miller, AWS’s vice president of global data centers, said in an interview with the Associated Press that “our interest is in being a model corporate citizen, to really be partners with those communities.”
Skepticism of the deals started years ago, when three formerly elected officials allegedly helped approve data center deals while also owning a stake in a company that contracted with AWS to provide fiber optic cables for the data centers. In June, they each paid $2,000 to settle an ethics complaint.
Those officials are no longer in office. But the latest data center deal struck between Morrow County officials and AWS, which gives the company an estimated $1 billion in tax breaks spread over the 15 years to build five new data centers, again raised eyebrows.
Two former Morrow County Commissioners, Jim Doherty and Melissa Lindsay, pushed unsuccessfully in 2022 for AWS to pay more in taxes in new data center negotiations.
“We didn’t want to blow it up. We didn’t want to run them off,” said Lindsay. “But there were better deals to be made.”
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