(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best blu-ray players & recorders

Boy, I'm no expert but I don't think I've ever read about or heard about this type of converter. Was searching over in the avsforum and nothing was coming up. The only solution I could think of is buying a blu-ray player that has multi-channel out and plays those formats but there aren't many. I can only think of the OPPO players because I have two. They are pretty expensive but you can buy them used. They are amazing units and the company's customer service is rated at the best ever. I have one of their older units, the BDP-83 that is about six years old and the tray began sticking, a problem that the units developed over the years and OPPO fixed it for free (I paid a small shipping fee). Anyway, I think that Denon and Marantz also made some players that supported them but were pretty expensive. Anyway, just my two cents and here is a link to a used 83 in case you are interested. https://www.amazon.com/OPPO-BDP-83-Blu-ray-DVD-Audio-Technology/dp/B002EEP3MK/ref=pd_sbs_504_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=X00HQ5H6SSH4EVNP1AJ3

Okay Lassie, here we go.

> Or just don’t read the comments.

You have a right to bitch and I have a right to point out that it's all been said before. "Lack of exclusives" is a meme at this point with how much it's mentioned.

> Spencer is all good at congratulating other devs and companies for their games and launches. I literally can’t remember when anybody else in the industry congratulated XBOX on anything.

What a weird thing to care about. Seriously, you're bothered that Spencer pats companies on the back and they don't reciprocate? First hit on a 3rd grade level google search.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-congratulates-microsoft-on-xboxs-15th-ann/1100-6445460/

> Fair enough they’ve progressed the streaming business model with game pass and the special needs controller was a stroke of genius but it’s all about the games.

Is... that a neg? Are you trying to emotionally batter MS into fulfilling your wishes?

> I’ve used my X to play Blade Runner 2049 in 4K than actual games console.

Again, seems like you'd be a lot happier selling the console and moving on. Why let yourself be so emotionally invested in a product that upsets you? [Here's a $50 4K BR player to ease the transition for ya.] (https://www.amazon.com/Sanyo-Ultra-Blu-Certified-Renewed/dp/B07FTTP9G2/ref=sr_1_5_acs_ac_1?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1537906501&sr=1-5-acs&keywords=4k+blu+ray+player)

> As for those complaining about not having Forza and Halo. There’s Gran Turismo and KillZone. Sony still offers alternatives. What does Xbox have to compete against God of War and Spiderman?

Killzone is five years old and hardly an equal to Halo in any regard. GT is okay but no one who takes driving games seriously is putting it above the Forza series.

God of War is the best received PS4 game ever. You might as well say "what XB1 games are like Breath of the Wild?" The answer is none. Quantum Break, Ryse, and a few others have similar elements but none are as polished or well received.

Spider-Man is heavily influenced by the Arkham series. So, the Arkham series. Not an exclusive but I'm tired of this inane discussion at this point. The great thing about being console agnostic is that I'm going to fire up my PS4 now and play it without having all that emotional baggage you seem to be carrying around.

Good day.

For $300 to $400 for music and possible use with a TV, an AV receiver and a pair of bookshelf speakers will be much better.

Then you also have HDMI switching as well as onboard crossovers and the option of adding more speakers for surround sound later if you want to. Just as easy to setup as a system in a box.

Receivers:

• Denon AVR-S540 $150 refurbished 5.2, one year factory warranty, with HDMI 2.0B and HDCP 2.2 for 4K video switching.
  
• Denon AVR-S640 $200 refurbished 5.2 adds Audyssey MultEQ room correction / speaker calibration.
  
• Denon AVRX1400 $250 refurbished 7.2/5.2.2, adds the excellent Audyssey MultEQ XT, or new half price for $300 with a 3 year factory warranty.
  
  For a CD player add one for $100+ or for a low budget a $35 DVD player or a $65+ Blu-ray player or a Ultra 4K player for $160+. Also very easy to find a used CD or DVD player at thrift shops for $10.
  
  Speakers:
  
  Bookshelf $100 to $250:
  
  
• Airmotiv B1 Pair $230, great deal and recently reduced from $300.
  
• Big Infinity Reference R162 $175 refurbished.
  
• Wavecrest Audio HVL-1, and order on sale here at Ascend $80 each + shipping.
  
• Polk S15 $185.
  
• BIC Venturi DV62si 6-1/2" 2-Way Bookshelf Speaker Pair $120.
  
• Polk Audio Monitor 40 $100
  
  Towers:
  
  
• BOSTON ACOUSTICS A250 5.25" $225
  
• Pioneer-SP-FS52 $200
  
  Speaker wire:
  
  
• Pure copper oxygen free 16 Guage and self adjusting wire strippers or basic.
  
• Or get pre-cut and terminated with Banana Plugs Micca. Or KK for the Denon 540.
  
  Home Theater Guides:
  
  r/HTBuyingGuides FAQ • How to Set Up a Basic Home Theater System - Lifewire • How to Set Up Your Home Theater Receiver • Speaker Placement for Home Theater
  
  Home Audio Guides:
  
  Intro to home stereo systems • Zeos Tutorials, Diagrams and Videos • r/Audiophile Getting Started • Beginner's Guide to Home Audio • AverageJoeAudiophile's Guides • Speaker Placement for Stereo Music Listening.

not op but I got mine here and absolutely love it! Not oppo but works great and is relatively cost effective

You can if it...you know...can? There are a hell of a lot of bluray (and DVD) players these days that have built in wifi/wifi support/ethernet and a netflix/hulu/whatever else app. And to be honest, those devices generally don't cost more than $35.

Picking one arbitrarily, here is a Samsung BluRay Player for $30 that plays Netflix Youtube and Pandora. Newer ones tend to support more apps, but this one is 5 years old so give it a break. Between smart TVs, bluray players and game consoles it's getting rarer and rarer that people actually need a dedicated device for streaming content. Granted the quality of these apps and services varies a bit depending on the specific device/manufacturer.

So ya. Maybe YOU can't watch netflix on your bluray/dvd player. But that's a personal issue. The dudes question was valid.

The non-shitty/ignorant answer is that because chromecast allows you to stream tabs you can technically watch streams from sites that arn't normally supported by in-house apps (Twitch for example) giving it a bit larger base of possible content . The reality though is that (at least when I used it) the feature doesn't work very well and stutters a great deal. Plus there is the whole part where that is only useful if you actually watch things outside of netflix/hulu/whatever.

edit: The above commenter deleted his comment. For context he stated "No it can't. It's a bluray/dvd player. Are you retarded?"

You can get a region free DVD player for like $30 ish and collect region 2 DVDs and save a crap load of money. Or check your dvd players brand and model number and do a google search for it + region unlock. A lot of them unlock with a simple series of button presses on the remote to open a hidden menu.
The 3 players I had I was unable to unlcok and i went a bit more expensive and bought a $99 refurbished bluray/dvd region free player. then i went to my mother's house and did a quick search on my smart phone and unlocked one of her dvd players in like under a minute.
After stalling out at 77 region 1 stories at what I considered a decent price I gave up and went region free. Have since added 26 region 2 stories to my collection. I intend to have them all as well. And this is worse then that dream I had the other night about vomiting up swarms of live spider, especially when this is an option.

Fair enough, but it's still a feature that they could most likely add without a huge amount of hassle. I have a £50 Blu-Ray player that can play video files without fuss off a USB drive or external HDD, and for me it was a huge factor in buying that specific player.

Given the PS4 already has capability to work with USB drives, and it can play video files already off the internal hard drive, it doesn't seem like a massive leap to be able to add support for playing external files. There's no reason that adding extra media functionality necessarily has to take away from it being a great games console.

I guess my point here was - You're asking why it isn't in use for movies/TV, but as far as I can tell it is in use. Were you looking for some different method or technology compared to what is available in current devices?

Blu Ray Player That Mentions Upscaling

I'd link a TV, but honestly just about every 4K TV does this in some manner. Better quality upscaling on better TVs.

You are not looking for a Blu-Ray player. You are looking for a replacement to your Home Theater in a box head unit. Short answer: Good Luck. Have fun on eBay.

It is out of your budget, but you should be getting a 5.1 Home Theater Receiver and a separate Blu-Ray Player. You might have to strip your speaker wires to plug them in, and the audio quality from the receiver won't be the best that it could be, but it will be MUCH better than whatever you had.

Receiver: This one is OKAY. It'll get the job done.

$170 - Refurbished - Yamaha RX-V377-R

Blu-Ray Player: This one is the only one worth buying, IMO.

$75 - New- Sony BDPS5500

You have a fairly large budget, so I'd go with a separates system. Here's what I would go with that will get you a very, very good system:

Speakers: Hsu Research Bookshelf Speakers $1059 for a 7.0 system. Chane Loudspeakers would also work here.

Subwoofers: 2 Hsu Research VTF-15H subwoofers $1709 for both. SVS subwoofers are also excellent here.

Amplifier: Outlaw Audio Model 7125 $999

Pre-Amplifier: Marantz AV7702 $1499 for a pre-amp with dolby atmos (in case it becomes popular). If you wanted to go cheaper here, you could pick up an Emotiva UMC-200

Projector Screen: Elite Screens Acoustically Transparent $470

Blu-Ray Player: Panasonic Blu-Ray Player $100 (unless you just want to go for a PS4, or my personal preference, an HTPC.

Cables: Monoprice 12 Gauge Speaker Wire 5 Aurum HDMI Cables Emotiva 7-Channel RCA Cable All cables add up to ~$90

Subtotal: $5926 plus shipping.

As far as anything else goes, I'd look into either padding the walls with acoustic dampening material, or putting up some other form of room treatment, which would be another couple hundred dollars. Other things you might want are speaker stands, a universal remote, a calibration disk (I like Disney WOW), and maybe a couple other cables for other audio equipment, etc.

Honestly, the Xbox One S is actually a really great buy if you're in the market for a 4K Blu-ray player. The only other options are over $200 from Samsung and Phillips. It's very reminiscent of the PS3 days where it was around the same price to get a PS3 vs other blu-ray players so it was a waste to get a standalone player.

Plus, with the introduction of the play anywhere thing (albeit limited), you only need to buy a single copy to play on both the Xbox and PC for the games which are eligible. Just seems MS is eager to try and mend the gap between PC and Xbox especially since they're behind. I'm still floored as to why Sony didn't use a 4K blu-ray player in their Pro model, but it made the decision really easy when I wanted to buy something capable to play 4K blu-rays.

Edit: Me grammar bad.

Throwing another wrench in to this:

I just watched a pretty technical comparison of the Oppo vs the Panasonic UB900, and the judgement was that the Panasonic had better image quality -- but no Atmos.

Now the question becomes: if I am going to drop $600 on a bluray player, do I go for the Atmos support + reputation of the Oppo or the better image quality of the Panasonic? How much better is Atmos compared to HDR10?

Not only was it the most affordable blu-ray player at the time, it was (and still is) one of the best available. It's not an Oppo, but between the quality of the BD playback (including 3D via firmware upgrades), fantastic DVD 1080p Upconversion, and very robust streaming support, it was a huge bargain. Hell, it outperforms the PS4, which is comparitively a rather cheap blu-ray player (they didn't even have a remote available until late last year, and then only one that is licensed by Sony, not actually made by them).

For sound bar use, this would be the loudest and (subjectively) best option. Other similarly priced bars can also be considered.

If you would like speakers and a receiver, I would recommend this, this, or even this. I would pair these with a decent integrated receiver like this.

Those combinations should provide you with lots of sound, if you apply a low pass filter (around 60 hz).

>Which would be better for someone that knows pretty much nothing about computers, and absolutely nothing about viruses?

I'd go standalone blu-ray/streaming player box + Chromebook. For non-computer people the options for linux blu-ray playback aren't great, don't get full menu support, install process is a bit annoying as you've got to install the decryption software separately, new discs may not play if the keys haven't been leaked yet. The sensible solution if it must be on a computer is run Windows + PowerDVD, which adds quite a bit to the price, and the Blu-Ray drive alone is more expensive than a standalone player that can also do netflix/hulu/youtube/etc such as this https://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDPS1700-Streaming-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B01AT6B14S/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1503280509&sr=8-5&keywords=blu-ray+player.

If they care about 4K Blu-Ray, I'd go Xbox One S.

I suggest buying an external (or internal) Blu-Ray drive for your computer. With MakeMKV (currently free, a license is around $50 I think) you can rip Blu-Rays to your computer and do whatever you want with them (including burn them to a region-free Blu-Ray playable on your Region B player).

My process as someone living in a Region A country when importing region B / C movies is to rip them using MakeMKV, then put them onto a flash drive and play them with my LG BP 145. It was around $55 when I bought it soon after Black Friday.

Even though the Blu-Ray drive for my PC costed around $60, these two together are still probably a cheaper and better experience than most region-free Blu-Ray players. I expect Oppo probably makes good region-free players, but that brand is extremely expensive.

So if I were in your position I would just buy the Blu-Ray drive and then use your region B player to play the files / discs.

As far as I can tell this should take care of your blu-rays, USB & Netflix. Though I just glanced quickly... read it more thoroughly to be sure.

Edit: For anyone in the US looking for a blu-ray player this seems to do all of the things listed above as well... Again, be sure to read everything thoroughly.

I think there are region free blu-ray / dvd players available on the market. here's one. But they seem pretty expensive (150$+) so I am looking for recommendations on cheaper ones

> The Samsung UHD Blu ray player is half off at best buy right now too

Worth noting that this will be $50 more off on black friday and is already ~$200 on Amazon

The Philips is also on sale for ~$180 on Amazon

The player is a Sony BDPS1200 Smart Blu-ray Disc Player. Currently, Kwaidan is the only Region 2 DVD that I have, but I plan on picking up more Region 2/B discs in the future. I currently have this nice, steelbook release of Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind ordered.

The DVD is the Masters of Cinema release of Kwaidan. The Criterion release is actually missing 20 minutes of the film, while this one is not. The middle BD is The Magnificent Seven Collection. It includes all four movies. And the last BD is the complete series of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, a pre-Evangelion series directed by Hideaki Anno. I ordered it back before Christmas when it was half-off during Right Stuf's big sale. It was on backorder for months.

LPT: spend a couple of extra bucks (or maybe save a few) and get a 4K player (not just "4K upscaling;" that's a trap). Sure it's overpowered now, but you'll be able to use it for another couple of decades and you'll have it in-hand when you see a cheap 4K TV you want in a few years (they're bonkers cheap now, compared with just a couple of years ago).

$15 more: https://www.amazon.com/LG-Blu-ray-Compatibility-Upconvert-Ethernet/dp/B077KXYTGG

$20 less (it's a refurb, but hey, it's new to you): https://www.amazon.com/Sanyo-Ultra-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B07931LR92
(I just noticed they say this one doesn't have Netflix and Amazon streaming apps; which is kind of a downer if you have no other source for those, like built into your TV, or on a Chromecast/Roku/Fire/AppleTV dongle...)

I don't really want to buy stuff from ebay. And I don't really know what PAL/SECAM refresh rates are. Would it be better to spend a little more and get this or something like this... http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-F5100-Upgraded-Region-Player/dp/B00GSZ5ISK/ref=sr_1_2?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1410907550&sr=1-2

There is another one released just this month by Phillips:

https://www.amazon.com/Philips-BDP7501-Ultra-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B01HBYUYSU/

The price is still too high on both the players though figuring the price of the Xbox One S model with 500GB is $100 less. Though these consoles are normally sold at a loss, it is still likely that these other companies, Phillips and Samsung intended to fleece people since they didn't know Microsoft's intentions. All under the guise of it being "new" tech. I bet when early September comes around, their prices will miraculously fall.

Even though Scorpio is coming next year and will almost certainly support 4K Blu-ray, if you were going to buy a standalone 4K player, this would be the best option.

This model does include an IR sensor, but the only difference some might have a problem with is for those who prefer a standard remote but have no universal one like the Harmony. That said, they do sell media remotes that will work and you will still end up ahead.

It took me like ten seconds to find one on Amazon for less than eighty soooooo

https://www.amazon.com/Sanyo-Ultra-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B07931LR92

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075VCYRG4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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Bought this one and its working really well. This one came with all the plugs so you can just use the outlet in your home.

https://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDPS1700-Streaming-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B01AT6B14S/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1527723158&sr=1-1&keywords=bdps1500

Really? I tend to disagree

Actually no, it costs the same.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HBYUYSU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_0Lp1xb8DAJJRR

Oh I know about the troubles of regions on them. I suppose if region locks are a thing you encounter often, a region-free blu-ray player would do the trick?