Disc Players

As the industry moves away from the disc format, reliable disc players that can handle compressed video seem to be getting more difficult to find. Just prior to the launching of the Blu-ray format, they were quite plentiful.

If anyone has been using a reliable player, please feel free to use the comments to post what brand/model you use, what country you're in and about how much it cost (if you happen to recall).

2 TB USB external hard drives that can fit in the palm of your hand are quite cheap in my area. If you have a player or TV with USB inputs they may offer an easy alternative to playing discs.
As do large capacity USB flash drives that can plug into your wireless router or other streaming device if your TV or disc player is WiFi ready.

There are other media storage devices on the market that connect to TV's for playback.

To me, the simplest and easiest solution is to take an old PC, install a couple of 3 TB hard drives in it, copy a few hundred or so discs of .avi files you want to watch to the hard drives and connect it to a TV with a VGA or HDMI cable and Bob's your uncle. Put the discs away. Turn on your TV, select the PC input, find the folder > file you want to watch, right-click with your wireless mouse and select play. After watching it simply delete it from the hard drive. I've been doing that for years. The PC is my player and my TV is my monitor. No problems at all.

Also, copy the files you want to watch to microSD cards that can be inserted into a tablet, sit back in your favorite chair and watch them on that. It's amazing - even the old VHS tape transfers look great.

Discs are media storage devices. How you view the media is up to you. If you do resort to disc players, please share the details of your successful experience with the other readers of this blog. 

Here's my experience: Last summer I purchased a Philips DVP 3880K disc player for about $62. 
I connected it to a TV in the spare bedroom and found it had "issues" with a lot of .avi files. Simply would not play many of them while a much older, and cheaper, Philips player connected to a TV in another room could play them all.
Bad player? Bad installed software? Bad installed codecs? Who knows? It happens and it's not my fault. It's been sitting in a box somewhere since July. So, if you're considering purchasing a Philips DVP 3380K disc player - beware. That's my recommendation.

If you have a player that's your best buddy, please share the joy. If you've been burned - please share the horror. Leave your comment.