Sony UHPH1 Universal player, anyone?

surroundophile said:

So does the 83.

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Even the DV980H player does.

Question: any known prize information?

So does anyone know if this plays SACD.ISO? My Denon 2012 is becoming more and more flaky in it's old age and I'm digging for a replacement.

A mate of mine is looking to buy his first ever BD player. :yikes

He's into surround music too :music (though not quite as much as a nut as most of us on here :banana: ) but he is on a tight budget. :violin

He's looking to spend less than £300, which, sadly, rules out my recommendation of an Oppo.

He's come up with this, and asked my opinion on it.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/blu-ray/sony/uhph1/sony-uhph1b

I've taken a look at the specs and some reviews and they all look pretty positive, but imho you can't beat experience, so I thought I would ask on here if anyone has any first hand exposure to this player for surround music?

Thanks in anticipation.

I haven't got this player (looks very good value), but I've had a lot of Sony kit over the years and its been very reliable. I would get the RicherSounds extended guarantee though as its only 10% of the purchase price, as it came in very useful sorting out the problem I had on my Denon Universal when it stopped playing discs after 4+ years of heavy use.

Neil Palfreyman said:

A mate of mine is looking to buy his first ever BD player. :yikes

He's into surround music too :music (though not quite as much as a nut as most of us on here :banana: ) but he is on a tight budget. :violin

He's looking to spend less than £300, which, sadly, rules out my recommendation of an Oppo.

He's come up with this, and asked my opinion on it.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/blu-ray/sony/uhph1/sony-uhph1b

I've taken a look at the specs and some reviews and they all look pretty positive, but imho you can't beat experience, so I thought I would ask on here if anyone has any first hand exposure to this player for surround music?

Thanks in anticipation.

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I love my Oppo 93, but if I was starting from scratch today I'd get a UHP-H1. The major caveat is that it's totally HDMI-centric, so it's great if he has a HDMI receiver but problematic otherwise.

I've seen a person or two around here say they have one, but it sort of occupies a difficult niche - it's cheaper and lacks the analog outs of the Oppo 103, but it's still a major expense compared with the typical BD player, even ones that support SACD.

I assume the lack of 4k isn't an issue for this friend? Also, if said friend would be happy with the DTS tracks off DVD-Audio, the Sony BDP-S7200 can do Blu-Ray and SACD for half the price of the UHP. The S6500 will too - although both are at the top end of the consumer level players, whereas the UHP is aimed at enthusiasts.

ubertrout said:

I love my Oppo 93, but if I was starting from scratch today I'd get a UHP-H1. The major caveat is that it's totally HDMI-centric, so it's great if he has a HDMI receiver but problematic otherwise.

I've seen a person or two around here say they have one, but it sort of occupies a difficult niche - it's cheaper and lacks the analog outs of the Oppo 103, but it's still a major expense compared with the typical BD player, even ones that support SACD.

I assume the lack of 4k isn't an issue for this friend? Also, if said friend would be happy with the DTS tracks off DVD-Audio, the Sony BDP-S7200 can do Blu-Ray and SACD for half the price of the UHP. The S6500 will too - although both are at the top end of the consumer level players, whereas the UHP is aimed at enthusiasts.

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I like the BDP-S7200. It will serve me well as I move from reel-to-reel into, the HD age!

Restarted my surround sound journey after the 70's quad era in 2001. My first setup was with an Onkyo 6.1 receiver no HDMI and a decent but no way a good player in a Toshiba that played Dvd-audio and Sacd. This player sometimes had recognition issues with certain titles. So decided to upgrade to an Oppo DV 970hd and sorry to say it was a step backwards ( had more issues then the Toshiba). Then it was late 2006 and flat panel HDTV HDMI time, so a receiver upgrade was also needed soon. Was O.K. with the comps to the TV from the Onkyo for a bit....
Wanted a good integrated setup (same component brand), So I matched up Yamaha RX-V667 and an S1700 dvd-audio sacd player. (strange was a 7.1 receiver only had 5.1 analogs) also had playback issues occasionally which frustrated me to no end.
So my better more consistent route was my P.C. with Cyberlink DVD 8 for DVD Audio and Blu-Ray playback. ( Blu-ray drive installed) and SACD titles to the Yamaha s1700.
Scoreguide :
1. Toshiba $99.00
2. Yamaha $149.00
3. Oppo. $149.00
This made me rethink my options and decided I would go to the Blu-ray format as my main music source (we know that didn't last)
So I picked up a used Sony 3d Blu-Ray player with SACD playback and was playing 2 formats in this, with the P.C. playing Dvd-audio disc's exclusively.
When I seen the ces had a universal dvd-audio sacd player new in 2016 by Sony I decided to go with it.
The UHP-H1 and the newly released Oppo udp-203 are similar, the Sony 4K enhancement only, the Oppo is 4K. So the savings right away 200.00 difference than the Sony not counting the cost of analog cables 150.00.
Getting the Oppo 203 is twice the price of the Sony with minimal gain.(4K enhancement or 4k).
I've had my UHP-H1 since release and had no issues with any disc I put in it. I may have considered the Oppo if I already had a 4k TV. (Swore off the brand after the 970).
That was long winded, anyways if you've already got a 4k TV and want a 4k player go with the Oppo 203.
If not, you can do alot worse then the Sony UHP-H1, IMO it's a good player.

Thanks for the replies all, and particularly Dave - That was a really useful post both to hear your experience and also; I'm not sure he realised that it's only 4k upscaling and not a true 4k player. I've passed that little nugget on.

With that budget he's not likely to find a 4K player yet, but it is nice to see Sony finally supporting DVD-Audio of late with their hardware, their new 4K ES player will support SACD and DVD-Audio also.

So I bought one, on spec as there wasn't much direct information about this machine's capabilities beyond glib assurances that it plays DSD (sort of)

Just to confirm;

It will not play SACD.ISO directly

It will not play home brewed DVD-A

It will play DSD (dsf) stereo and multichannel from its front mounted USB socket

It does support DSD (dsf) stereo and multichannel playback via DLNA if you run something like Bubble UPNP and use the player as a renderer. It also works if you use the Songpal App to browse to the respective folders on any attached network attached storage you may have.

I've had some problems playing SACD.ISO from JRiver MC 20 and MC 22. At the moment I can only get it to stream as LPCM 176 from any DSF or SACD.ISO source rather than DSD. But it outputs in Surround when I input a surround DSD source. I'm sure that after a prerequisite amount of footering, I will get this to work without the need to transcode. Despite this, it still sounds pretty damn good.

It looks like it supports Flac 5.1 as well.

It sounds incredible - compared to my old Denon DBP2012? It's like someone has given filthy windows a good old going over with Windolene and vinegar. Roxy Music's "Avalon" is sounds open and airy in a way none of my previous players could manage.


CD's sound almost as good as my Marantz CD6005, stereo DSD is comparable to my Denon USB300

Haven't played any movies through it yet. I'm sure it will be fine.

So a provisional thumbs up

Sixtyten said:

It will not play home brewed DVD-A

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That seems odd ...

fredblue said:

I saw this video and I thought of Sony watching us all at QQ...

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Commencing at about 1:28 ... Karen looks a little too much like the Borg Queen for my liking ...

Resistance is futile!

Sixtyten said:

So I bought one, on spec as there wasn't much direct information about this machine's capabilities beyond glib assurances that it plays DSD (sort of)...

...It sounds incredible - compared to my old Denon DBP2012? It's like someone has given filthy windows a good old going over with Windolene and vinegar. Roxy Music's "Avalon" is sounds open and airy in a way none of my previous players could manage.

CD's sound almost as good as my Marantz CD6005, stereo DSD is comparable to my Denon USB300

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So, are you referring only to the stereo analog output here? Because being digital-only, the sound of the multichannel audio out should be affected more by the DAC than the transport/decoder. Barring some serious issues with your Denon, comparing digital-out to digital-out should produce broadly similar results using the same DAC.

That'll be unreliable bundle of crap that was the Denon? Sent back D&M's service agents three times in the first year of purchase. They had to replace the entire disc mechanism, and it still wouldn't play CD's properly or read mixed content from DVD-A? Which then failed after 4 years? Safe to say there was something wrong with it from the start.

But, and regardless of this, I try to be helpful, hopefully providing information that doesn't seem to be any where else on the net, and certainly not on this board and the response? I'm some how imagining a difference in how it sounds? Or that it doesn't play homebrewed DVD-A?

Really?

Tell you what, go and buy one and work it out for yourselves.

Sixtyten said:

...I try to be helpful, hopefully providing information that doesn't seem to be any where else on the net, and certainly not on this board and the response? I'm some how imagining a difference in how it sounds?

...

Really?

Tell you what, go and buy one and work it out for yourselves.

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Whoa, nothing personal here. I'm not saying there isn't a difference or that you're not hearing one. If it's the analog stereo outs you're using, then of course there will be a difference. As regards multichannel digital out, I'm only suggesting that you reexamine your evaluation of the situation rationally.

JediJoker said:

Whoa, nothing personal here. I'm not saying there isn't a difference or that you're not hearing one. If it's the analog stereo outs you're using, then of course there will be a difference. As regards multichannel digital out, I'm only suggesting that you reexamine your evaluation of the situation rationally.

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Just to add to a friendly conversion, outputting pcm and outputting, by way of, bitstreaming are not identical. Sending pcm, although digital, the player CAN alter the output (good or bad), while bitstreaming the data is more straight forward, and the dac will be the ultimate influence. Not giving a lesson here, just throwing that out there.

himey said:

...outputting pcm and outputting, by way of, bitstreaming are not identical.

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Very true. I didn't want to bring the decoder into the equation, but it is important, of course.

I have a UHP-H1, and I'm very satisfied: it plays almost all formats and with high quality results.

By the way, does anyone know if/how this unit can become region-free ad far as DVD playing is concerned? (I made a BDP-S7200, which is almost identical, region-free.)