My current Blu-ray player is about half a decade old and showing its age. I’m looking to get a new one but don’t have much clue about what’s out there.
Are there features which can be particularly useful? Any brands to seek out or avoid? What’s your experience been like?
My first Blu Ray player which I bought around 5-6 years ago was a Sony. It never worked right from day one. Many disks which would play on other players would just freeze on it. I finally got tired of it and replaced it with an LG which I bought maybe 4 years ago. I am very happy with it. I’ve only had two complaints with it:
It isn’t consistent about remembering where I stopped a disk if I stopped partway through. Sometimes it will remember and offer to resume and sometimes it will just start over.
The Amazon Prime app was taken away arbitrarily and the Netflix app stopped working. It would freeze randomly. I got a Roku now so neither of these matter anymore (although I prefer the interface to my Blu Ray’s Netflix app to the Roku’s and if it had still worked I would use it instead but oh well).
I’ve had nothing but peerless service from the two Oppo Blu-Ray players I’ve had. They aren’t cheap but they are the best bang for the buck out there. The BDP-83 and 103 I presently have also play almost any format disc you may have (CD, SACD, DVD, etc). The same goes for the 203 I linked to, and it plays 4k natively which is huge if you decide to dip your toes into the UHD game. As an added bonus the audio DACs are very good and pure audio playback is amazing.
Personally I would look for a player with a front USB port in it that can play a myriad of formats from a flash drive. Flash drives are easier than discs when it comes to moving files from your computer to your tv.
That is, unless your TV has an easily accessible USB port and can play a lot of formats. Most TVs do have them now but they don’t always play too much. I think mine just plays JPG slide shows and maybe mp4.
Looks like that Oppo system that **swampspruce **linked to has such a feature. No idea if it’s something that cheaper machines have too.
It does play files via USB and you can also do updates if you don’t have it networked. You may be able to snag a BDP-103 or 105 fairly inexpensively if you don’t need native 4k. My 103 Darbee Edition upscales to 4k and does a pretty decent job of it. Can you tell I’m a fan?
It’s pretty standard now, but regardless of the brand, make sure the player has internet connectivity.
This allows the system to download updates and allows it to play the most updated disks. The biggest problem with the blu-rays back in the day was the older ones couldn’t play the newer disks because they couldn’t download the latest updates from the web.
I have one for Sony and will not buy that brand again. I have to say it’s pretty old and blu ray is pretty much obsolete in this household and perhaps it had changed but it has a very clunky interface that I was very disappointed with. The Sony replaced another one which i forgot it’s brand, but at first I thought I was upgrading to a Sony, big letdown when I actually tryed to use it.
And also that it can do so via wifi, unless you know it’s only going to be in a place near the router. My parents learned that one the hard way - especially if you want a Netflix/Amazon enabled box.
Another thing to consider is that you might want your player to be region-free, so that you can watch discs from Europe/Asia/Australia.
How readily available are those - and, for that matter, are there that many region-specific Blu-Ray discs? I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as it was with DVDs.
Also note that not all “region-free” players work the same way. There appear to be two kinds - one that makes the player think all discs are Region 0 (or A/B/C for Blu-Rays), and one that actually switches to a particular region. Somebody found a way around the first one; a Region 1 disc would start trying to play in Region 2, and if it worked, it would display a warning message (“This disc is meant to play only in a Region 1 player you thief”) and lock up everything except the eject button, but if it threw a “wrong region” error, it would then go through the other regions before finally playing the correct region. I, er, “have a friend” with the second kind of DVD player.
I too am interested in a “region free” or “region 0” player recommendation. I bought the complete set of BBC Goodnight Sweetheart (I’m in the US) and having to Handbrake-rip them all is too much work.
I would recommend against a dedicated blu-ray player and instead take a look at the Xbox One S (going for about $244). It offers you quick UHD bluray load times and great picture quality, all at 4K and with HDR support too. It’s added support for Dolby ATMOS too.
I don’t think you’re going to find a better deal in terms of features and support vs price.
Like you, I’m a PC gamer, so I almost never touch it for games, but as an entertainment center, it’s really fantastic!
It’s easy enough to purchase region-free DVD players (or hack one to make it region-free) but I wasn’t aware that you could do that for a Bluray player. I notice that when I play Bluray discs, the player will, occasionally, download a new decryption code. So if it needs network connectivity to get the codes, will it lock up if it’s been hacked to be region-free?
I have found the software extras - like Netflix, Amazon, YouTube etc, to be pretty useless. Slow clunky code, usually running in an embedded browser - eventually it stops being updated. A dedicated Roku, AppleTV or FireTV is much, much more usable.