rduncan

Folks my LG BD630 from 10 years ago, per build date on back, finally gave up. Actually a mechanical issue as the "clamping" mechanism won't hold the disc in place. I guess that's what I get for forgetting a DVD in the tray, Paul Blart: Mall Cop of all things.

In any case when I look at basic players, nothing special like 4K or 3D, I see as many bad review as good on many. Mostly they seem to suffer from "infant mortality" and they die within a couple to few months. I use a Roku for streaming so built-in apps aren't really much of a consideration for me but I think I would like wi-fi connectivity for updates and not sure what else.

Any noticeable differences between basic brands, LG, Sony, Panasonic, and their models? No heavy use but I do have some Blu-Ray media I occasionally like to view.

DJariya

You can pretty much walk into any Walmart or Target and buy a really inexpensive Blu-Ray player for under $100.

Kurt D

Sony has done fine by me at the 100$ price point

davidh777

I think I got my MIL a Sony a couple years back. Basic functionality plus smart apps.

morriscroy

I had this exact same LG model too. Eventuallly it also succumbed to this exact same issue where the transport wasn't able to "clamp" onto the disc properly.

I took the metal cover off, just to see how exactly the mechanism was malfunctioning. The only "fonzie" workaround I could find, was pushing down on the metal chasis directly above the transport when a disc is being loaded in. This was enough for the clamping mechanism to grip onto the disc, but far from ideal. Easier to just buy a new bluray player.

zyzzle

I'm also looking for a new Blu-ray player which has zoom capabilities (0.5x,1.5x,2x,4x...). None of them seem to have it. The only one seems to be an expensive model by Sony, the X-700 ($1000), and it is discontinued, like the Oppos. Back in the day, any $30 DVD could zoom the film being watched.

Josh-da-man

Zoom functions on players seem to be a thing of the past.

I suspect that as widescreen tvs became more ubiquitous, manufacturers dropped those functions because people didn't have to zoom in to get rid of the "black bars" any more.

And, at this point, most HDTVs have zoom functionality so people don't need to get rid of the "black bars" on the sides or bottom with their players now.

Though the ability on older players to zoom in on certain parts of the screen was useful for examining details, like writing while watching a DVD.

rocket1312

At this point in blu-rays lifespan, most players are going to be on the cheaper side. Anyone still making anything that's a noticeable step up in quality is going to be putting those resources into UHD. I'd say avoid the generic Chinese brands and anything you get from Sony, Panasonic, LG, etc. will be more than sufficient.

zyzzle

Precisely why I found the feature so useful. It can't be THAT hard to implement a simple Lanzcos resample on the frame in memory and allow you to zoom it in. The Linux OS on almost every player made is very robust, but features are intentionally crippled or left out, How much would a "zoom" feature cost? Five cents to implement in firmware?! It boggles the mind.

Re: UHD a "zoom" feature makes even MORE sense, since you've got (3840x2160) = 8.3M pixels to display on screen, and unless you've got an 85" screen, a "zoom" would help you to resolve fine details in a picture / frames with all of that information!

TomOpus

Are you talking about the Sony UBP x700? I bought that player, mainly for it having Dolby Vision. It was nowhere near $1000.

zyzzle

No, sorry I meant Pioneer LX500, not Sony X-700. I believe that Pioneer player did have zoom, but it's discontinued as well. There also was an lx550 but I can't find stock anywhere. It was close to $1000 when in production.

Josh-da-man

Do any current players -- DVD, Blu-ray, or 4K -- still have a zoom feature?

I think the last player I bought that had one is my Toshiba DVD-Recorder I bought about twelve years ago. I don't think any of my blu-ray players have had a zoom, or if they did it was buried in the menu somewhere.

zyzzle

Even more annoying than not having "zoom" is the trend on newer players of not being able to search directly by time. Again, using the cheap $30 DVD players of a decade+ ago as the "golden standard", I could happily enter an offset time, like "55:55" or 1:11:11" to seek to within the movie -- and the player would very happily accomodate that simple request by going to that exact point in the film. Now? I haven't seen that feature, except perhaps on the $500+ players. It's so senseless to not include it. Being forced to fast-forward takes a full minute or longer and is inexact, as opposed to less than 3 sec. to just enter a seek time. Intentional crippling is often maddening as hell. And you folks wonder why I hate big companies?!

MooMooMooMoo

FYI: yesterday I had a 2 hour discussion with a Sony corporate upper level manager about the issues regarding my very old Oppo 95 communicating with a current Sony TV. Per the manager (who was pretty high up in the food chain) blu-ray players are on the way out. I would suggest to anyone who wants a new (as opposed to used Pawn shop or garage sale) br player; it's getting close to last chance for purchasing.

E Unit

You didn’t need a high up food chain Sony person to tell you that, it’s been going that way for years. There will always be players that support blu ray, just not traditional standalone ones anymore.

morriscroy

What would be amusing is if computer bluray-r drives (manufactured by LG) are still available, long after generic standalone bluray players (ie. Sony, Panasonic, etc ...) have stopped being manufactured.

zyzzle

There will always be Blu-ray players available. Just like there are still vinyl turntables, CD players, etc still available. The main problem will be, the "newly" made players will be of exceptionally poor quality relative to the cream-of-the-crop players available when the Blu-ray format was at its peak (Oppo, etc). Not only will they be poor in quality (cheap workmanship, and cheap parts), but they will become very expensive for what you actually get.

So, the best bet is to buy 3 - 5 good-to-very good standalone BD players *now*, out of the used bins of Goodwill and / or the "gently used" piles of Amazon or Ebay. Keep those sealed until needed. The quality of those throwaway "cheaper" players will far exceed whatever the expensive, crappy players of 2030-2050 will ever offer. It is a shame that Oppo players never did decrease in cost, as they were perhaps the pinnacle of the format, and they bit the dust early enough and quickly enough that no fire-sales were ever a possibility.... Even so, I'm hanging onto my Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player (still the *best* DVD player I've ever used for its great Reon upconverting chip, which I picked up cheaply during such a firesale ~ 15 years ago), and the Oppo BDP-93, which I did purchase for a reasonable price years ago and which still works far better than most current BD players, which is cherished for its BD .ISO image playback capability.

MooMooMooMoo

As I've found out the hard way, the frequency put out by the Oppo 93/95's HDMI 1.0 causes several issues when paired with the current Sony model's HDMI 2.3. Apparently 10.x & 20.x Oppos did make the change to "modern HDMI" The problem is nobody told me about it, including 2 retailers.

Your older players sound like a good idea, but in 20 years there probably won't be a TV available that will communicate with 2020 blu-ray players HDMI.

We got screwed on that. USB 2.0 & 3.2 work fine (though slowly) together.

morriscroy

Technically once all the relevant bluray patents expire, anybody can manufacture their own bluray player.

In the case of a computer dvd drive which only reads dvd-rom and cd discs, just about all relevant dvd patents have already expired worldwide.

The remaining unexpired patents left which will expired over the next several years, are releated to reading burned dvd-r / dvd-rw discs and some standalone dvd player functions. (The patents releated to burning dvd-r and dvd-rw discs will take longer to expire).

I haven't check bluray patents recently, but iirc the earliest most of the relevant patents will expire worldwide will be well after 2030.

Josh-da-man

Does that mean 4K UHD is DOA?

morriscroy

If the niche labels don't abandon it, then likely it will be similar to laserdisc market during the 80s and early->mid 1990s.

morriscroy

Assuming high end 4Kbluray players are still on the market in the future. For example, such as Reavon moving into the niche abandoned by Oppo.

E Unit

4K market is nowhere close to laserdiscs in the 90’s. Hardly anyone ever bought laserdiscs or players. 4K probably surpassed laserdisc adoption a while ago.

morriscroy

The only cases of laserdisc players being purchased by many non-hardcore movie folks which I'm aware of, were in asian countries and asian expatriate communities where karoke singing is a very popular leisure activity.

The only reason I ever purchased any laserdiscs back in the 1990s, was that my (now) ex-wife had purchased a laserdisc player for karoke. She was not a hardcore movie buff by any means.

kahuna

Karaoke Laserdisc players were big in Hawaii for business's & regular people like me. I never own a Karaoke player but had many friends that did and some of those locally produced laserdiscs were pretty expensive. They spent $1000's on their setups. Just about every weekend I would hear someone where I lived singing on there Karaoke Laserdisc player or machine. There was a locally produced TV show called "Hawaii Stars" from the Ala Moana center stage that aired on local TV station once a week.

Here is a article from the Business side of it.
https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/...4/smallb1.html