I was recently asked what you should look out for when buying a second hand Blu-ray player and my answer was fairly simple and quite obvious – make sure it can play discs! The biggest cause of failure in Blu-ray players is that the discs either play with a lot of skipping, or that they simply don’t play.
Most second hand purchases these days are made though eBay and although there are measures in place to help you should anything go wrong, buying anything second-hand can still be risky, especially when you have not had a chance to examine the product in person. It is always best to make sure you are clear on the returns policy if there is one, and if not, give yourself the best chance by choosing a seller who has a good feedback rating and describes the product in good detail, and answers any questions in good time. Also don’t forget to pay by PayPal for the extra level of protection.
Looking on eBay it is quite easy to find a Samsung BD-P1500 for around £70 which at first glance seems a good deal. The latest equivalent model the BD-P1600 can be purchased for around £140 which is double the price. Even if you are on a tight budget though, do consider that second-hand Blu-ray players will probably be the earlier generation which were much slower to load and play discs, would likely be the older Blu-ray profile and hence lacking the latest features, and will not come with the peace of mind of a 12 month warranty.
Another thing to consider is that Blu-ray discs are still more expensive to buy than an equivalent DVD so consider if it is worth purchasing an upscaling DVD player like the Toshiba SD-590 to get the best out of your existing DVDs instead.
If you really want to go Blu-ray though, and if you buy carefully, you could really bag yourself a bargain.
For those without the latest gen AV receiver or surround processor with HDMI audio support, one should definitely hunt down a Bluray player with 7.1 analogue output. The bluray player could then be used to decode the latest lossless surround formats (7.1 LPCM, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA) and pass them to the AV receiver as 8 channels of analogue audio.
This method will bypass all the digital processing of the AV receiver, so will be reliant on the speaker set-up and bass management features built into the bluray player. But ultimately, can be a cheap way to take advantage of the latest high def audio streams found on bluray.
However, some manufactures have discontinued the 7.1 analogue out feature on their latest bluray players, e.g. Sony. The last Sony bluray to do this was the BDP-S550. So, one shouldn’t dismiss the second hand market too quickly.