Why has a second-hand Blu-ray player released 8 years ago been hyped up to a price of over 70,000 yuan?

In the field of home audio and video, a Blu-ray player that has been out of production for 8 years has maintained enduring popularity, embarking on an incredible path of value appreciation.

On second-hand trading platforms, the OPPO UDP-205, which originally cost less than 12,000 yuan, has been hyped up to 75,000 yuan.

What does 75,000 yuan mean?

The price of second-hand OPPO Blu-ray players on trading platforms ranges from 20,000 to 70,000 yuan

In 2026, the starting price of Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is 9,999 yuan. Almost all top flagship smartphones on the market are priced at around 10,000 yuan, which means that one second-hand UDP-205 can buy six latest-model smartphones.

Reading up to this point, you may have several questions:

Isn't OPPO a smartphone manufacturer?

What even is a Blu-ray player?

Why is an OPPO Blu-ray player that has been out of production for many years worth so much money?

The More It Is Out of Production, The More Valuable It Becomes

In 2018, OPPO officially announced that its Blu-ray players would be discontinued, and since then, the price of these products in the second-hand market has soared continuously.

The official launch price of OPPO UDP-203 was 4999 yuan. Right after it was discontinued, its second-hand price was 7000 to 8000 yuan, and now it has surged to nearly 16,000 yuan.

What is more exaggerated is the flagship model UDP-205, with an official price of 11899 yuan. The domestic second-hand market price generally stays above 20,000 yuan, which is more than 60% higher than the original price of 11899 yuan.

That's not all.

There is a device called "Wukong" circulating among audio and video enthusiasts, which is a modified and jailbroken version of OPPO UDP-205 launched by the brand KILIN.

When this modified version was first launched in 2018, its transaction price was 27,990 yuan. Eight years later, the highest transaction price of this device has been hyped up to an astonishing 75,000 yuan.

Screenshot of chat with a seller on Xianyu second-hand platform

Prices in the US market are also extremely crazy.

The second-hand listing price of UDP-203 on eBay is as high as 1177.99 US dollars (about 7950 yuan), which is much higher than the original price of 4999 yuan back then; the UDP-205 in the US market was hyped up to more than 4000 US dollars (about 26995 yuan) very early.

Second-hand listing price of UDP-203 on eBay

As electronic products, smartphones and Blu-ray players show completely opposite price trends.

Generally speaking, consumer electronics follow the iron law of "new replaces old".

After the vast majority of electronic products are discontinued, their second-hand prices will plummet rapidly.

Even for Apple, which is famous for its high value retention, the trade-in price of its flagship phone within one year is only 60% to 80% of the original price.

According to data from SellCell, the average depreciation rate of the iPhone 17 series ten weeks after its launch is about 34.6%.

Comparison of average resale price of each model with the manufacturer's suggested retail price

The second-hand price of the iPhone 7 Plus bought in 2016 is less than 1000 yuan now; the price of Android flagship phones of the same period is even lower, with the trade-in price only 5%-10% of the original price.

However, the UDP-203 of the same period and same price range has seen its second-hand market price multiply several times today, even outperforming most wealth management products.

To understand this abnormal phenomenon, we must first figure out what a Blu-ray player is.

Nowadays, people usually watch movies and TV shows through online playback on mobile phones or computers.

30 years ago, if you wanted to watch movies and TV shows other than those broadcast on TV stations, you needed to use a player called VCD, connect it to the TV, put in a disc with recorded movies and TV shows, and then play and watch.

The world's first VCD player was made in China

The discs that VCD can play have small storage capacity and low resolution. Later, DVD appeared, with qualitative leaps in storage capacity and picture quality.

The Blu-ray player introduced today is an upgraded version of DVD.

It gets its name because it uses blue-violet laser to read data (while DVD uses red laser).

Simply put, Blu-ray is the synonym for the top-level audio and video picture quality in the consumer grade.

A Blu-ray player is a device used to read and play the content on Blu-ray discs.

For audio and video enthusiasts, only a top-tier Blu-ray player paired with a 4K Blu-ray disc can bring the supreme visual experience.

OPPO UDP-203

Some people may ask, can't online video platforms play Blu-ray movies?

You should know that the size of a Blu-ray movie is usually around 50GB. Due to the limitation of network bandwidth, the movies played on online video platforms are highly compressed, which is far from the clarity of the original Blu-ray disc.

In pursuit of better visual experience, enthusiasts are willing to pay a high price for a Blu-ray player.

Buying OPPO Blu-ray Players Is for Faith

Many people who do not know much about disc players will wonder: Isn't OPPO a smartphone manufacturer?

In China, OPPO is more widely known as a smartphone manufacturer, but audio and video hardware is the foundation of this brand.

In 2004, OPPO established OPPO Digital in Silicon Valley, USA, focusing on high-definition DVD players.

From 2007 to 2008, DV-980H and DV-983H were launched one after another. Among them, DV-983H, with its built-in high-end video processing chip, became the first DVD player to get a full score of 100 in the evaluation of the authoritative US institution Benchmark, making a name for itself overnight.

In 2008, OPPO launched its first feature phone A103 "Smile Music Phone" in China.

But what really made OPPO famous all over the world at that time was its first Blu-ray player BDP-83 released in the same year.

BDP-83

The popularity and brand influence of OPPO Blu-ray players in the industry are no less than that of international big brands.

BDP-83 was rated as "an incredible work" by the US audio and video magazine "Stereophile", and was selected into the top A+ reference list, listed together with many Hi-End devices whose prices are several times higher than it.

After that, BDP-93, BDP-95, BDP-103 and BDP-105 came out one after another, and each generation was the benchmark at its price range.

The authoritative US IT magazine PCMag left a widely spread comment: "When it comes to Blu-ray players, we think there are only two choices: OPPO and others."

The UK's "What Hi-Fi?" gave it a five-star rating, Audioholics in the US rated it the best of the year, and it even won the PCMag Readers' Choice Award for three consecutive sessions.

BDP-103 won the European EISA award

In 2013, BDP-103 won the European EISA "Best Home Theater All-round Player of the Year" award. In the same year, in the evaluation of the US "Consumer Reports", BDP-103 ranked first in total score, leaving behind many big brands such as Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic and Pioneer.

In 2016, OPPO launched its first true 4K Blu-ray player UDP-203.

Two years later, the ultimate flagship UDP-205 came out. None of the subsequent domestic 4K disc players and high-end Japanese devices can fully replicate its hardware configuration.

Why can it achieve this?

Because of its absolute hard power.

First, the ultimate hardware materials and components.

UDP-205 is the technical peak of all product lines of OPPO Digital. It is equipped with two ESS ES9038PRO DAC chips, supporting a dynamic range of 140dB.

Front and rear views of UDP-205

The whole machine adopts toroidal transformer and independent power supply design, weighing 10kg, which makes many professional audio devices priced at tens of thousands of yuan pale in comparison.

Second, the closed and dedicated system architecture.

Different from Android players that carry general-purpose systems with complicated background services and get stuck after using for several years, OPPO Blu-ray players are equipped with a streamlined Linux system, with 100% of resources focused on audio and video decoding, no redundant background services, and run smoothly for ten years.

Moreover, the excellent framework and software system of OPPO Blu-ray players themselves provide an excellent foundation for subsequent hardware modification and software jailbreaking. Many Blu-ray players of overseas Hi-end brands are modified based on OPPO devices, so they have great room for value appreciation.

In the enthusiast circle, the saying that "buying OPPO Blu-ray players is for faith" has been circulating to this day.

Irreplaceable

Having said that, why no brand has been able to make an alternative product in the past eight years?

In 2018, streaming media rose in an all-round way, and subscription services such as Netflix, Hulu and HBO led to a sharp shrinkage of the physical disc market in the United States.

Data from the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) of the United States shows that the sales of physical discs in the United States that year had fallen below 3 billion US dollars, shrinking by more than 80% compared with its peak period.

Facing a continuously shrinking market, OPPO Digital frankly stated in its farewell letter:

Since there is no energy to develop better next-generation products, we will do a good job in maintaining the existing products.

After its team was disbanded, some engineers returned to the smartphone department, and there was no plan to restart the Blu-ray product line.

Even