Actually pioneer drives work out of the box without custom firmware I’ve brought two of them before a standard blu-ray and a 4k one. Both worked out of the box.
I have a collection of about a hundred physical 4K BluRays that I would like to rip and upload to my Plex server.
I just hate using my physical BluRay player. The reproduction is good, super stable, but it's noisy and clunky. I've thought about buying a new player but good players are expensive and I'm not sure I want to keep investing money on physical media.
I live in Mexico and for some reason Amazon US has stopped shipping most BluRay discs here. The selection of titles available in Mexico is much more limited and the prices are so much higher.
4K HDR streaming is really good these days. I rarely feel like the compression is noticeably worse than when watching a BluRay.