Oppo Digital, the maker of the acclaimed but pricy BDP-83 Blu-ray player, has announced on its Twitter page: "We will be announcing a lower-cost Blu-ray player in early January 2010." There is no information regarding technical details or specific pricing at this time, but people interested are encouraged to visit the company's website "around that time" (presumably coinciding with CES) to learn more.
A company representative also revealed that they are investigating several streaming options.
It's funny but I never considered their player overpriced at all. Given what it does and how it does it, it's a amazing value. Other higher priced players are inferior.
Of course, just when I finally consider giving in and paying quadruple the price of most other players, they announce a new entry level unit. Odds are, it WILL NOT have analog 7.1 outputs, will not use Anchor Bay VRS, and so forth. Also, it will be interesting to see if the same hardware hack pathway to making it region free wil be left in place, or if that will be closed off, or even made easier with some sort of software/remote hack. I am betting the price will be $280.00-ish...
Let's hope the "method" of easily doing a non soldered region free hardware fix for overcoming the control freak BD player license will remain, it would be a shame if future OPPOs needed the same sort of soldered on chip hack as other players.
It will, for sure, be lighter, slimmer, and cheaper... The Region Free issue still looms large for any prospective OPPO product...
Regardless of the lower price, if they follow their model on upscaling DVD players, the BD player should be a well featured, great value for the price point. I still watch DVDs on my OPPO and I sometimes forget I'm not watching a Blu-Ray.
A big mistake! When you have the best player on the market, fairly priced, stick with it!
There are plenty of people who will pay for a great player with outstanding customer service.
Now that the Bly-ray market is matureing, and movie prices are dropping, a good player is more important than ever. What features would they cut?
The OPPO should remain an aspirational player ... let BD newbies buy cheap (I did with Samsung UGH!) and as there knowledge grows they will move th a better player. If OPPO goes cheap they will become just another brand.
Please don't cheapen the brand.
^ Just to go back in time before the BDP-83, Oppo was selling the DV-980H and DV-983H. Then Oppo replaced the DV-983H with the BDP-83. I think the rest you can figure out.
Cutting prices does not mean cutting features. More players are selling making the components come down in price, making them cheaper to make, which means lowering prices.
I would like to know why some people are making such a fuss. In the past Oppo had two models both with great reputation, I always wondered if they would make a player without the 7.1 analog and SACD specs, if it will bring down prices, some say not by much. Give one that just a pure blu ray player with only HDMI out and I'll be happy.
"A big mistake! When you have the best player on the market, fairly priced, stick with it!
There are plenty of people who will pay for a great player with outstanding customer service.
Now that the Bly-ray market is matureing, and movie prices are dropping, a good player is more important than ever. What features would they cut?
The OPPO should remain an aspirational player ... let BD newbies buy cheap (I did with Samsung UGH!) and as there knowledge grows they will move th a better player. If OPPO goes cheap they will become just another brand.
Please don't cheapen the brand."
Your statement doesn't even make business sense. Why wouldn't a company want to offer an entry level product alongside their high end products? This will put a quality entry level product alongside crappy entry level products giving a better choice to consumers who can't afford high end products. People who buy high end products aren't affected by this at all, and it doesn't make sense for a company to ignore the entry level market when the overwhelming majority of prospective buyers are not spending more than $200 on a player anyway. I bought a $150 Sony player since I definitely was not going to buy a $400-$500 player for the bedroom, but I probably would have spent an extra $50 on the Oppo had it been available and I think there is a large number of people who would do the same.
This is pointless for Oppo, the only people who know Oppo are Audio-Videophiles, now they want to compete with the cheap box store players people know. I'm picking up the BD83 Special Edition player next week to hook up to my Anthem Integrated 225 via analog. I already have a PS3 for my "cheap" player and if you cant afford that you can get players at Walmart now for 90 dollars. Oppo needs to stick to making good stuff or they might scare off their base market.
don't be over hype about oppo scaling, if you had the newer tv that paid big bucks, you most likely had upscale chip better than those in oppo, my samsung tv has better upscale than oppo that i can tell, so i sold it and grab the ps3 slim. Oppo is very nice quality player but suffer many shortage for that price tag, but if you are into sacd there's no other opinion for that price.
Oppo Digital, the maker of the acclaimed but pricy 
