price of Oppo players threw the roof

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.

If I remember correctly I am sure OPPO stated they were going to continue with a 5 year support period of their disc players, tech support and parts.
Don’t forget OPPO are NOT going out of business, far from it, they are just concentrating on the side that makes the most profit which is cellular. You may not see many oppo phones in the USA but elsewhere they are huge.

Still would not surprise me if somebody did not buy the rights to the disc spinner side and resurface at a later date.
All this panic and gouging for a 205 could be for naught!

Oppo is no longer making players. The price is high because of that.

1950 is cheap, there is one at 2500 now, 100% markup,not bad line of work.....

Thank you for this thread. It’s nice to see that I’m not alone in waiting to hear about the chance to purchase a 205. I was fortunate to be able to purchase a 203 from Oppo at the end of May. But I also put my name on the list for a 205 in late May, and I have yet to receive notification for purchase.

While I take coyotesx5’s point, I still think it’s worth trying to obtain a 205 directly from Oppo. (Yes, the prices for 205s elsewhere ARE ludicrous and more than I’d be willing to risk, for the reasons coyotesx5 raises.) The only other comparable option for me to do better than my 203 (or a 205) for playing SACDs and DSD downloads through my McIntosh MAC 6700 seems to be something like a McIntosh MVP901 (more than quadruple the price of an Oppo 205 and a risk, given the price AND the troubles that McIntosh seemed to have with the MVP901’s predecessor). Otherwise, I’d have to look at a dedicated SACD player with analog outputs (e.g., a Yamaha CD-S2100), which would offer a tech support phone number for potential problems down the road. As the Yamaha wouldn’t allow the use of an external hard drive (no USB A input) for playing my (mostly PCM) download files and I don’t wish to use a computer to play download files, I’d continue using the Oppo 203 to play PCM files through the coax input of my McIntosh MAC6700.  But my experience with Yamaha’s tech support hasn’t left me feeling very encouraged about the thought of Yamaha for a dedicated SACD player. Others, though, cost even more.

I wish I’d foreseen all of this before I started buying SACDs and DSD downloads. For now, I’m likely to curtail purchasing these and opt for PCM downloads of hi-res recordings. I’m very much enjoying the 203, but I’ll also continue waiting to see if my name comes up on the list for an Oppo 205.