Blu Ray Players

[NE5]

I'd like some general advice and recommendations for a Blu Ray player please.

Its not for me, but I don't want something cheap, and at the other end of the scale there is no need for it to be state of the art expensive, just something to play disks.

I also have 2 questions.

1. Is it compatible with a standard TV that already plays normal DVDs, and will there be a problem using this TV ?
2. Is such a lead supplied, and if not, what do I need.

 

[lucid]

From the information you've supplied so far, @NE5, it's not possible to give you a hard and fast answer. However, if you can answer a couple of questions then we can get you a better response.

By Blu-ray player, do you mean for the Blu-ray discs that have been available for over a decade, or do you mean the more recent 4K UHD discs?

The description "Standard TV" is too vague for the rest of us to be sure we know exactly what you mean. It would be safer to give the make and model.

To fill in some background for you, a DVD player will work with the big back CRT TVs and pretty much any flatscreen TV including the latest generation of 4K UHD TVs.

A Blu-ray player (1080p res) should really just partner a flatscreen TV.

A 4K UHD Blu-ray player should partner a 4K UHD TV. There's no significant benefit putting this with a non-UHD flatscreen TV.

 

[NE5]

Thanks, its just to play a blu ray disk, i didnt even know there was a new range of machines !

The TV is a 40 inch flatscreen, with no intention at all to get a new one, she hardly plays DVDs and the ones she has have been playable on an old basic DVD player.

Hope this helps in the meantime I will try and find the TV model bit its about 7 years old.

 

[lucid]

That narrows things down enough.

You're looking at an ordinary Blu-ray player. Any of the major manufacturers (Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG) will do just fine. My preference is Panasonic.

Here's a simple to use BD player that will also play UK DVDs. Panasonic-DMP-BD84EB It's under £60.

Here's the same player buy made multi-region* for DVDs if required. Panasonic-DMP-BD84-MultiRegion-DVD It's under £80

You will need to buy a HDMI cable to go with it. This is the same for most BD players now. Here's an Amazon Basic 1.8m for £5.99



*Multi-region DVD. If you're not already familiar with the term then the chances are that this isn't an important requirement for you/her. However, if you'd like to know more, then here's a quick primer: The world is split into sections (regions) so that the film studios and local censor boards can exert some control over who sees what and when. Or at least that was the original idea when DVD launched in the late 90s. The UK, Europe and the Middle East is one region (R2). The N. America is another region (R1). Here's a link to a map showing the rest of the regions.

There used to be a time advantage buying films on DVD from the US. They'd be released there about 6 months ahead of the UK. That doesn't happen so much now. They tend to launch at roughly the same time give or take a few weeks. The other incentive for buying films from outside the region 2 zone was special editions not available here. With the shift from DVD to Blu-ray, and now Blu-ray to UHD discs for serious collectors, there's probably not so much interest any more in importing special edition DVDs.

One area where there's still a requirement is home movies transferred to DVD. For someone who has relatives in the US an either isn't able to- or can't do anything with a file transfer over the internet, then a DVD sent from the US to the UK is one way to share family memories. Such a disc could be made region free (plays on any machine) but might equally be recorded with Region 1 encoding which would make it unplayable on a normal Region 2 locked UK BD player.

 

[NE5]

Thanks mate, that sounds about right, a decent machine and a considerable upgrade on her present one.

For me though.... its gave me further thoughts.

I have a panasonic DVD recorder which i bought about 15 years ago to digitise an entire home made collection of about 80 football videos.

Its still going strong, however i dont watch DVDs very much either, and still value the recoder capability occasionally to record a disk from TV.

As well as the DVD recorder (connected by Scart) to a freeview recorder (my main TV box) i have a firestick connected to the TV.

Can you connect a flash drive to a blu ray and watch the flash drive on TV ? And if I got a blu ray player myself, could I connect it to my TV without disconnecting the freeview recorder, DVD recorder or firestick ?