Oppo UDP-203 4K UHD Blu-ray player | Brand new release today
- Thread starter NorthStar
- Start date
I have 3 105's...glad I was rejected on the 205...put that money towards a new Jura E8 Full auto expresso maker last night...
Best post I've read so far today.
If you are not a fan of going to funerals (not my particular place to hang around), you might prefer to not watch this YT video; don't say I didn't warn you. :b
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The Oppo 203, and 205, are the last of the very last Oppo universal 4K Blu-ray players ever made by Oppo Digital. They are considered among the best of the best if not the best...for now. They are still available and already viewed as legends.
No other 4K Blu-ray player's manufacturers build them like Oppo do, nobody.
Not Sony, not Panasonic, not Samsung, not LG, not Philips, not Microsoft, ....nobody.
Should you get one now before it's too late? ...My very best thought: It depends. :b
Me personally, the 205 is the best value. ...Short of shopping for a new turntable.
The Oppo 203, and 205, are the last of the very last Oppo universal 4K Blu-ray players ever made by Oppo Digital. They are considered among the best of the best if not the best...for now. They are still available and already viewed as legends.
No other 4K Blu-ray player's manufacturers build them like Oppo do, nobody.
Not Sony, not Panasonic, not Samsung, not LG, not Philips, not Microsoft, ....nobody.
Should you get one now before it's too late? ...My very best thought: It depends. :b
Me personally, the 205 is the best value. ...Short of shopping for a new turntable.
The 203 is a fantastic player to play 4K Blu-ray movies.
You can plug an external hard drive (up to 16TB) in one of his two USB 3.0 ports on the rear for films stored in it. Or use the one on front (2.0) for quick accomodation.
And you can modify the 203, and 205, to your heart content...to make a great video player an even better one. It is the easiest video machine to upgrade and make it worldwide region-free DVD and Blu-ray movies playback. It 'oppons' the entire movie world's library @ the push of one finger...'Play' button on the remote.
Desire and knowledge have never been more accessible. :b
You can plug an external hard drive (up to 16TB) in one of his two USB 3.0 ports on the rear for films stored in it. Or use the one on front (2.0) for quick accomodation.
And you can modify the 203, and 205, to your heart content...to make a great video player an even better one. It is the easiest video machine to upgrade and make it worldwide region-free DVD and Blu-ray movies playback. It 'oppons' the entire movie world's library @ the push of one finger...'Play' button on the remote.
Desire and knowledge have never been more accessible. :b
Modwright and EVS were the two companies I looked at when I briefly thought of having my BDP-105 modified. I ended up with a dedicated SACD/CD player. Both offer significant improvement. Be prepared to pay money for that improvement.
I have had several Modwright mods but Dan's work is more about the sound. I am looking to improve the video side more.
How is your power? By upgrading the power cord, and using a Shunyata Triton v3 for power conditioning, I was able to get more detail, and brighter colors from my Oppo 103. My 203 just inherited those improvements when it moved in last year.
Just a quote from someone who had his Oppo 203 player modified/upgraded with a linear power supply:
"Regarding linear power supplys.
I read about the Oppomod version in this thread around Christmas and was intrigued enough to try it.
I also purchased on eBay a mod with a Rhodium iec with solid silver cable soldered with high purity solder which connects to the power supply.
The idea being I've a good quality power cord so this mod would connect the power to the linear power supply.
I found my video of my 203 to take a very noticeable improvement with the following benefits, image was more 'stable', (looked more real), colours were more saturated. Both Open range and Only the Brave, both excellent transfers, looked incredible.
3D also improved markedly with better colour saturation and again just a better, more pleasing image.
People may say the above mods should make no difference, but I can see the difference, having owned my 203 since release last Christmas and very well acquainted with the picture quality.
I am very happy with the purchases and couldn't go back to a bog standard 203 now and plan to keep my 203 for a very long time."
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My take, without direct personal experience but from clean readings:
The people who had their Oppo players upgraded with linear power supplies they all hear better audio and see better picture. The people who had their Oppo unmodified, in their original state, they see nothing, they hear nothing, but many criticize the people who do as coucou people. ...Coucou means crazy.
Methinks that the crazy ones are the ignorant ones with short narrow vision, and biased in their sale pitch from the original Oppo players (unmodified). And it's more than just a thought. They are so shortsighted that they are bullying and insulting the audio/video industry. I want nothing to do with those people, nothing. They think that they are smarter and better and above the rest; they live in the illusion of their own biased shadows. Oppo is good, and it could be made better, everything can be made better in this audio/video passion.
Coris here has a great contribution on his own Oppo mods; Coris is a solid gentleman from my exchanges with him. There are other Oppo diy modifiers who are also reliable. The number of happy customers is a testament. And the Oppo players are the nicest ones to work with for improving picture and sound.
That's my take.
"Regarding linear power supplys.
I read about the Oppomod version in this thread around Christmas and was intrigued enough to try it.
I also purchased on eBay a mod with a Rhodium iec with solid silver cable soldered with high purity solder which connects to the power supply.
The idea being I've a good quality power cord so this mod would connect the power to the linear power supply.
I found my video of my 203 to take a very noticeable improvement with the following benefits, image was more 'stable', (looked more real), colours were more saturated. Both Open range and Only the Brave, both excellent transfers, looked incredible.
3D also improved markedly with better colour saturation and again just a better, more pleasing image.
People may say the above mods should make no difference, but I can see the difference, having owned my 203 since release last Christmas and very well acquainted with the picture quality.
I am very happy with the purchases and couldn't go back to a bog standard 203 now and plan to keep my 203 for a very long time."
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My take, without direct personal experience but from clean readings:
The people who had their Oppo players upgraded with linear power supplies they all hear better audio and see better picture. The people who had their Oppo unmodified, in their original state, they see nothing, they hear nothing, but many criticize the people who do as coucou people. ...Coucou means crazy.
Methinks that the crazy ones are the ignorant ones with short narrow vision, and biased in their sale pitch from the original Oppo players (unmodified). And it's more than just a thought. They are so shortsighted that they are bullying and insulting the audio/video industry. I want nothing to do with those people, nothing. They think that they are smarter and better and above the rest; they live in the illusion of their own biased shadows. Oppo is good, and it could be made better, everything can be made better in this audio/video passion.
Coris here has a great contribution on his own Oppo mods; Coris is a solid gentleman from my exchanges with him. There are other Oppo diy modifiers who are also reliable. The number of happy customers is a testament. And the Oppo players are the nicest ones to work with for improving picture and sound.
That's my take.
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Easy improvement/upgrade for all Oppo 203's owners.
Power supply's replacement/upgrade, plus disc transport's isolation/upgrade.
The proof is in the pudding...listening and watching.
Power supply's replacement/upgrade, plus disc transport's isolation/upgrade.
The proof is in the pudding...listening and watching.
[FONT=palatino\ linotype]Haha! That guy is pretty comical as he cavalierly dispenses with the unnecessary.
[/FONT]
And in the third video, from the two pictures side by side, without playing the video, I'd take the standard Blu-ray over the 4K HDR Blu-ray, 100%
Concur with your comments regarding the improvements.
I've always been kind of skeptical about any improvement from just changing the PS given that I'm using the Oppo 203 only as a Blu Ray player on a 50" 1080 Plasma (on such a small screen, would any video difference be obvious?) feeding PCM to my EMM Labs DA2 (would a LPS really make a noticeable difference on movie soundtracks when I’m already using a MIT Oracle MA-X spdif cable feeding into an elite asynchronous DAC like the DA2?). Given that skepticism, modding my Oppo has always been low on my list of priorities, particularly in comparison to getting my 2 channel system where I want it to be.
So I've finally finished my 2 channel system for the most part and with the recent Oppo announcement I refocused on my 203 since no more new players will be coming from Oppo. My research revealed that a LPS is the most cost effective and significant upgrade to the Oppo (isolation after that but I already have that covered – I’ve removed the footers and replaced them with four HRS Nimbus Assemblies).
I found the ~$400 LPS from Oppomod to be priced quite high for what I saw plus I don't care about analog. Found a pretty solid looking digital only LPS from Zero Zone (it only provides power to the main digital board and not the separate analog board) with a nice thick plate under the toroid to dissipate heat properly (heat is definitely a concern given the tight space) for ~$200, so I went for it.
The difference is not subtle. With the LPS, video is more stable and "flows" much better even on my relatively small TV – it’s slightly hypnotizing (now I know what Charlie of Ayre was going on about regarding video improvement in the Ayre Blu Ray player over the Oppo player even though they were both using the same transport and video chip). Audio was that much more relaxed with a substantial uptick in low level detail retrieval and differentiation of sounds (for example, people's voices became much more distinct in their nuances).
Having gone that far, I said why not just go for broke and get the upgrade kits for the power inlet (rhodium plating plus silver cable to LPS) and power cable from the LPS to the digital board (silver plated copper). I didn’t really expect much change and I was mostly right but there was further improvement over what I heard from the LPS alone (maybe another 10-15% - minor but noticeable). So not as great a return on investment compared to the LPS (the combined price of these two mods gets uncomfortably close to the price of the LPS) but moves performance up a notch or two, so it’s still money well spent provided you already have a LPS.
The last “upgrade” to the 203 I have planned is an incoming Kanex HDMI de-embedder so that I can obtain full resolution audio from movie soundtracks (spdif is restricted to 16/48 2 channel PCM output due to Hollywood restrictions). Not sure how much of a difference that’s going to make as everything sounds pretty spectacular right now but for ~$30 used it’s not much of a gamble.
I’ve attached a pic of the fully modded unit which also has the region free Blu Ray mod (I think this was originally purchased for my Oppo 95 but works perfectly on the 203 – the RS232 port and USB dongle are in case you don’t want to open your player – you can just plug it into the back of the OPPO as an alternate way to install it).
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Thank you Bar for sharing a great post; informative and advanced in the pursuit of higher satisfaction for the senses.
* I didn't know that you can put the region-free kit inside; the one that normally people plug in the back of the unit. That's good to know about its versatility...outside and/or inside.
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• https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ZER...c8849e3&transAbTest=ae803_2&priceBeautifyAB=0 ^
• https://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-ve...or-UDP-203-PSU-Modified-Upgrade-/132465794188 ^
* I didn't know that you can put the region-free kit inside; the one that normally people plug in the back of the unit. That's good to know about its versatility...outside and/or inside.
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• https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ZER...c8849e3&transAbTest=ae803_2&priceBeautifyAB=0 ^
• https://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-ve...or-UDP-203-PSU-Modified-Upgrade-/132465794188 ^
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Let us know your impressions. That's the one I would have purchased if using analog as well. R Core is supposed to be the best type of LPS.
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