Just spent a few intial hours setting it up and testing and it's blowm me away so far!
This is the third Blu-Ray player I've owned, initialy the Sony BDP-S350 which is now in the bedroom and a Denon DVD-2500BT which I paid £599 for. I thought the Denon was very disappointing for the money, better than the Sony, but not by £400 or more. Now I know I was right to be disappointed with the Denon and definately made the right decision to sell it!
I've paid the same for the Oppo, £599, hardware modded to play any region DVD and remote selectable to play any zone blu-ray. First thing you notcie as it comes out of the box is that build quality hasn't been comprimised, a nice solid player, just the right size, big enough to make you feel you've got a good piece of kit, but it won't upset the missus! Plus you get a chunky HDMI lead, 2gb USB stick (for firmware updates) and a Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray, nice freebies.
I really like the setup menus which are easy to navigate. Played about with SACD for a while and came to the same conclusion as Will, it sounded better letting the Oppo convert DSD to PCM and send to my AVR600 by HDMI, rather than using DSD decoded straight to analogue by the Oppo. The latter should have been the better, but I guess the DAC's in the AVR600 are just better quality than those in the Oppo. When I got onto to Blu-Ray, I was amazed how clean the picture was, better than the Denon I'd say, where it trashed the Denon was the audio, much more dynamic. One area that the Denon did major on was DVD playback, I'd say the Oppo is as good as or marginally better. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I put the blu-ray in and by the time I sat down, it was playing!
When you consider what you get with this player for the same price I paid for a DVD-2500BT, the big boys better watch out.
This is the third Blu-Ray player I've owned, initialy the Sony BDP-S350 which is now in the bedroom and a Denon DVD-2500BT which I paid £599 for. I thought the Denon was very disappointing for the money, better than the Sony, but not by £400 or more. Now I know I was right to be disappointed with the Denon and definately made the right decision to sell it!
I've paid the same for the Oppo, £599, hardware modded to play any region DVD and remote selectable to play any zone blu-ray. First thing you notcie as it comes out of the box is that build quality hasn't been comprimised, a nice solid player, just the right size, big enough to make you feel you've got a good piece of kit, but it won't upset the missus! Plus you get a chunky HDMI lead, 2gb USB stick (for firmware updates) and a Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray, nice freebies.
I really like the setup menus which are easy to navigate. Played about with SACD for a while and came to the same conclusion as Will, it sounded better letting the Oppo convert DSD to PCM and send to my AVR600 by HDMI, rather than using DSD decoded straight to analogue by the Oppo. The latter should have been the better, but I guess the DAC's in the AVR600 are just better quality than those in the Oppo. When I got onto to Blu-Ray, I was amazed how clean the picture was, better than the Denon I'd say, where it trashed the Denon was the audio, much more dynamic. One area that the Denon did major on was DVD playback, I'd say the Oppo is as good as or marginally better. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I put the blu-ray in and by the time I sat down, it was playing!
When you consider what you get with this player for the same price I paid for a DVD-2500BT, the big boys better watch out.