Again there's no way even a few months ago that anyone in their right mind would sell a 205 for almost half of the original cost of $1300. We're talking about an Oppo player that aren't "standard used gear" and they hold their value. What do base your theory on? Any actual sales numbers?
I don’t think anyone at AVS would be privy to this knowledge except for the 1-2 Oppo representatives who post there. I’ve reached out to someone to confirm. Thanks.
Just what I’ve seen—and I have seen Oppo gear sell for 50% of MSRP in the past. As I said before, too, I would never sell Oppo gear for any more than 50% of MSRP. As a beta tester, I am not an emissary for the company but I have a contractual relationship with the company and I would not want to conduct a transaction that would make me or them appear in a bad light.
You're dead wrong. To group all used audio gear as "standard" is not taking into consideration that some brands hold their value much better than others. To say selling an audio product for it's current fair value is "profiteering" is crazy IMO.
Edited my post as I just saw your last post. I could see if Oppo gave you the players but they don't. Hey if you want to sell your gear for much less than you could get more power to you. I think it's nuts but that's just me .
Um, I'd be surprised at any 205 selling for 50% even a day before they announced unless the seller was clueless. Amazon used to have a used\refurb site for Oppo players. They would give you 50% of msrp for a mint player and then resell them. Just because, I searched for manufacturers still making true universal players. Denon who used to be a leader in UDP players. Looks like they're pau. Pioneer Elite makes one at $400. Doesn't do 4k. Sony makes 2. 1 at $500, another at $250. Cambridge CXU at $700. Postercowboy says this is discontinued although Crutchfield says new stock arriving early May. Marantz makes CD\SACD players. Yamaha lists a UDP but it doesn't do 4k. So again, there really is no other current company producing a player that does everything that the 203 & 205s do. Especially with the 205. Feel free to correct me. I'm not up on what is coming out in the near term. DACs are the thing now. In fact you kind of have to look close at product line offerings to find gear that doesn't have a DAC. Except turntables
I don't. From your earlier post you kind of alluded to that. I think it's time to let this go as the above post makes no sense. You're asking me how I would know if Oppo gives you players. Then you say they don't . I'm out, have a nice night .
I've had the Denon 3930I (plays SACDs, DVD-As, but no Blu-Ray) for about 8 years and although I had been buying the Steve Wilson Blu-rays of XTC and Yes for a while, I held off on getting a player for them; the OPPO news made me order the 203 earlier this month, and it arrived today. Hope to hook it up later in the week.
Yamaha lists all their Blu ray players as discontinued here in Australia. The Arcam UDP411 should probably be on this list too even though, technically, it isn't a UDP as it doesn't do DVD-A
The current CXUHD model is the one Cruchfield has on backorder, the old CXU is sold out. New model is 4K (same video platform as the current Oppos), and if the past is any indication, it will sound a lot better than the Oppo 203. No analog outputs, and no DAC, though, so it is not a full alternative to the 205. Then again, at $699 it‘s a lot cheaper than the 205. And to me, it looks better, too.
But you have only $600 left in that hypothetical budget for an outboard DAC to equal the sound quality of the 205's - and even then there's no direct DSD playback of SACD.
Do we know if the CXU and CXUHD are still in production? Seeing as they were based—at least in part—on the Oppo players, they conceivably could be discontinued too.
When you say CXUHD will sound better than the 203 that comparison will be digital only. So how much of a SQ difference do you think there will be when comparing the CXUHD and 203 using HDMI? I highly doubt the CXUHD will "sound a lot better" and most likely the players will sound pretty much the same. With regard to "past indication" those comparisons were comparing Cambridge Audio players to Opp players using analog not digital as far as I recall. The CXUHD in regard to features is not even close to the 205 IMO. So it's not even a half of an alternative to the 205 as far as the features I want and are using with the 205. If one is just looking for a universal transport then I'm sure it would be a fine choice. If you're going to do a comparison it should be the CXUHD to the 203. With that it'd be an easy choice for me as it would be the 203 over the CXUHD. Why pay $150 more for a player that has much less features? Even if you're not going to use those features why spend more? As far as looks I like the look of the 203/205 over the CXUHD.
This doesn't make any sense: The overwhelming majority of the sonic difference between the CXU (and other past Cambridge units) and the Oppos comes from the different DAC chips, different DAC implementations, and different analogue stages. The current crop of Cambridge units are digital transports. The sonic signature of a digital transport is tiny compared to that of a unit with a DAC and analogue stage. So it's highly misleading to folks reading here, for you to use past comparisons as any basis for speculating about comparisons between current models.
I agree. I've had both a Cambridge Audio CXU and an Oppo UDP-205. The Cambridge Audio had a warmer, slightly more forgiving sound. And a more "homogenous" sound--different formats and sources shared a similar sound as all were up sampled to a common 96/24. It is very system dependent which a person might prefer the sound of. . . both sounded quite nice to me in my system. But as the CXU-HD is a transport only the only sonic comparison is the digital out to a DAC or other processor and though there's likely to be some small differences again I would think it's going to be component-connected dependent which one may prefer. Features needed may drive the choice as well.
All that love for a Corporation that has just announced they will be letting you down in the very near future... Oh wait, they promised to be there for you, with service, and repairs, and spare parts, and firmware updates, and what not, and all that for an unlimited time, didn‘t they? Fact is: Oppo is owned by a Corporation. All they want is to make money. And once the last warranty has run out, they are under NO legal obligation whatsoever to keep any of the promises they are making today. So all you can do is hope and pray that they will be true to their promises. And when has a Corporation (or a politician) ever lied to to you?
I actually agree with your overall point about corporations. But I don't get your consistent and thinly veiled contempt for both Oppo and the sentiments expressed by the many folks here who enjoy their products. Your point about corporations could be expanded to Cambridge and every other corporation that the members of this forum depend upon for the equipment and music that fuels this hobby. Your arguments, and the criticisms that come with them, strike me as highly selective and a bit hypocritical. It appears you're taking an unusually broad and high-handed approach to prosecuting what is at root a simple personal reference for one company's product over another.
From my point of view, it is the other way around. I have actively compared several multiplayers from Oppo, Sony, and CA, so I can speak from first-hand experience. Yet, in this thread I constantly find myself attacked by people who have no experience whatsoever with any of the other players on the market, yet they just KNOW that Oppo is the measure of all things and could not possibly be beaten. Everybody can go out of business, but it does strike me odd to see all the support for a firm that has just announced it will do so. And again: Once they have shut down, what reason should they have to keep the promises they are now making? Do you really think they care about moral obligations?
Odd? What is so odd? People have decade old players that still work perfectly and that have held their value much better than most if not all digital disc spinners. The ONLY odd thing is you worrying about other people's business. Fifty five posts by YOU in this thread and you don't like the company. That is not only ODD is is strange. People here understand that. You should be attacked based on that alone. Saving the world from Oppo...talk about odd!
First off, you're not the only one who has compared multiple players. But you are one of the only people who has persisted so strongly in comparing Oppos unfavorably to other products that don't compete with them on performance and/or price and/or features. A Cambridge CXUHD and a high quality outboard DAC can sound as good as or better than an Oppo 205 - but it's very unlikely you'll find an outboard DAC that compares favorably with the 205 that will enable you to match the 205's price for the CXUHD-DAC combo - and you still won't be able to play SACDs in native DSD format as you can with the Oppo. Likewise, the Sony 1000ES is a very nice machine and has analogue outputs - but it has only stereo analogue outputs, and its build quality and sonics are more on par with the Oppo 203 than the 205. And the Sony lacks the multichannel analogue outputs of the 203 and 205, and it also lacks an HDMI input (203 and 205) and a USB DAC input (205). And if you use it (or the Sony 800 or non-ES 1000) just as a digital transport, you still don't get a DAC input that permits full-resolution/native playback of Blu-Ray audio or SACD. Or you can get the excellent Cambridge Azur 851C, with USB DAC input and a very good quality high-res streaming DAC built in - but the 851 costs $200 more than the Oppo 205 and doesn't play SACDs, DVD-As, DVD-Vs, or Blu-Rays; it's CD only. The list goes on. The fact is that the Oppo 205 is a unique machine in the market. It's not the best-sounding in everyone's opinion, and its combination of features are not essential for everyone. But for what it provides, it is indeed unique, and so it's a real loss to the marketplace. So in my view, you have made a good number of misleading, straw-man comparisons simply because you're bothered by some people's positive comments about Oppo. Similarly, no one is saying Oppo is "the measure of all things and could not possibly be beaten." Evidently that's the argument you'd prefer to go up against, but that's not the actual argument people are making. And no one is arguing that Oppo cares about moral obligations. People are expressing what they would like to see and what they would think would be good or fair. That does not mean they are deluded that Oppo has a moral obligation to do those things, nor does it mean they are deluded that they can somehow get Oppo to do those things, or that Oppos is even trying to do those things. Some folks have expressed the view that Oppo is likely to stand behind their products for some portion of the next two years - and while that view might end up being mistaken, it's actually pretty decently supported by Oppo's past actions, and by the way they have elected to do their wind-down, announcing a gradual end to production along with ongoing customer support, rather than suddenly closing up shop as most companies do. Conversely, Marantz and Cambridge have stopped making universal players with USB DAC inputs and analogue outputs. But no one criticizes Marantz and Cambridge fans for sticking by those brands' digital transports despite the fact that these two corporations just suddenly cut the DACs out of their products and have made it impossible to have native SACD playback without PCM conversion. The reason no one criticizes Marantz and Cambridge fans is because no one here feels any desire to do so in order to shore up their own positive feelings about Oppo or any other brand of choice. In the same vein, the overwhelming majority of people are not pledging their allegiance to Oppo. Rather, some are expressing how much they like Oppo products, while others are expressing a desire or hope to obtain a 205, or relief or happiness that they have managed to get one already. None of that is support for a corporation. To the contrary, it is you who are equating positive feelings about one or more of the company's products, with some kind of larger, more general "support" for the company. So I will repeat my conclusion from my last comment: As far as I can see, your own personal preference does not appear to be for Oppo machines (which is totally fine of course) - and for whatever reason, it greatly irks you that others do like them. All the arguments you're making seem to be ways of trying to dress up this baseline frustration as something larger (and more martyr-like) than it is.
However we can read the spec sheets and can easily see what the supposedly competitive players can and cannot do. Other than the CA which requires an outboard DAC and which is an Oppo chassis and which will, without doubt, suffer the same fate, there is no competitive player. I want, need and use 4k, blu-ray, DVD, SACD, DVD-A, analog outs, NAS and USB streaming and HDMI in in one box and priced attractively. I want my Oppo 205 and I want it now.
