You want Blu-ray for not much cash? How about $68.00 Magnavox from Walmart?

Lowest price I have seen for a brand-new Blu-ray player....

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/prod...uct_id=11319406&sourceid=40965205372073703071

 

I bought one of these pre-xmas at that price so far it's great , also walmart had a cheap extended warranty , i think it was $5 , if it breaks you get a giftcard to buy a new one .

 

Ditto. Owned this one for about 4 months. So far it's played any bluray I've thrown at it. I've not had to upgrade firmware yet.

 

Stunning news, even for a crappy Funai! My only caveat is I'm concerned about the long-term reliability of brands like this. Magnavox, Philips, and Sylvania were never that good, even for their higher-priced products (of the last ten years or so). An Oppo or Panasonic is a far better investment, IMHO.

 

Update: the bast@rds up and raised the price to $79. Apparently, the word is getting out...

 

I agree. I'm saving up in my piggy bank as I figure this one will last me 2 years tops. I used it as a cheap entry to pass by the Mrs. and get her convinced that bluray is a good idea.

 

If i get 2 years out of mine it was worth it , it has a 90 day warranty & i bought the walmart warranty for like $5 , if it breaks within a years time after the 90 days i get all my $$$$ back , how can you go wrong ??

 

No display on the front of the unit? No thanks.

 

Nope , it's all on screen .

 

Do they play CDs and regular DVDs?

 

Don't they all?

 

How is the video performance?

 

Not quite. The first Sony stand alone player, the BDP-S1 didn't play CD. It was made by Pioneer and whatever the Pioneer equivalent model was didn't play CD either. As far as I know, all other Blu-ray players play CD and DVD including the Magnavox players.

Chris

 

Playing Blu-ray, it blows away a $3,500 Denon DVD player playing DVD. The player uses a Panasonic UniPhier SoC for video decoding and processing and video quality for Blu-ray at 1080p is very good. DVD quality is probably equivalent to an inexpensive DVD player, let's say one that costs about $68 or so.

It is a Profile 1.1 player, no internet connectivity, no BD-Live features. Build quality is considered acceptable, the player is about one and half years old now and there are a lot of user reports online at AVSForums, Blu-ray.com, High Def Digest and Amazon if you want to piss away time researching a $68 Blu-ray player. There are equivalent models made by Funai sold under various other names including Sylvania, maybe Denon, maybe Onkyo, since Funai makes Blu-ray players for many other companies. I don't know what brands can be found on this specific player but certainly more than just Magnavox. If you have more money to spend on a Blu-ray player, get something better and there are a lot of choices but if this is the budget, it is a great value in my opinion.

If anybody here picks this player up, here is a link to download Funai firmware and instructions to download and install. Be sure to download the specific model firmware. Wal-Mart actually carried three different Magnavox players and I don't know if this sale is limited to just one specific model or if any of the three might be sold.

http://www.funai-corp.com/support/Firmwares.aspx

Chris

 

The item on sale, and another one at Walmart.com, don't list CD or DVD at all in the features section. So I thought I'd ask.

 

Hi Jay , yes i have been playing DVD all the time in mine & so far over 2 months this player plays everything i have put in with no problems , really nice picture quality & the sound is top notch on blu-ray .
the Dvd playback is equal to players i have that are 3 or 4 times this price when i bought them ..