To my surprise there is no thread for Oppo, so I thought I would offer a few thoughts. Like most people I am shifting to streaming and downloads for much of my A/V fare. However, I still have hundreds of discs, still receive BR discs from Netflix and have less sophisticated friends who stop by with optical discs of various sorts.
So in an attempt to find a cheap, but a highly effective improvement to my A/V system, I turned to the Oppo BDP 93 at $500 because in some cases it is a better way to go than streaming, especially for conventional DVD's than downloads. First let's get one thing out of the way, the transport and video processing of the BDP 93, 95, NuForce versions are identical. All of the changes in the analog section, which I cannot comment on because I use my freestanding DAC (Bryston-another bargain) for the analog work and connect with Toslink.
I want to make three major points:
1) The video is state of the art with HDMI 1 being the better choice due to an extra stage of video clean-up and enhancement compared to the other HDMI output (2). Even conventional DVD's look better on this machine than most BR discs on other players.
2) The combination of the Oppo transport and my Bryston DAC is certainly better than any player or transport/DAC combo that I have ever owned with the cap on my front being around $5k, but I would not be surprised if it gives $10k units a good run for the money, especially in "pure audio" mode which turns off all of the video circuitry to reduce internal RFI.
3) This is the smartest and most thoughtfully designed audio product I have ever bought. Its manual exceeds any I have seen at any price. The Chinese are starting to get it right and American manufactures should be concerned.
So in an attempt to find a cheap, but a highly effective improvement to my A/V system, I turned to the Oppo BDP 93 at $500 because in some cases it is a better way to go than streaming, especially for conventional DVD's than downloads. First let's get one thing out of the way, the transport and video processing of the BDP 93, 95, NuForce versions are identical. All of the changes in the analog section, which I cannot comment on because I use my freestanding DAC (Bryston-another bargain) for the analog work and connect with Toslink.
I want to make three major points:
1) The video is state of the art with HDMI 1 being the better choice due to an extra stage of video clean-up and enhancement compared to the other HDMI output (2). Even conventional DVD's look better on this machine than most BR discs on other players.
2) The combination of the Oppo transport and my Bryston DAC is certainly better than any player or transport/DAC combo that I have ever owned with the cap on my front being around $5k, but I would not be surprised if it gives $10k units a good run for the money, especially in "pure audio" mode which turns off all of the video circuitry to reduce internal RFI.
3) This is the smartest and most thoughtfully designed audio product I have ever bought. Its manual exceeds any I have seen at any price. The Chinese are starting to get it right and American manufactures should be concerned.