I owned an UDP-205 and it proved to be defective out of the box. I returned it for a refund. Then subsequently, I heard that OPPO was ending its production of this line of goods, but honoring their warranties. Frankly, most people don’t give enough weight to a company’s behavior before making such a significant dollar purchase. I view the abandonment of the sale of a complete line of goods as a sign of what may come.
Even with digital products, that usually work right out of the box and long thereafter, it’s nice to have a company maintain their level of tech support even when they discontinue a line of product. While I certainly wish the best for a long-lived experience for any of you who purchased and are enjoying their products, I view the elimination of their tech support phone number as a real negative. Email-only support is for the birds. If your player begins to act squirrelly despite a factory reset or firmware refresh, as mine did, email-only support could require a time-consuming written analysis by YOU to describe, in detail, the what, where, and how of the malfunction, and the reiteration of the numerous steps in the process of elimination OPPO has you go through before they settle on the fact that the unit needs service.
I have seen this with other "high-end" audio products. I’ll never forget back in the early 1980s, a company in Reseda, California called Quatre manufactured the Quatre Gain Cell, a great-sounding amp I used to run my Maggies MG-2As. The amp cooked itself and was replaced "thankfully," but the new one only lasted two weeks. Tech support had regular phone hours, then hours just a few days/week, then no hours at all. Quatre went under and I had a 45-pound paperweight. Not comparing them to OPPO, but I’m just pointing out that tech support is very important and that the elimination of OPPO phone support is likely NOT a coincidence. Caveat emptor.
