Marantz, OPPO, Reavon, SONY 4K UHD Blu-Ray universal player advice or recommendations?

Babur72

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How’s it going peeps?

Hoping to acquire a multi-channel/multi-zone system for the living room & conservatory hooked-up to a multi-channel AV receiver. But to keep component count & cost down through the purchase of clearance, ex-dem or pre-owned components.

Have a very large CD, SACD, Blu-Ray & DVD collection. Need to replace our recently expired Panasonic Blu-Ray player. Lately been searching for a decent 4K UHD Blu-Ray universal CD/SACD player, preferably one with dual HDMI outputs & multi-channel analogue audio outputs, such as: Marantz UD7007/UD9004, OPPO UDP205/UDP203, Reavon X200, or SONY X1100ES.

Would welcome any advice, first hand experiences or recommendations regarding these & other suitable universal players that you’d be willing to chime-in with.

Much obliged.

Regards.

Bob
 
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Oppo has stopped making players quite a while ago.

Your options are between Reavon, Sony and Panasonic DP-UB9000EB1.

I wouldn't recommend Marantz. Firmware updates are important for continued compatibility of newer discs and Marantz won't be good at issuing them.
 
Personally, I'm not in favour of buying UHD players of companies that have closed down. Unlike Hi Fi equipment, UHD players need periodic firmware updates to ensure compatibility with newer titles. This won't be forthcoming for Oppo.
Very true.
However I haven't had to update my Oppo for years. It still does what it was advertised to do and thats why I bought it in the first place....
 
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Personally, I'm not in favour of buying UHD players of companies that have closed down. Unlike Hi Fi equipment, UHD players need periodic firmware updates to ensure compatibility with newer titles. This won't be forthcoming for Oppo.
i would disagree. Most are capable of playing whatever they were originally designed to do. The chance they have to provide access to even more recent formats is irrelevant, they were never designed to play those so, in this case a player upgrade would be required.
Nobody in their right minds produces an upgradeable player of that type.
 
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Babur72

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Appreciate your responses guys.

After multiple recent searches on a number of sites, I noted that the OPPO players listed generally cost more now pre-owned than when sold originally as new(?)

I get that Reavon released their players fairly recently. So i’d necessarily have to wait a bit for deals. But i’m prepared to bide my time.

Read somewhere(AVforums? Soundstage? WhatHiFi?) that the Reavon’s design & firmware were based on the OPPO UDP-203/205(?)

Be interested to know if anyone has seen & heard the Reavon universal players first hand at shows or demo’s?

Much obliged.

Bob
 

Arron

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Have a very large CD, SACD, Blu-Ray & DVD collection. Need to replace our recently expired Panasonic Blu-Ray player.

Left-field suggestion... have you considered ripping them all to a Plex server instead?

I still buy discs but they get ripped to my NAS and played via an Apple TV. It's like having your own Netflix.
 
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i would disagree. Most are capable of playing whatever they were originally designed to do. The chance they have to provide access to even more recent formats is irrelevant, they were never designed to play those so, in this case a player upgrade would be required.
Nobody in their right minds produces an upgradeable player of that type.
Classic example is Top Gun Maverick disc which is BD100 triple layer and several players have had issues during the layer change, except Panasonic.

There is no single format in UHD so firmware updates are important.
 
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Babur72

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Classic example is Top Gun Maverick disc which is BD100 triple layer and several players have had issues during the layer change, except Panasonic.

There is no single format in UHD so firmware updates are important.

Not a fan of that film series. So don’t think I’ll be missing much(?)

But I accept that the playing of other similar multi-layered titles may be adversely affected & appreciate your insight.

Thanks.

Bob
 

Babur72

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Left-field suggestion... have you considered ripping them all to a Plex server instead?

I still buy discs but they get ripped to my NAS and played via an Apple TV. It's like having your own Netflix.

Ooh?! That may be an inspired suggestion(?)

I hadn’t considered this option before. Have to investigate further.

Wonder if you’d know whether these ripper/servers are susceptible to similar multi-layer disc reading errors, as players sometimes are?

Much obliged.

Bob
 
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Arron

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Ooh?! That may be an inspired suggestion(?)

I hadn’t considered this option before. Have to investigate further.

Wonder if you’d know whether these ripper/servers are susceptible to similar multi-layer disc reading errors, as players sometimes are?

Much obliged.

Bob
The nice thing about ripping is you only need a PC Blu Ray drive. Mine is a Pioneer BDR-XD07TUHD and it claims to work with triple-layer discs though I haven't knowingly tried any in it. Either way, it was only ~£120 so not the end of the world if it needs to be replaced. You need a drive that supports UHD if you want to rip 4K discs.

Not sure about ripping your SACDs, had a quick look and it seemed more complicated than expected. Only have CDs myself and they all get ripped to Apple Lossless on my Mac. Which is nice because they play on my phone, Mac, iPad, PC or through the Apple TV.

Plex is free unless you want the optional extras. (You probably don't need them.) I used MakeMKV to rip the discs and it's free while it's in beta -- it has been for years and the registration key is in the MakeMKV forum. It just copies the files without re-encoding so the output is exactly the same as playing the disc.

If you have a PC or Mac with an optical drive, strongly recommend you try ripping maybe five movies as an experiment -- Blu Rays take much longer to rip so start with DVDs. That was my taster and have never looked back.
 
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We have the flagship Panasonic Bluray that @bigboss found for us about 8 or 9 years ago. The picture quality & sound quality is very good. It has RCA and HDMI connectivity.

Highly recommend any of the Pannie models.
IIRC my Panny was described as a engineers or technician repair from Richer Sounds Bromley. In the last 8-9 years it hasn't missed a beat -- it seems incredibly robust
 

Sixtyten

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Ooh?! That may be an inspired suggestion(?)

I hadn’t considered this option before. Have to investigate further.

Wonder if you’d know whether these ripper/servers are susceptible to similar multi-layer disc reading errors, as players sometimes are?

Much obliged.

Bob

Ripping SACD's is possible. It's not entirely straightforward - at least initially. Once you get into the swing of it though it becomes easier as you get used to it. From personal experience the most difficult aspect getting the set-up right. Then away you go. If you dig around the internet you'll see plenty of guides how to do it and a list of old Sony blu-ray players which (with a bit of footering) support it. I'd recommend the Quadrophonic Forum as an excellent place to start - specifically this thread. I followed the steps and eventually was able to get it to work. I can now play my SACD iso's via Jriver to either my DSD dac, or if I want to play multichannel discs, play then directly from my laptop into my Marantz 1710 or DLNA them to my Sony UHP-H1 (which and entirely coincidentally supports ripping) from the previously mentioned Jriver
 
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Babur72

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We have the flagship Panasonic Bluray that @bigboss found for us about 8 or 9 years ago. The picture quality & sound quality is very good. It has RCA and HDMI connectivity.

Highly recommend any of the Pannie models.

Would that be Panasonic’s DP9000EB1?

I accompanied a friend to a store demo. some years back & still remember thinking the Panasonic player’s video performance was peerless at that time.

But had hoped to find a 4K UHD Blu-Ray player(or ripper/server) with 2/5.1 channel SACD playback functionality(?) DVD-A playback is less important for me.

Appreciate your input.

Regards.

Bob
 

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