Is it possible to buy a "no-frills" Blu-Ray player?

Believe it or not, I have never owned a BR player. My wife and I pretty much went straight from old-school DVD's to doing 90% of our viewing through streaming devices. We also don't own any consoles that can play BRs. However, we have ended up with a few BRs (mainly ones that were given to my wife as gifts) and there are some we'd like to acquire for the few favorite films that aren't on any streaming services where the image quality of our old DVD's has become irksome.

So I'd like to acquire a basic, cheap, no-fills, gets-the-job-done BR player. Problem is that now seems to be impossible.

Even the most low-end BR players I can find for sale new on Amazon or Best Buy have online and streaming features we will never, ever use (we have Chromecast/Roku/etc for that and the almost universal consensus I've heard is that BR player streaming features are godawful) and cost like $60. Not that $60 is a budget-breaking expenditure for us, but it annoys me to think I'm paying for features I don't want. Is it truly the case that literally nobody makes a basic, just-plays-the-damn-discs BR player for like $25-30 in 2017?

Bluray players tend to have a ton of features I could care less about and it sounds like you're the same. That said, they all generally connect to the internet in order to update, so that's not a feature that will ever be cut out. That right there is one of the big reasons the price hasn't bottomed out and likely never will. Too much tech inside these things. That and demand for bluray players isn't what DVD demand ever was thanks to streaming.

You could always buy a used PS3.

Yeah about $50 is the minimum for a BR player. I also don't use any of the streaming/internet features on mine, it is a Sony unit I bought from Costco for I think $70 a few years ago.

garion333 wrote:

Too much tech inside these things.

I'm thinking it's pretty much this. There's no way adding those 'features' doubles the cost of manufacture.

If it helps you feel better, you're probably not paying 'extra' for those features. You're probably paying 'extra' because it's not worth it for them to offer a $90 'regular' model and a $30 'basic' model at this point. Even in that case they'd probably price the 'basic' model at $55 or something.

Wow, even the cheapest Blu-Ray readers on the computer are about $50. Ouch.

Malor wrote:

Wow, even the cheapest Blu-Ray readers on the computer are about $50. Ouch.

If you mean BR drives for PC's, it's even worse than it seems because there's no guarantee any given disc will actually play. PC BR playback is a quagmire of frustration and uncertainty. The copy protection and codec flaming hoops to jump through make it not even worth bothering with. And it's been that way for years with basically no improvement.

I'm surprised Walmart doenst have some Blu-ray players for $29.99 or so.. or maybe Costco?

garion333 wrote:

You could always buy a used PS3.

There is a super slim 12gb hard drive PS3 model. Almost useless for games but great for a Blu Ray player.

Saw some on clearance at Target earlier this year.

Looks like list price at GameStop is $110, but they were cheaper than that when I saw them. Could be all gone now.

TheGameguru wrote:

I'm surprised Walmart doesn't have some Blu-ray players for $29.99 or so.. or maybe Costco?

Probably no demand for it. I think most people looking to play Blu-rays are people who are willing to pay in the $100-$75 range at least. People looking for a $30 disc player are probably fine with a DVD player--they have those in that range. If you're looking for a player in the $30 range, maybe you don't want to pay extra for a Blu-ray disc either?

Maybe a blue ray drive would work for you? Those should be pretty cheap.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Maybe a blue ray drive would work for you? Those should be pretty cheap.

Middcore wrote:
Malor wrote:

Wow, even the cheapest Blu-Ray readers on the computer are about $50. Ouch.

If you mean BR drives for PC's, it's even worse than it seems because there's no guarantee any given disc will actually play. PC BR playback is a quagmire of frustration and uncertainty. The copy protection and codec flaming hoops to jump through make it not even worth bothering with. And it's been that way for years with basically no improvement.

Middcore wrote:

If you mean BR drives for PC's, it's even worse than it seems because there's no guarantee any given disc will actually play. PC BR playback is a quagmire of frustration and uncertainty. The copy protection and codec flaming hoops to jump through make it not even worth bothering with. And it's been that way for years with basically no improvement.

Yet another example of pirates providing a vastly superior product for free. I wonder if Sony gets that this mostly just hurts them? Make it hard, and people will find an easier way.

Which also prompts the observation that, if you've bought the physical Blu-Ray, there are options to get unencrypted, nicely formatted versions of that file without jumping through flaming hoops.