I'd love to see an old vs. new feature.

Hi strapped,

I do not understand why it would an interesting feature. Where is the value of compairing a budget sony player to the denon which retailed for 4 times the price. Is it really a surprise that the Denon is the better unit?

Hi def lugs

If you're in the market for a blu ray player, then a second hand or manufacturer refurbished 2500 may be a better option than a much newer Sony. Granted, the Denon was originally four times the price, but I picked one up for less than the current rrp of a Sony S-380.

The feature would be interesting for two reasons. First, because buying older high end equipment at knock down prices may represent better value than buying current budget models for a similar price. An old vs. new group test would help address that question. Second, because I simply don't accept that, every year, the performance of equipment inevitably improves. 

If you're like me, you want your Blu-player to play Blu-ray discs, your receiver to decode and output audio, your television to produce the best picture possible, and so on. Other features are of little interest to me. I wonder how many forum members regularly use BD-Live, for example, or access golf lessons via their BDP's internet platform (one of the many puzzling offerings from Sony)? 

Not a bad idea at all strapped for cash.

 I did a comparison of a new Sony S380 purchased at Argos by me for £64.99 a couple of weeks ago & my Pioneer BDP320 now coming up to 2 years old, playing Avatar Extended Edition yesterday. All the connections to my system were exactly the same except obviously the players.

My result, well i'm very pleased with the Sony it compares very well with the Pioneer on picture quality, not much to choose between the two players on that account, the Pioneer only just edging out the Sony. The quality picure of the sony felt very defined, just showing a little more judder than the Pioneer on panning shots.

Sound wise the Pioneer won it hands down, better separation clearer & a more defined audio. That does not mean the Sony is bad, far from it, it just wont dig up quite so much information out of the disc.

Conclusion IMO is if you want a ( NEW ) budget 2D player the Sony is a very good buy, it loaded up Avatar in about half the time of the Pioneer & the picture quality is excellent value for money. The Sony i have has a quiet drive, once the disc is fully loaded up & running. If you needed to buy the wireless dongle for the Sony it's not cheap, can be found at around £55+ & has a few mixed reviews on other web sites.

 On the other hand a 2nd hand or ex-display Pioneer can be had for less money, admittedly it doesn't have all the extra iplayer, Love Film etc etc internet bits on it but if thats not your bag & load up time is not a problem then it's a winner. 

The choice is, of course, up to the buyer. I purchased mine ( Sony S380 ) as a 2nd player for the bedroom without doing a demo, as i wasn't integrating it into my main system & it's had good reviews, deservedly so IMO.

Regards ...

I did the exact same thing a few weeks ago i bought the sony s380 from argos for £69.99 and did a comparison with my pioneer BDP-LX70A, if you dont want all the added Guff and purely want pq & sq then older players are the way to go, my pioneers picture was sharper with no jagged edges and had better blacks, as for the sound quality the pioneer creamed the sony in every aspect (even bitstreaming), I also hated the menu on the sony, very playstation!

as for load times i have just uploaded the latest firmware and it is much better, sony is back in the box and the pioneer is staying put!

Glad I'm not the only one with this view, though there's hardly been a flurry of responses. Guess it's not as interesting a potential feature as I thought...

As this thread's progressed, there seem to be 2 separate ideas of old v new. I don't think the concept that an older but originally much more expensive component remains better than a new, budget model would be disputed, or make for a terribly interesting feature. I think this is especially so where 'old' is only a few years old. It seems obvious that a £1000 BDP from a few years ago will outperform a £100 current model.

The other idea (and what you opened the thread with) is perhaps more interesting: is the idea that products constantly improve right or not. I would find interesting a comparison of much older products v new, eg a £2k (taking into account inflation) 20 year old stereo amp v a new £2k amp. However, this is not going to appeal to a broad market, and certainly not for your 'typical' purchaser of WHF who picks up a copy in Tesco when they're after a new 32" TV.

In fairness, WHF does deal with the 'constant improvement' idea in a way - by doing group / super tests which include the last group test winner v the new pretenders. There are some products that stick around for a long time doing this (B&W 685s, ATC SCM 11s, Atacama Equinox, Partington stands spring to mind), although with TVs, BDPs (at a consistent price point) and AV amps WHF generally seems to conclude there is constant improvement.

Of course,  your desire for a feature like this is based on the idea that performance is more important than features. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. For example, you could pick up some marvellous Pre/Pros for decent SH prices (say under £2k) which would destroy similarly priced modern pre/pros. However, they'd only have to be 3 or 4 years old and not have HDMI (and certainly not ARC and HD sound decoding) and very few people will want these. 

FWIW having just bought a Sony BDP-S380 I'd be surprised if anyone needed to use all the features, but I wouldn't want to without all of them. Everyone has their individual performance / features / price compromise, and where features are further down the list there are bargains to be had on the performance / price compromise if you go SH.

I agree that this would make an interesting feature. Spending more generally results in getting a better product performance wise, but it would be interesting to find out how much time bridges the gap.

I totally agree. If im in the market for a 50"tv, i want simply the best PQ i can buy for my budget not the best allrounder. Same with a blu-ray player i want a player with the best PQ with SQ for my budget. and so on -,AV receiver for surround stage, hifi amp for best stereo performance.   I once bought a Denon 1909 av receiver 5*review at the time, in my opinion  the denon was an allround av receiver but ok at best for surround sound . I felt let down by the review(my own fault as a noob) and i realise that 5*reviews seem to be best allrounders in there product catorgory.

I think this thread is really about getting the best for your buck so to speak, for instance given a £200 budget to get the best in PQ and SQ with no other gimmicks the way to go is simple, a second hand HIGH END player which is a few years old, picture wise i dont think blu ray has evolved that much from what i can see, nor has the sound, its just the faster loading times and other added guff which nobody really uses which have been added to the new units.

older units also seem to be better built with the likes of pioneer,denon and even the older sony units, and some with every input/output you would ever need. why would you want a flimsy cheaply made pile of guff when you can get a top spec second hand unit which was built to last with the best possible componants available at the time.

Sorry bud, I still dont quite get it.  Similar to suggesting you buy a Top of the range brand New Ford Mondeo for £30K or a three year old BMW 5 series for the same money. We already know which car has the greater performance.

I could see a bit of interest in how much 'bang for your buck' that £1000 in 1990 's money would buy you today. E.g does a new £1500 amplifier significantly outperform the 20year old £1000. Do we get more for our money these days?

But a large proportion of people would likely buy the Mondeo, because the idea that newer means better holds considerable sway among consumers. It's this idea that sustains the consumer electronics industry and encourages enthusiasts to constantly "upgrade."

I think we agree to differ on this. I fall into the catogory of believing the newer product is the better when compairing like for like products of similar cost.
Using my comparision of cars above. The improvements in safety, fuel efficiency, reliability have made massive leaps over the last couple of decades. But a 30 year old Lotus Esprit will still show a clean pair of heels to the majority of new cars that populate our roads.

Also I cannot see any magazine running an article that promotes people not to buy new equipment.

...Which would be approximately our last reason for not running such a piece.

Which of course doesn't mean consumers wouldn't be better served, in certain regards, by older high end kit; though I appreciate such a feature would hardly suit the magazine's interests.

EDITED TO CLARIFY: It's not a question of this being a feature that would 'hardly suit the magazine's interests' by suggesting that consumers would 'be better served, in certain regards, by older high end kit', as I thought I had made clear in my previous response.

The real problem is that we struggle to find space for all the new equipment we have to test each month without having to turn over space to old stuff.