Sonic

Correct me if I'm wrong but the 205 is for audiophiles correct? I mean even if I have a great surround quality system and not much of a music listener the 205 seems overkill if I'm more into movies.

Is that why you was thinking of selling it because you not much of a audio music listener?

I'm still contemplating a 203.

melasnus

The 205 improves the audio of ALL disk sources (that includes movies).
Only high-end surround processors can compete.

What audio equipment do you have?

DVD Polizei

Buy a $200 or less Samsung.

I dumped the Oppo brand a few years ago. Best decision I ever made. This decision by Oppo does not surprise me. They started out as a simple company but went really off-track later. They expanded way beyond what they should have, and the bills probably started coming due from that bad investing. They were supposed to be a simple company, delivering a simple, effective, but expensive product, but their products just went nutballs over the last few years.

And as I posted elsewhere, I'm going to argue physical media is hardly going away. Especially in the audiophile sector. Oppo is not making its decision to close its doors because of the physical media excuse.

zyzzle

News is bittersweet in so many ways. The smartphone kills Oppo! Of course people knew this would happen, so I really feel no love lost for those who "invested" in one of their products. The smartphone probably will ultimately kill all other consumer electronic products eventually. A terrible fate for a once very robust, rich hobbyist industry. I'm old enough to remember that time.

I am very saddened by the news, for it will definitely lower the bar even further in the standalone blu-ray player market. Now, it will become completely commodity. Quality will be driven further aside as $50 players become the norm. Then, when physical media finally die out, a $50 player will become a $500 due to terrible scalping and greed.

So, the Oppo at that point will be a $10k (= greedy, Ebay scalper) product, with no warranty, no support, no firmware updates, and few to no new parts available to fix it when it does finally give up the ghost.

zyzzle

This would be the BEST possible thing that could happen, and you know it. Fuck AACS and their draconian ways.

Open that source up, and Oppo would live on, and actually improve.

zyzzle

Ask any Tesla owner whether they've regretted their $150k purchase. You'll get precious few naysayers. Validation is a strong psychological drive.

And, for most of those Oppo (and Tesla) owners, $550 for an Oppo player is a couple peanuts, and $150k for a Tesla is a mere drop in the bucket. So much are they rolling in dough.

For the other 99% (with only 50% of the net wealth of that top 1%), those purchases are pretty extravagant when much, much (1/10 the cost) alternatives exist.

Why So Blu?

I like OPPO from a purely aesthetic point of view but will not pay a premium for it. Chip be damned. if my Sony region free player conks out then I pay another $99 for a replacement. That's about as far as I will go.

melasnus

You have a $99 Sony 4K player?

zyzzle

Fry's has had them for as low as $89....

Brian Shannon

Those are upconverting to near 4K, they are NOT 4K players

https://www.frys.com/product/8760251...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Would not waste my money

E Unit

Yep, not when full 4K players go on sale at times for a few bucks more.

Pretty much my mindset as well.

melasnus

Yeah, OK, I get it now.
I was a little stunned that prices had dropped so sharply.

For the hell of it, I went to Amazon to actually find the lowest price player and found the LG UP870 3D Ultra High Definition Blu-Ray 4K Player for $107.
Have no idea how good the video processing is (most likely, not very)...

E Unit

Based on reviews, seems like a solid UHD player.

Pizza

Have you ever bought DVDs and Blu-rays? Any blind buys?

zyzzle

No, those $89 players claimed to be true, native UHD 4k players. And those prices were for only a day or so, as Fry's has them periodically, you blink and you miss them. As far as I remember, one was an LG (for $89), the other was a Sony for $99. Not sure of the chip used. Fry's normal prices on these players is quite a bit more.

I'm sure the Oppo is better and more robust, but 4k is still 4k, and so much depends on the set you're using, and of course even more depends on the quality of the ENCODE of the disc you're watching. Garbage in = Garbage out. The quality of some 4k encodes, at paltry bit-starved bitrates is appaling. That's much more noticeable regardless of the player you're using to watch those bitstarved encodes.

Why So Blu?

Paul_SD

If your main concern/priority is 4K UHD and you don't need a player right now, you might as well wait.

While I'm fully confident that Oppo will continue to provide fw at least midway into 2020, the only real driving reason to get one, IMO, is to get the most out of the legacy formats.

If you've dumped all your DVDs and gave up buying Bds and only collect or watch 4K now, the premium price for the Oppos doesn't make a whole lot of sense.


Yeah, the 205 was marketed to audiophiles primarily because of the analog outs which take advantage of the on board DACs (there are two- on for the dedicated stereo out and headphone amp, the other for the 7.1 channels out).

The DACs inside are the SABRE ES9038PRO. Up till the release of the Oppo, the only place this DAC had been used had been the Ayre Acoustics QX-5 Twenty D/A processor which is a $9000 digital hub.

Like you, I'm more into movies too. In the HT where the Oppos are hooked up, I listen to almost no music - with one big exception. All of my favorite movies, along with hundreds more I just like, usually have a musical score that contributes greatly to the film's effectiveness.

I started upgrading the audio portion of my HT a few years back with the front speakers in 2016, and then last year I replaced the surrounds.
Over the next couple years I was going to upgrade my 2002 era AVR, and then in the following year get whatever was the current audiophile version of the Oppo.
Or vice versa.

The reason I was thinking about selling it was because 12 hours before I ordered it, I had ordered a 203. As much as I wanted the 205, I wasn't comfortable with dropping that much money just yet, so I kept vacillating while over the course of a couple days the price just kept going up.
Someone advised me to simply get the 203 and put the money saved towards a new AVR, which I had to admit made a lot of sense.

But I couldn't help myself. When it looked like everyone was sold out, and the dealer I was doing business with still had a "live" order page for it, I threw caution to the wind and ordered it, fully expecting the odds of the order actually going through would be next to nil.

But once I got a tracking number, I suddenly had buyer's remorse. The more I thought about it, the wiser that earlier advice seemed. It looked like I was fixing to make a costly mistake. The audio performance, which I'd built up in my mind over the last couple years, was almost sure to end up being a big let down. Once again I was going to fall for a whole lot of marketing sizzle that wouldn't translate into much of any discernible difference in practical use.

So now I was on the hook for two players, and it just made sense to sell off the one that was more expensive and in higher demand/shorter supply.

Fortunately the audio performance turned out to be, for me, everything it was cracked up to be. Like any good DAC, the end result is more air between sounds which translates into a more expansive soundstage (in every dimension); more precise, pinpoint imaging; a more pronounced and nuanced dynamic range which gives the low end a lot more authority (especially beneficial for me as I don't run a sub) and on and on.
It helps that I now have a calibre of speaker that can take full advantage of these higher quality sources. I really stretched my budget for those, and now I finally feel like I've fully justified that decision.

As long as my geriatric AVR can keep limping along, I'm going to be enjoying what this player brings to the game quite a bit.

For anyone with a more modern AVR, especially one that offers room correction, the 203 would more than fine.
It shares the same Mediatek chip for processing/scaling non 4K sources as the 205, and offers the same full feature set for video settings- along with a bunch of other little tweaks that come in handy
As someone who has more than a few foreign films in their collection, and who has a constant height set up, the ability to shift subtitles is almost a deal-sealing perks in itself.

Yeah. I'm a fanboy.

Alan Smithee

Subtitle shifting is another thing I love about these players- on discs that have forced subtitles, including 'bugs' (as some Passport Video and Platinum Disc titles did) or "Promotional Use Only" text, you can move most of them completely off the screen.

PerryD

What current 4K player supports both SACD and DVD Audio? That's one main reason I'd like to get the Oppo, in addition to its build quality.

Brian Shannon

Sorry, I do not believe that and would not touch that.

Buggy firmware, no updates, HDR 10 or Dolby vision? Were they closeouts of poor performing models? Even if true it would not be worth the risk for me to try and play a real 4K disc on a questionable player.

melasnus

The Oppos were built for videophiles and audiophiles...those who wanted the best, but didn't want to spend many thousands of dollars to get it.
The Customer Service was beyond excellent and their FW updates far exceeded everyone else.
The units are built like tanks and damn near indestructible.
Oppos are like the Energizer Bunny; they just keep going and going.
Buyer's regrets are practically non-existent.
This is what Oppo ownership is about...

jjcool

Sure. But I don't pay 5 times the regular price for them.

fumanstan

There has certainly been UHD players in around the $100 range. Just a search on slickdeals shows various entries over the last few months from LG and Samsung.

https://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php...searchin=first

I'm not sure what's so unbelievable to you that the price point has dropped that low.

zyzzle

I think you mean that Oppo lets you over-ride "Prohibited User Operations". This is fine, and a totally artificial limitation, but some other players have hacked firmware that allows the same thing.

Of course, opening up the Oppo firmware would allow MANY, many things like ISO playback, analogue audio out, 1080p component, Region-free playback, elimination of DRM, many more media formats supported, non-standard resolutions, etc- and in general elminate all the bullshit that the MPAA and AACS force us to suffer through -- all artifical, forced (and "needless") limitations.

So, may the hackers unite and figure out how to crack open the Oppo firmware. Then, Oppo would really be a "cat's pajamas" product, true king of the heap.

Sonic

Just a soundbar. I'm not too big on loud theatrical booming sounds. Annoys my ears.

Thanks for sharing.