The low entry price and no-commitment approach of streaming services makes them attractive to budget-conscious buyers. Buying a digital copy or physical release of one movie could cost the same as an entire month’s worth of a video streaming service. This leads to the misconception that physical media is an expensive hobby, and streaming is cheap. In reality, you could end up spending more in the long run on monthly subscriptions than it would cost to own the media you truly care about.
The barrier of entry to owning physical media has never been smaller. A $10 Blu-ray player from a thrift store is your gateway into owning your favorite movies or TV shows in a format that beats your 4K streaming plan. I did exactly that, and I haven’t looked back. I grabbed a used Samsung Blu-ray player for $10, a few $5 Blu-ray discs, and some more 99-cent DVDs to kick off my home media collection for cheap.
Blu-ray players are dirt cheap, and surprisingly great
I paid $10 for one at Goodwill, and it started my physical media collection
When I first sought a Blu-ray player from my local Goodwill thrift store, I didn’t have many expectations. My only real requirement was an HDMI output, so it played nice with my home theater receiver and smart TV — I didn’t want to deal with composite or component video outputs. Luckily, a Blu-ray player with HDMI isn’t hard to find. Every model released since 2014 is guaranteed to have one, and many earlier models do too.
I ended up with a Blu-ray player that offered way more than I expected for the price: the Samsung BD-C6500. It’s a player from 2010, and despite its age, this Samsung model has quite a few modern features. There’s obvious support for Blu-ray and DVD discs, plus streaming from Netflix, YouTube, and more platforms. It has Wi-Fi, HDMI, and 7.1 analog audio outputs. You also get 1GB of onboard storage, and a USB-A port for peripherals.
Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections help you stream, and the Samsung Apps platform allows you to run third-party programs on your Blu-ray player.
As players like the Samsung BD-C6500 are well over a decade old, don’t expect any features that rely on an internet connection to work. They may still function, but it’s not guaranteed.
The Samsung BD-C6500 shows its age with component and composite video, as well as an optical Toslink port. It only supports HDMI version 1.3, which may be the biggest bummer, but that’s enough for a 1080p Blu-ray. The player does support Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. In all, this cheap player left me more than impressed, considering what I paid for it.
It’s more than I expected from a used Blu-ray player at this price point, that’s for sure. The sticker price of this Samsung player at Goodwill was $12.49, and Goodwill stores in my area have a 20% off coupon for newsletter subscribers that can be used once daily. That cut the price of this thrifted Blu-ray player to just under $10. Take a look at your local Goodwill or thrift stores, and I guarantee you can find a used Blu-ray player for close to this price.
An old Blu-ray player beats streaming for one simple reason
You don’t need a flashy new player to outdo your 4K streaming service
Regular Blu-ray discs have a 1080p resolution, and that resolution is lower than what many streaming services offer. Regardless, a 1080p Blu-ray disc will beat a 4K video stream, and it comes down to bitrate. This is a metric that reveals how much digital data can be shared at once. You can identify it by looking for a bits per second (bps) figure. In simple terms, a number like Mbps or Gbps tells you how much digital data can be shared in one second.
A Blu-ray disc has a maximum bitrate of 40Mbps, and this is higher than most video streaming services. The weakest streaming services might deliver 4K video using a 15Mbps bitrate. If you’re using the best streaming services for image quality, like Apple TV, you’ll be lucky to match the 40Mbps max bitrate of a Blu-ray disc. Streaming can’t beat a 1080p Blu-ray, and it likely won’t even match it.
To understand why a low bitrate is a problem for image quality, we have to understand what resolutions mean in the first place. They tell you exactly how many pixels are available in a video, and a dimension like 1920×1080 represents the number of horizontal and vertical pixels displayed. So, a 4K (3840×2160) video has four times as many pixels as a 1080p (1920×1080) video.
Here’s where streaming loses — you won’t see the benefit of the quadrupled pixel count if your delivery method can’t share the video data quickly enough. A low bitrate, worsened by things like bad Wi-Fi connections, leads to compression. The extra pixels are there, but you aren’t seeing them in full quality. Meanwhile, a 1080p Blu-ray video is always going to be delivered at a relatively higher bitrate, usually averaging between 20Mbps and 30Mbps and topping out at 40Mbps.
The resolution is lower, but it’s delivered without compression or quality loss. This explains why a $10 Blu-ray player and a 1080p Blu-ray disc beat a 4K streaming service in picture quality.
Building your Blu-ray collection is even cheaper
It’s not hard to find used Blu-ray discs for under $5, or DVDs for a buck
The cost of Blu-ray discs isn’t a pain point, either. Grab new Blu-rays or splurge for 4K Ultra HD discs (you’ll need a special player for those), and you might pay upwards of $20 or $30. Browse the used bin at your thrift store or video shop, and you can pick up Blu-rays for $5 or less. If you’d settle for DVD quality, those discs usually only cost a dollar these days.
Be warned, though: that $10 Blu-ray player could be the start of an expensive hobby. I began with the cheap Blu-ray player from Samsung, but I’m now eying a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player with lossless Dolby Atmos support to crush streaming once and for all. That said, there’s nothing wrong with sticking with a cheap player you find at a thrift store. You won’t have to deal with the quality loss, buffering, or stuttering you get from video streaming services.
- Brand
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Sony (UBPX700U)
- Ports
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Ethernet, Wi-Fi, HDMI, Coaxial
- Connectivity
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Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, DTS:X
Sony’s UBPX700U 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player is the perfect solution for playing lossless Dolby Atmos discs. It supports Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, DTS:X surround sound modes, with HDMI and coaxial audio outputs. The player also has Dolby Vision and HDR for visuals. In addition to Blu-ray discs, this player can handle DVDs and CDs.
