Blu-Ray Players

[psicodude]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

I was a big supporter of the ps3 until this week. My 18 month old unit worked perfectly until friday, and then all of a sudden stopped reading discs of any kind. After doing some research, it looks to be a pretty common problem after a year or 2. So, it is pretty much toast now, and sounds like it would cost about $200 to repair.

Can't say I recommend a ps3 to anyone anymore. I expected a longer life than that out of a $400 piece of hardware.

You're not allowed to complain until you are on your 4th replacement unit like all of us 360 owners are.

[bomber317]

Looks like the Oppo blu-ray player is up for pre-order for shipping beginning May 25th.

$500 USD, for shipping to canada +$89 USD.

For $600, I'll keep moving my computer around to watch blu-ray on the big screen.

[OBCT]

Originally Posted by bomber317

Looks like the Oppo blu-ray player is up for pre-order for shipping beginning May 25th.

$500 USD, for shipping to canada +$89 USD.

For $600, I'll keep moving my computer around to watch blu-ray on the big screen.

Throwing all the bells and whistles of Blu-ray technology into an already proficient universal player isn't bargain basement cost effective yet. Just the pure 'technological component' side is one thing; the real challenge/money sink is in software configuration and testing. Development, implementation, testing, tweaking, re-testing, etc, etc, is beyond laborious for a product that aims to do so much. The marketplace isn't willing to accept a good-except-for-one-major-glitch player, and Oppo knows it.

One of Oppo's calling cards has been reliability (surprisingly so considering price/build weight/build quality/feature set of their products), so I am actually glad they decided to market this player at an overall "reasonable" price, instead of stupid low or stupid high like some other brands will probably eventually do. It will do more to continue their reputation for value and quality. As much as a $300-$400 universal BDP sounds great in theory, I just don't think it's practical. Several years from now, maybe!