Seiki BD660 Blu-Ray Player Review

I'm late to the Blu-Ray party, but I honestly never felt that I was missing much. Then came along this super-inexpensive Seiki Blu-Ray player at Walmart (in the Cote-St-Luc part of Montreal) and I decided to pick it up. I think a lot of other people did too, since the whole book case dedicated to them was nowhere to be found about a week after I bought mine.

Seiki Blu Ray Photo

See more details about the Seiki Blu-Ray Player


Physically the Blu-Ray player is quite small and light. You can easily hold it one hand. It's about half the size of my old white Xbox 360 console. The red light on the front may bother some people (it's always lit when plugged in); and turns blue when you power it on. The remote control is pretty basic looking. Nothing fancy at all here, which is expected at this price.

Reading Reviews

Anyways, I did a bit of research on it beforehand; since I'm pretty paranoid about these "no name" electronics brands (I mean I couldn't even find their web site, how sketchy is that?. Update: I finally found their site here). But, it works! At least for now...

It's been a nice surprise so far, actually. Apparently, I have the "newer" model that doesn't overheat and burn out after a couple of months (issues the older ones had). It has the latest firmware that gives it additional capabilities too.

Good Features, Region-Free Playback

What all that means at the end of the day for me is that it has "out of the box" playback capabilities for the following files: mp3, avi, mov, wmv, rvmb, and mkv (which is more than what an Xbox 360 or PS3 can do). I am also able to use my external hard drive and play files right off of it. Oh, and it plays DVDs/Blu-Ray discs too...Now I have to see if it has been able to shed its infamous reliability issues, and then all is good.

Update: I've read that it also plays Blu-Rays from different regions which is a great bonus...So I went ahead and got a couple of Blu-Rays from the UK; and they play with no issue. Sweet.

Update 2: Here's the web page I used to see which Blu-Rays are region free. For example, I purchased Life from the UK (Region B, 50Hz Blu-Ray) and it plays it perfectly fine. The PS3 supposedly cannot play 50Hz Blu-Rays so this is a nice bonus for owners of this player.

Update 3: It does freeze up more than I would like it to. It still works, but those rare times that it freezes are annoying nonetheless.