Last shipments were expected in UK around July so any left are kept back or a warehouse find. Would be difficult to fake these players.
I don't know, my friend. The new Pioneer UDP-LX500 is looking more and more fine to me. It does everything I need. -I Don't need analogue seven-channel out, with my McIntosh Mx121 processor handling that part very nicely. UDP-LX500 - Universal Disc Player windows screenshots tool
I said this (using different words) in the other Oppo thread and was argued with. Anyone reading this should not listen to anyone else but their own ears. Room EQs ruin the SQ for me - period. I've had my Anthem AVM60 for over a week now. Been listening to a lot of MCH music and toggling the room EQ on and off just to make sure I wasn't under a spell. The Anthem Room Correction (ARC) is said to be a pretty good room EQ. It's one of the reasons I chose Anthem over Marantz (I had a Marantz AV7005 for over 6 years too). It's not just about frequency response. They do something whacky to phasing and the dynamics get squished. That is far more important to me than a little more thump from my room's Schroeder frequency. Oh, all of this is my humble opinion.
The reviews are saying it’s not that great a player, with pretty limited features and lightweight build quality in a nice box to justify a higher price tag.
Can you point me to one of these reviews? The only one I've read is the "from vinyl to plastic review" that did state it uses a heavier box but I didn't see anything about cheap components.
Here is one that is pretty cold on the LX500: Pioneer UDP-LX500 & UDP-LX800 4K UHD Blu-ray Players-First Look - From Vinyl To Plastic The LX500 sure has a lot of vacant space compared to the Oppos, especially considering the $999 price. I know that “vacant space” does not indicate good or bad audio or video quality, but it does point to a lower BOM which leaves me scratching my head at the $999 price tag, more than double the 203 and very close to the 205.
Yeah, there are a lot of video reviews on YouTube that I have been watching. I didn’t see that review in your post above. I must not have looked at it very closely. Sorry!
Which processor? The SOC, the DAC, or the video processor? The big chip labeled “Oppo” is the Mediatek SOC. I assume the chips surrounding it I are flash memory and other video functions including HDMI. The small chip on the thin board behind the transport osbrhe AKM DAC.
I just read through that review of the LX500 quickly. Correct me if I'm wrong but the "reviewer" had no comments on how the LX500 sounds. If that's true it's not a review at all in regard to overall SQ which is the most important thing over build quality IMO.
Can you point me to some of these YouTube reviews? I saw one from techno dad and he seemed to like it.
Now I see what happened—I didn’t see your post at all before I wrote mine. I was responding to Bill’s post, not yours—my fault.
On the 203, surround and two channel are handled by the same DAC. That would be the small chip behind the transport. So, there is no additional decoding hardware for the surround channels. There would be some opamps, caps, and resistors associated with the additional channels, but these are not complicated output stages.
That amp, caps and additional resistors are the stuff I don’t want. As I wrote before this Pioneer should do everything I require.
Yeah, he said he is saving his full review for later. My point is that the BOM on the LX500 does not appear to justify the $999 price tag, nor does the feature set.