Quest to find a decent sounding ,picture Blu-ray player

I couldn't quite pull the trigger on a UB-9000, but I am very pleased with its little brother the Panasonic DP-UB820-K. Listed at $499, I found it on sale for $399. 

Panasonic DP-UB9000 plus the OppoMod upgrade:

http://www.oppomod.com/

Please explain why you’ve plugged analog "into" a Digital Analog Converter.
I’m happy with Sony, the inventorsIt plays all disc formats that I have.
And most I don't have or care to.

I’m sure there are lots of good choices these days for a "...decent sounding, picture Blu-ray player." Since your budget seems to be around $1K, I have another suggestion. The Pioneer BDP-09 BluRay player was introduced several years ago at $2200. Today, you can find them at between $300-500. It’s a great player and the audio is its best feature. It’s only drawback is that it doesn’t play SACDs, or DVD-Audio, as my Oppo 105D does, but it sells at less than half the price. It also has HDMI and digital out connections.