Oppo UDP - 205

I should add it took the LPM upgrade to achieve this performance.

Hmm. That's alarming. Have they alluded to any remedy?

Hmm. That's alarming. Have they alluded to any remedy?

Not yet. The gist of their (supervisor level) response is a high priority ticket has been issued and the next official firmware release is mid-October. In the interim, some beta testers on the AVS forum have already/also verified same. I have sent the following correspondence to Oppo, asking that their executive management team read it.

As of firmware 50-0913, the UDP-205 no longer always correctly, accurately and faithfully displays the proper aspect ratio while in source direct mode. 

When the unit is essentially asked to do nothing (comparatively speaking) and can’t get that right, their (Oppo) presumed embarrassment should speak volumes and act as the catalyst for action.

In my opinion this issue should be of utmost priority to Oppo engineers and utmost concern to customers. Oppo engineers should do absolutely nothing - besides eating and sleeping - other than work to resolve this particular issue.

Alternatively, they could offer a full refund to those who would accept it.

Customers should be concerned because if source direct isn’t right, it certainly calls into question “what is”.

Once resolved, the company as a whole should then turn their attention to why this was never caught in the QA and beta process, and then implement a procedural and perhaps other change(s) to ensure this type of problem wouldn’t occur again.

Next, their engineers should turn their attention to creating the necessary conditions via hardware and/or firmware that allow a user to restore to a previous version of firmware. That could serve to mitigate these types of issues.

I ask everyone to add your voice/text to mine by calling and/or writing to Oppo, multiple times per week, until this is resolved.

Thank you.

Well here is my first review of the Oppo 205 with the power supply mod and with the 2 channel balanced outputs.

It is definitely an improvement over the stock power supply.
First off there is much greater bass with better definition.
Second the general dynamics are impressive.
Third, the stereo separation is wide not much deeper though.
And finally the general frequency response has been improved from the lowest lows to the upper frequencies.

So now I have compared this modified Oppo 205 to my main system; which consists of a Bryston BDP-2 ($3000) and PS Audio Direct Stream Dac ($6000) and a Mutec ($1000) for a total of $10,000 of equipment.

Results: The modified Oppo 205 competes in most areas except in soundstage depth and the space between instruments. If the original Oppo 205 was a 6 compared to my main system, the power supply mod brings it up to maybe a 7 or perhaps 8.
It should be noted that along with the power supply mod I also installed a Synergistic black fuse and 2 of the Tweek Geeks Sonic Tonic bottles inside the Oppo 205.

ozzy