Why is Oppo Great?  

I have an Oppo BDP 93 and I have a 112" wide screen. I can honestly say that once calibrated the 1080/24p picture was no 'better' than a £100 Sony player I had previously. Am I disappointed? No. It has good HD sound decoding that my old (but great) Arcam AV9 processor can't otherwise make the most of. To replace my AV9 with the newer AV888 would cost me about £3k so not really a priority right now, so £500 for a player is a cheap upgrade by comparison. It passes the picture out without undue messing about of gamma, sharpness or other image 'improvements'.

My Oppo has subtitle shift so when I'm using my A lens and the subtitles get cut off into the black bars, I can raise them up into the picture area: Not many other players offer this option. It can also play my SACD and DVD-A discs in multichannel into the above AV9 with superb results. Also it has a fairly rare option of 'source direct' that means my Lumagen Video processor can do any upscaling and deinterlacing of DVDs or 1080/60i BluRays.

I've never had a disc that wouldn't play in the Oppo (apart from rental discs with very bad fingermarks , that played after cleaning), it just gets on and does what it should.

IMHO you don't buy a BluRay player expecting a 'better' picture as in most cases you won't get an improvement unless your existing player does some unnecessary fiddling with the image (some players add sharpening even at 0 for example). Of course you might prefer this 'improved' image, but that's not the point. For watching BluRays on a smaller screen such as a TV using HDMI and the TV sound then maybe a basic £100 player would be a wiser use of money unless you need some of the Oppo features such as the networking (that I don't use myself).

It's all the things that Oppo players do. They are much more than DVD and Blu-Ray players. If all you need is what most players do, then an Oppo is overkill and you can't justify the price. But if you need a player that can play just about any media type, that offers superior processing for standard video, can handle PAL and NTSC, and has many, many other features, there is nothing that comes near it for anywhere near its price. In addition you get superior build quality, a much longer warranty and the best support offered by an consumer electronics company. This makes it worth the price to its customers. Oppos, though, are not for everyone.

OPPO is an enthusiast's brand and this is an enthusiast's forum, hence the amount of attention.

It's a small company selling direct to the consumer. Their products have always had aggressive price/performance: they pull high-end features into mid-range players at prices that were not available before.

It's less important now, but during the DVD era they always excelled at the very difficult aspects of video processing. Calibrators say the players always produce textbook video levels, something not all brands do, although we have very little public test results these days.

They take care of "legacy" customers: still supporting the old SVCD format, still getting the most out of DVD and providing analog audio. They kept component video until licensing killed it this year.

Lots of little features that add up for the movie buff: 50hz content and optional output, Constant Image Height stretch, shiftable subtitles, informative On Screen Display.

More and more media types, increasing use of DLNA and now SMB, digital inputs and the Roku Streaming Stick.

Finally, legendary customer support. We see posts every day of above and beyond efforts by OPPO, things I wouldn't do, and I'm as helpful as I can be.

-Bill

If all you need is BluRay capability and Netflix streaming, using digital audio, then yes, a less expensive player is all you need (although Oppo provides better build quality and better customer service). But if you have a large SD DVD collection and want the best upconversion capabilities, and if you use analog audio, then Oppo provides great value (with excellent audio at least as good as more expensive dedicated CD players). It all depends on what features are important to you.

Because their name is a palindrome!

Cheers.

Tony

P.S. actually they make incredible products that combine excellent audio and video capabilities with world-class customer service. Sadly, there are not very many others like that.

+1.

Jacob

Oppo Customer Service is fantastic. I had a loading mechanism problem occur after 3 years of ownership. I paid shipping to them and once they received it they repaired it that day and sent it back to me the next day without any charges.