A freeze-free Blu-Ray Player?

[ZoetMB]

I have about 200 movies and my OPPO has never, ever frozen. But my old Sony never froze either. While freezing can be a matter of needing a software update it also be something as simple as a disc being dirty.

Also, many players sell for extremely low cost and therefore have very low quality components. If you have a player with such components, eventually, for example, the laser is going to put out less light and may not read correctly, which can also cause freeze ups.

If you pay under $100 for a player, I really don't know what else you can expect. They're not made to last. And you also need to realize that these are not solely mechanical devices - they're essentially computers driven by computer software, that software changes over time and therefore most players will need updates over time as most menu functionality is Java driven.

I paid $80 for a turntable back in the early 1970s. That's $491 in today's dollars. And what's a turntable? It's a platter, tone arm and motor. No electronics unless there's a small rectifier or timing circuit to drive a quartz motor. A Blu-ray player has almost all that, plus the laser and all the electronics to play a large variety of different formats as well as numerous video and audio outputs. And people pay $60 (the price of three decent pizzas) for that and expect it to last forever. That's absurd.

We've been spoiled by cheap Chinese manufacturing, but we're not willing to also make the sacrifice of inferior quality in order to pay that price. What we do get though, is really miraculous when you think about it. I think I paid close to $1000 for my first CD component player. Now you can pay as little as $20-$30.