OPPO Digital Ends Audio Products Production (April 2018)

[GOS]

FWIW:

I jumped in and purchased a UDP-203 today and got a call from Oppo Customer Service concerning a problem with my credit card. Got to talking about staffing moving forward. The guy said he and most everyone else was getting cut at the end of April. There was just going to be a skeleton crew holding it together for warranty and updates etc.

He also said they sold a boatload of inventory today.

That is so sad to hear. Customer service team were always top notch, very professional and all had super attitudes. I'm sure this hurts many of them as they probably feel like they are being crapped on after all they've given. Ugh....

 

[salsdali]

He also said they sold a boatload of inventory today.

I checked on amazon last night at like 2 AM and Oppo (on amazon) had 403 units available of the 203. I just checked now and they have 330 so 73 units in just over 12 hrs

 

[salsdali]

I would have been concerned about this 5 years ago. Every disc the OPPO supports can be converted to a file format and played without a disc transport on a PC or media player. I never play discs now.

Our only protection against losing all equipment to playback DVDA and SACD (LPs and Tapes too) is to get your music off original media. Converting to file format also give you a backup of the disc too, many of which are irreplaceable now. There’s disk rot going on (e.g. PF DSOTM BDA), not to mention fire and theft.

I wouldn’t run out and by a new OPPO 200 series. Spend your cash moving you discs to files on disc drives and get set up to play files (there’s also many additional benefits)

but the oppo 103 was the way I was finally able to convert my SACD's to a file format (iso) on my HDD.

Without oppo I would still have a stack of SACD's that needed a disc transport to play.

 

[proufo]

Had HDR and more bits/WCG been introduced as a compatible evolutionary technology and not as an extraneous and absurdly complex proprietary one maybe UHD 4K Blu-ray would have been a success and Oppo would have sold a lot of players.

So I will stick to my Marantz 7100 and a non-working Marantz 7600 (that I hope to have fixed). I need analog outputs.

 

[4-earredwonder]

The X800 - and honestly any recent Sony blu-ray player, plays content off USB and network extremely well. Both the X800 as well as consumer models like the BDP-6500 could play MCH 24/96 FLAC and even MCH DSD (uncompressed, no ISOs) to my AVR, and even sent the MCH DSD to the AVR as DSD.

Man, that's a lot of acronyms. But it was part of why I chose the Sony. It did everything really well. If only it did Dolby Vision. And then they announce that the X700 is going to support Dolby Vision but is dropping DVD-Audio...

My OPPO UHD 205 recently received the Dolby Vision firmware update but the problem is my 3D LG OLED TV, 2016 model, is still awaiting that upgrade....which is supposedly in the pipeline.

Problem is a lot of UHD 4K movies....even newly remastered ones.......omit Dolby Vision but continue to support HDR......and even more alarming, a lot of new 4K releases are STILL 2K Upsampled!

Sony could've hit a home run with their newer X700 but why they eliminated DVD~A, which would've rendered it a true Universal player, is ridiculous! But that's SONY for you.....STILL fighting the format wars.

 

[jaap74]

Reminds me of when Pioneer stopped making TV's..... Just because a company has the best products in their category doesn't necessarily mean they will survive....

 

[salsdali]

Reminds me of when Pioneer stopped making TV's..... Just because a company has the best products in their category doesn't necessarily mean they will survive....

It just goes to show, most people in America have no taste. They want crap because they seem to be happy with crap.

You can lead a horse to water..........

but I will say the price of Oppo's was always just a bit high for the market. The majority of any market just doesn't want to pay an ultra premium price.

 

[ubertrout]

My OPPO UHD 205 recently received the Dolby Vision firmware update but the problem is my 3D LG OLED TV, 2016 model, is still awaiting that upgrade....which is supposedly in the pipeline.

Problem is a lot of UHD 4K movies....even newly remastered ones.......omit Dolby Vision but continue to support HDR......and even more alarming, a lot of new 4K releases are STILL 2K Upsampled!

Sony could've hit a home run with their newer X700 but why they eliminated DVD~A, which would've rendered it a true Universal player, is ridiculous! But that's SONY for you.....STILL fighting the format wars.

Really? My 2016 OLED65C6 has supported Dolby Vision essentially since I got it. "Glow" on Netflix streamed fine in Vision using the TV's onboard app. Not to get too far off topic.

 

[quicksrt]

I think analog outs are really cool. I just like having them even if I were not using them going to the receiver.

 

[ar surround]

It just goes to show, most people in America have no taste. They want crap because they seem to be happy with crap.

You can lead a horse to water..........

but I will say the price of Oppo's was always just a bit high for the market. The majority of any market just doesn't want to pay an ultra premium price.

At $1300 for a universal 4k audiophile player with analog outs, I would consider the UD-205 good value for the money. It is certainly a lot less expensive than the Marantz DV9600 that I bought in 2006 for some $1800.

Also, some of us neither want to take the time to rip discs to a computer or music server nor want to take the time to learn how to do so. (But it looks like we are going to be forced into it.) This is not my primary hobby and I don't want to put any more time into it than I do now. So a universal player that handles all formats including DVD-Audio is important to a (dinosaur) like me.

 

[markshan]

Sony could've hit a home run with their newer X700 but why they eliminated DVD~A, which would've rendered it a true Universal player, is ridiculous! But that's SONY for you.....STILL fighting the format wars.

Has Sony ever included DVD-A in a player? I've never seen one. Sony helped develop the SACD, and, I believe, omitted DVD-A in hopes of killing it.

 

[ubertrout]

Has Sony ever included DVD-A in a player? I've never seen one. Sony helped develop the SACD, and, I believe, omitted DVD-A in hopes of killing it.

The UBP-X800 we're all talking about (and its predecessor the UHP-H1) both have it.

 

[markshan]

The UBP-X800 we're all talking about (and its predecessor the UHP-H1) both have it.

Good info, thanks.

 

[Scott65]

They already are.

Have been for at least a couple of years, I have one from 2016

 

[ihg90]

Think of it this way, Gene, You can probably buy a Universal player like the SONY X800 for cheap but as I have one and it's a good unit, it's NOT an OPPO and let's face it, SONY customer service SUCKS and hopefully OPPO will service their units for a few years to come [fingers crossed]. I've had my OPPO BDP~105 for a few years now and it's performed flawlessly but in the end, it's your decision. Am even considering buying another UDP~205....it's a gorgeous UNIT....might as well go out in style!

When I consider what I paid for crappy high end [?] audio/video players over the years.....the OPPO, IMO, has always been somewhat of a TRUE bargain.

Let me just add that I had the Sony X800 and, when I found a good deal on the Oppo 203, I bought it and sold the Sony - besides the difference in build quality, I was pleasantly surprised that there were several surround discs I bought used on Ebay that the Sony wouldn't play (I thought the discs were bad or wrong format and was about to sell them) - but the Oppo played them without hesitation....

 

[Ninecats]

Let me just add that I had the Sony X800 and, when I found a good deal on the Oppo 203, I bought it and sold the Sony - besides the difference in build quality, I was pleasantly surprised that there were several surround discs I bought used on Ebay that the Sony wouldn't play (I thought the discs were bad or wrong format and was about to sell them) - but the Oppo played them without hesitation....

Sounds strange - what kind of discs?

 

[atrocity]

I like that possibility. However, as phones increasingly become multi-media devices, won't they only become more beholden to those agencies?

That's a good question. I was specifically thinking of whatever hoops they have to jump through in order to sell a Blu-ray player. Clearly that's not a consideration with phones, though it's certainly possible--likely, even--that there's some other ramification I haven't considered.

 

[atrocity]

That said: one of the things I like about DVD-As and Blu-Rays, even the klunkily authored and slow-loading ones, is the visuals that go with the music. Just today I was listening to Gentle Giant's The Power and the Glory and digging the extremely cool animations that go with the lyrics. You don't get that with a FLAC.

But you do get it with an MKV, which normally has the identical bits as the disc, just in a new container.

Having said that, one of the few frustrations I've had with Oppo is utterly arbitrary pickiness about what soundtracks it will allow to be paired with an MKV. For example, linear PCM is OK on Blu-ray but will not play back from an MKV. Hopefully the 203/205 fix that, but I haven't seen anything and don't yet have mine to test.

 

[ubertrout]

That's a good question. I was specifically thinking of whatever hoops they have to jump through in order to sell a Blu-ray player. Clearly that's not a consideration with phones, though it's certainly possible--likely, even--that there's some other ramification I haven't considered.

There's a lot of patent license fees to pay for blu-ray, 4k, various audio codecs, and now various HDR codecs. Heck, even the basic DVD patents are only expiring in the next year or two. I'm guessing players like Sony are able to finesse such licenses better than even a good sized company like Oppo can.

 

[Ninecats]

The UBP-X800 we're all talking about (and its predecessor the UHP-H1) both have it.

Since I have learned that X800 id capable of multichannel through USB, is it likely that the UHP H1 is capable of this as well?