Bluray player that can also read digital video from a hard drive?
Are there any good [the thing i said in the post title]?
My laptop is too new to have a disc drive and the external one i have refuses to work half the time for DVD and doesn't support bluray at all. My "smart" TV is either too smart or too dumb to play a good portion of the movies i have digitally on a hard drive. Is there a device that can just do both and plug into the TV over HDMI?
Sony BDP-S1700U
Though you may be better off with a used Xbox or PlayStation, a thrifted blu-ray player and an Nvidia Shield, or a dedicated media PC.
What are the differences between Xbox and Playstation if i'm just using both for movies?
Afaik, none. They both have models that play blu-ray disks and can read from an external HDD. They also have the basic streaming apps available and are faster than a smart TV so you could in theory use them as your only source of media and just use your TV as the output.
That being said, there are a couple things to be aware of:
The only real differences you'll see are in how the ui is laid out.
I'd take stock in the physical media you have. Are they blu-rays, DVDs, CDs, 4k blu-ray, uhd, etc? Then look at the consoles at your local pawn shop and check if they can play what you need. In general, newer models can play newer formats (like 4k), and XBox can play more total formats (newer PS dropped support for CDs).
FWIW I have an XBox Series X almost exclusively for movies. My wife and I do play games on it occasionally, but we're both more PC gamers and I got the console with the primary intent to be a blu-ray player.
We used a PS3, and now a PS5, for such a use. It's a great Blu-Ray player. There are also apps for most streaming platforms. It supports both Plex and Jellyfin.
A raspberry PI setup, running VLC with a computer/NAS DLNA serve, might be interesting to try too.