Panasonic is launching a new 4K Blu-ray player! Okay, it's very niche and is coming to Japan only so far — but it's the second new player this year, and I'm just happy we're getting new hardware
If we had a nickel for every Blu-ray player launched this month we'd have two nickels. That's not a lot, but it's good it happened twice
by https://www.techradar.com/author/carrie-marshall · TechRadarNews By Carrie Marshall Published 16 September 2026
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- Panasonic launches new DMR-4X1010 4K Blu-ray player in Japan
- Also includes 4K tuners, 10TB of local storage for recordings, Blu-ray recording, and support for cloud storage
- About $2,800 / £2,080 / AU$3,930
Blu-ray fans should be feeling blessed this month: with new players decidedly thin on the ground, September has brought us news of not one but two 4K Blu-ray players — though neither is really aimed at the average movie enthusiast.
The new Panasonic DMR-4X1010 is a flagship 4K player with a bunch of other neat tricks up its sleeve, and while it's likely to stay as a Japan-only release, we're still happy to see new players being made.
A 434,500 yen, which works out at about $2,800 / £2,080 / AU$3,930, it's a fair bit cheaper than this month's other new Blu-ray player, the Magnetar Ultima: that costs a cool $12,000 (about £8,895 / AU$16,687).
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Panasonic DMR-4X1010: key features
The Panasonic DMR-4X1010 not plays 4K Blu-rays, regular Blu-rays and DVDs, it also features 4K broadcast tuners and includes a giant 10TB hard drive for recording shows and movies. There's also the option of cloud recording of up to 10TB via Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, so you can access recordings on your phone or store Blu-ray disc images in the cloud.
It even records to BD-R/RE discs of up to 100GB, if you prefer. Recording from live broadcast isn't that popular worldwide, but evidently it's popular enough in Japan to make this the ultimate 'own your copies' machine.
The player uses an AVC encoder for high-definition recording, and Panasonic says the encoder can compress 24Mbps signals to around 1.6Mbps to maximize recording space… though, again, it does come with 10 terabytes.
The DMR-4X1010 also works with Panasonic's AI Viera system, which can automatically adjust the picture quality to fit the scene — so bright and vivid if you're watching sports, and richer contrast if you're watching a noir movie. AI can also adjust the audio to make it more immersive.
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