looking for a blu ray
 

my brother is looking for a blu ray player during the day after thanksgiving sales from blackfriday.info I was looking for some input as to the best deal out there. I've heard that some players can't play everything. any info is appreciated.

I don't know that I can find the best price last-minute. Pretty much everybody will have Blu-ray players on sale. Much like DVD players, you get what you pay for.

Beyond that, Black Friday deals are not exactly the best prices anyway. I bought two hard drives on clearance at Best Buy for less than the same capacity drives being advertised for BF. Compare $107 for a 1.5TB eSATA/USB2/Fw400 Seagate drive against the BF faux sale price on 1.5TB USB2 drives for $130. I spent $20 less per drive, got eSATA, and didn't have to wait in line! The days of BF giving the best prices died in the 1990s. February and October tend to have much better prices.

I saw quite a few BD players in the $90-140 range from Aug-Oct.

Anyway, assuming you want it now...

I'll look at e-mails, see what I have from vendors, try to get back to you.

As far as Blu-ray players not playing all discs -- I don't have any research to really back that up. Back in 2008 there was a lot of online crybabying on forums and blogs, critical of BD specs evolving over time. The claim was that future BD players would not play all discs. I don't think that ever turned out to be more than perpetuated online myth.

Much like DVD, there were early players that had issues with discs, requiring firmware updates. The lifespan of firmware updates tends to be 6-12 months before a manufacturer gives up, so there may be some old players that can't play some discs. Samsung models were the ones with most reports.

Anything new in stores should play current BD's just fine.

The biggest issue with BD players is you shell out $100+ for a device that works about the same as a $25 DVD player. In other words, it's built like a piece of crap, and tends to lack features the less you spend. Buyer beware. This is why I don't have a standalone BD player, I use BD-ROMs in HTPCs.

Most of the "cannot play" myths revolve around BD+/AACS encryption. The threat from the BD consortium is that tampering or circumvention could result in the some players being disallowed viewing of future titles, as those players would be inserted into the blacklists of new titles. However, given the nature of our civil court system, it's never going to happen. It's just a bluff to scare people from "hacking" their players (ignoring anti-copy, enabling more regions) or from copying discs.