Oppo Ceasing production
Just my opinion, but I think Oppo could have raised their price as much as $500 more (Model 205) per unit and it would have still been a viable product. I mean a product with such Fantastic 4K, Blu Ray picture quality, + SACD, DVD Audio, CD playback for under $2000! I still would have bought it. ozzy |
I just read this today and ordered two UDP-203's. I wanted a 203 & 205 but I'm not paying those kind of prices. Anyway I was in such a hurry messed up my ordered and had to place a duplicate order. Oppo called to confirm that I had placed two orders, so while I had them on the phone I asked about a 205. None to be had, but he did say there has been such a demand that they are considering doing one last run. He said to watch the web site for a place to enter you e-mail for updates. I will be monitoring. Hope this helps brighten a few people's day. If it doesn't, I tried have a nice weekend. |
I have the Oppo BDP-83SE. The SE is enhanced analog audio section. It’s never put a foot wrong in thenyears I’ve owned it. For about a year I’ve been considering an upgrade. Couldn’t figure out whether to buy the 105D Darbee or the UDP 205. Now I fear it may be too late. I’ve always liked to own my own music and movies. But do I need a new player.....? I ve been streaming a lot of video and am considering buying a network streamer to marry to my multiple analog stereo systems which I remain attached to because of generally good to very good quality sounding equipment. |
It is ironic that the streaming feature they dropped from the latest geration is exactly what could have saved them. Streaming, after all, is what is killing disc sales and what led to Best Buy’s decision to no longer sell CDs. I own a BDP-83 and a 103. I didn’t buy the 103 for streaming but it is pretty much all I use it for these days. And streaming is my main listening method now, I no longer invest in SACD. I recently decided that the 103 is the last disc player I will buy and it’s replacement will be a music streamer of some sort if it ever fails. I’ve researched a few dedicated streamers and some of the prices are out of my acceptable range. Wouldn’t it have been fantastic if Oppo had entered that market and made a dedicated music streaming device at their affordable prices? They would have had my money with enthusiasm. I would add that Oppo products haven’t been bullet proof in my personal experience. They’re really good for the price, but not on the gilded pedestal some are placing them on. The 83’s had a well known issue with the disc tray. I had to send mine in for replacement and was charged for the replacement of the defective part they sold me. It also used to skip quite a bit when it would play. And I never loved the audio quality of their players, but I was in their entry level range so I guess that’s fine. |
This was an E-mail response to me from Oppo just a couple weeks ago. It made no mention of completely going out of business. Strange and sad. Bill, Unfortunately we have stopped the
manufacturing of the Sonica DAC and the HA-2SE as we were finding that the cost
of manufacturing such precision products and the sales volume were just not in a
good enough equilibrium to continue their manufacturing. So there are no current plans on manufacturing additional Soncia DAC and HA-2SE products. Customer Service OPPO Digital, Inc. 162 Constitution Dr. Menlo Park, CA 94025Service@oppodigital.com Tel: 650-961-1118 Fax: 650-961-1119Enter your text ... |
Very strange,
but not unexpected given the elimination of features in the latest 200 series
of players including direct access apps.
Purchased my BDP105 for 1) performance to $ ratio, 2) multi-format disk
play, 3) streaming and 4) two video outputs (I have a small 7” monitor at my
listening position). It seems the parent
company, BBK Electronics, is focusing on smart phones, MP3 & 4 players and
other consumer and industrial electronics.
For whatever reason, BBK didn’t sell the brand and continue as a third
party manufacturer.
|
I was considering upgrading from my 105 to the 205 because I believe they had improved the shared DAC situation in the 105. Too late as their stock is gone. My 105 is amazing and solved many connectivity issues I would had in my system. As far as the media disappearing, I don’t see that as a consideration as I have a fairly large collection of CD’s some of which are SACD’s. |
I was all hyped up when the 203/205 were first announced. Then I found out that they dropped the Apps. I was using my 103 to stream some hi-res of the internet. After a few months, I finally decided to upgrade. So, sold my 103 here and pickup up a 203 and a Roku. The Roku doesn't support hi-res audio so now I do that listening on my computer. After a few months I moved the 203 into the secondary system and picked up a 205. I figured these are the last "spinners" I'm going to buy. By the time they need to be replaced, hopefully 4k streaming w/hi-res audio has reached the quality of today's UHD Blu-rays. Best Buy and Target announced that they will no longer carry CD's. Walmart's not far behind and the selection on Amazon is also shrinking. Oh well, the world moves on. Glad to hear that there might be another production run. I'm trying to justify the purchase of a pair of PM-3 headphones, but I think that they would be too big for the gym and I don't listen with headphones at home. |
bobag: Interesting that you mentioned your 105 solving connectivity issues in your system. That benefit was a strong incentive for me to buy a 205. Remains to be determined if my system connection plan with the 205 pans out but, on paper at least, it may be an ideal hub to dovetail my tv/video and 2 channel audio. |
I've got to plug Marston Records. Ward Marston (world famous remastering engineer for 78s) has a small company which limits CD production to 1000 units each with very extensive research booklets. He sells CDs at $18 each. They generally consist of 1900-1950 recordings by opera singers and pianists. Each CD may contain $50,000 value of 78s or even unissued recordings from the vaults such as Edison's 300 trial opera recordings on discs from 1910-1914. These will never appear on streaming without his permission. He also remasters for major labels, NAXOS label and the defunct Romophone (similar as his Marston label, different recordings). It would be a terrible and historic loss to be unable to retrieve (enjoy) the greatest serious music recordings of the first half of the 20th century through CD reproduction. |
@samosa Who Wrote: "Since you old folk are feeling without hope for the future of high end audio because your Blue ray drives are becoming defunct, I wrote a post in Misc Audio about my (a millennial's) journey from low-end to high-end audio. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/a-millennial-recounts-their-journey-from-low-end-to-high-end-.... TLDR: Thanks to Hi-fi streaming, high-end audio won't be dead anytime soon." I'm 58 and have often wondered why anyone would want physical spinning media in recent years. I started streaming from internet radio nearly twenty years ago in the home and now I don't have to move to any particular city to get good radio. Like KROQ in Pasadena but live in Seattle? No problem! You don't even need commercial radio stations anymore since there is an embarrassment of riches for any style of radio that is internet only you can think of. One can spend weeks sampling them. I started ripping my Compact Discs (not so compact after all) to FLAC in 2002 to a server in my home and for a decade I have been buying lossless downloads wherever possible and avoid buying physical media like the plague. Streaming audio was making inroads until the iPod distracted people. In 2001 Turtle beach produced a device that fits in with living room equipment and aesthetics in form and function that not only streams internet radio but mp3 and wm over SMB as well as wav. We pushed hard for FLAC support but never got it. Since many of us ran SAMBA on Linux someone came up with a clever way to make it transcode FLAC to wav on the fly when the Audiotron streams off the server. The Audiotron only sees them as wav and was delivered wav. I still use that today to stream internet radio by using a local xml file on my server and pointing my audiotron to it. Turtle beach had the foresight to know that Turtle Radio would not be here forever and built in a back door to set it to look over SMB for an xml file with a specific name. Yes my mythTV box, Logitech Transporter and other devices also do as well as my smartphones. About fifteen years ago I had a cellphone with a built in FM transmitter and as a proof of concept I streamed some of SomaFM's internet radio while driving 85 miles away to visit a relative. This was before UMTS which later evolved into HSDPA then HSPA for download and upload quality and now LTE, all being W-CDMA with different numbers of slots. Over edge it worked mostly with only a few dropouts over the 85 miles. I am in the process of putting discless Alpines in my car and truck. There simply is no need for spinning discs. I can use bluetooth but will use USB instead by putting a jack inside my center console. This will keep it charged and allow media to be played from the phone akin to a cd changer not to mention provide internet access to the alpine. I rented an Infinti Q50 on a vacation and streamed internet radio the whole time. T-mobile does not charge for streaming audio from most internet radio providers. I can also put a USB stick in the usb jack if I am only playing my own stored music but my entire FLAC collection is copied to the micro sd card in my smartphone anyway. I became annoyed with having to get out a disc to play anything years ago. When digital storage and home servers became easy to come by it changed the game in my mind. I have A BluRay player but haven't used it for anything other than streaming movies, of course my Rokus do that better anyway. The few Blurays I own are in Matroska format on my server and my MythTV box plays them from my server so that is that. My server is 17" wide and 1.5" tall whether it has one album or movie or ten thousand on it. I'm using one of the two filesystems that prevent bitrot. Many do not realize this but CDs DVDs and other discs will NOT last forever as we were led to believe. Storing the music on a Copy On Write filesystem with checksumming and self correction is as close as we can get. As far as high end, networked audio being asynchronous has a better chance of being without jitter than a physical spinning media transport directly to the DAC, it's an added benefit to network audio. |
I, too, am annoyed at having to do all the work to play my CDs and LPs. Damn, I’m getting too old! So I’ve been investigating Network Streamers. Came upon this thread about Oppo and after visiting the Oppo website, reading the bad news (they’re quitting manufacturing) and reading the potentially good news (they might make a run to manufacture the UDP-250), I started reading up in the 250. Unless I am misunderstanding what Ive been reading, it does do streaming! It has WiFi and it has an Ethernet connection and it is set up for Roon, one of the major software organizers for your digital music. I don’t know what would happen if I wanted to subscribe to Primephonic, maybe it wouldn’t support that. But, darn, it looks like it would provide the link between the digital streaming world and my two channel audio system in my TV room. What else would I need to marry digital to my analog world? |
So not to put too fine a point on it, my name is Allen and I am a system designer at the Magnolia Design Center Perimeter in Atlanta Georgia. I can get access to Oppo udp-205 for the time being, but at last count we were down to 38 in our warehouse in Virginia. I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to assist anyone who doesn't want to get gouged on eBay. |
Jb0194 You mentioned the 205 solving connectivity issues for you. I’m having a connectivity problem too. I want to combine digital and audio, two colliding systems, to my three more than decent stereo systems, only one of which has a connection to digital via my desktop computer. I looked into buying Network Streamers (Naim and Linn) and ran into major problems with Sticker shock, and I still needed at least one good DAC (more $$$).. Now it seems that the 205 may actually be the link I need to “marry” my analog stereos with a digital source. Is that what you are thinking? Though I might need two 205s, one for my living room stereo, the other for my TV stereo. “Interesting that you mentioned your 105 solving connectivity issues in your system. That benefit was a strong incentive for me to buy a 205. Remains to be determined if my system connection plan with the 205 pans out but, on paper at least, it may be an ideal hub to dovetail my tv/video and 2 channel audio.” |
On Oppo, I get that their business model no longer made sense to their Chinese Overlords, but why not sell their designs and IP to another manufacturer ? Something doesn't smell right. I have this sneaking suspicion that this is a Chinese power play and we haven't seen the last of it. Apple is completely dependent on mfg. in China by Foxcon among others. How much of the mfg. process does Apple own ? What if the Chinese want to play hardball with Herr Drumpf and say "no more" hardware for Apple but you can buy our Oppo iPhone clone ? I don't see how we stop them since the Fortune 500 has very little on factories or labor in the USA for over 20 years. The Communists / Mercantilists used to have a definition for Yankee Trader / Capitalists. They said a capitalist is the guy who will unwittingly sell you the rope to hang himself with. So true. As Herr Drumpf would say "SAD". |
echolane: Regarding the 205 and connectivity: I will soon move into a rental and my listening/TV/HT room will belong to someone else. My 2ch music system has, until now, been separate from TV/HT surround sound system in the same room. My 2ch system will handle the audio from my video sources. Hopefully, the 205 will accept HDMI video input from my Dish network receiver ( or its replacement ) and send audio from both shiny DVDs and satellite to my Naim Uniti, either by its HDMI audio or RCA analog output, and send video from both to a TV via its HDMI video output (been using a projector for over a decade and haven’t shopped for a TV in 20 years...). Like you, I am both getting old and transitioning to the brave new world of music and video content without physical media. The 205 will be my last source component that spins discs. My grandkids like loading DVDs and looking at their cases, much like I was with lps and their covers. A hopeful sign for the future of physical media? |
I'll also vouch for Allen (allenone973). He hooked me up with a UDP-205 through Magnolia Audio-Video here in Atlanta with no price gouging. I also bought a new UDP-203. I'll decide which to keep and sell the other; I figured it is better to have two and not need one than to have none and wish I had bought. I also have a BDP-203 that has given me 4 years of service. |
I appreciate it everybody. You were all wise to act when you did. After tomorrow we will almost certainly be sold out. We were down to around 10 at closing time tonight. Better safe than sorry as who knows if Oppo will actually make another run. Looking forward to seeing that pallet full of Oppo show up later this week! |
The upcoming Panasonic DP-UB9000 looks promising. The player supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision HDR, Alexa and Google Assistant voice control (via a future software update), and 7.1 channel audio. The emphasis will be on audio performance, with the DP-UB9000 having a dedicated audio power supply, a 'high-performance' DAC and an XLR balanced output. Housed in new vibration-reducing casework, a thick steel plate fixes the optical disc drive to the chassis to reduce noise during disc rotation. It also features the latest HCX (Hollywood Cinema Experience) processor and 4K upscaling and HDR optimisation technology. Pricing is yet to be confirmed, but it’s expected to be around $1400. I guess only time will tell how this player stacks against Oppo 205. |
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So close ...but no go. I was in contact with Al from Magnolia AV about getting the OPPO 205. He tried, took my info and said he'd let me know. He thought maybe there was a couple left. Nadda. The sales system wouldnt accept any more orders. I want to thank Al for going to bat for me, on his day off BTW. The man deserves a raise. As to the 205, I can only hope they do another production run. Jeff |
Jeff, I just saw your response. I really appreciate that. I know there's a few folks on this forum who are not too happy with me right now. Somehow our system allowed for the 205 to get oversold and we are now scrambling to fulfill the orders. I have been assured by members of our management team that these orders will be filled, but it will take until June to do so. We can hypothesize all we want about how this happened, but at the end of the day I have egg on my face and as a sales person, that is the most uncomfortable thing in the world, because our integrity and our word is all we've got. I have of course reached out to all of the folks who put down their hard-earned money on these units and refunds will be issued immediately to anyone who does not want to wait. I truly apologize for any inconvenience and for making promises that I'm unable to deliver. |
There is someone on here selling a brand new in box Oppo 205 for...wait for it....$2600.00. I sent the person selling the player a nice and polite PM saying that what he is doing is taking advantage of a bad situation and that he should be ashamed of himself for price gouging. His response that he is much cheaper than the 4-6K they are selling for on eBay and that I am a jerk for stating the obvious. What person in their right mind would pay that kind of money for it? At the retail price, it is a decent product, but at 4-6K??? You can buy an Ayre or Esoteric for that kind of money. Anyone who pays over retail for a 205 is a fool IMHO. |
