Since I already have the decoding capability in my avr, I don't want to have to pay for yet another component, the player, to decode.
Part of my aversion to doing the decoding in the AVR is the loss of some of the features of BD which can only be utilized if the audio is decoded to LPCM first. BDs can allow custom live remixing of channels, dynamically lowering the volume of the main program to mix in commentary on the fly, and while not that wonderful of a feature the playback of wave files in the BD-Java for interactive sound effects for games or menus laid over the movie. None of that is possible if the decoding is done outside of the player.
That's another reason I've passed on Oppo's first player. It doesn't have the power to decode the full resolution audio steam and mix in the secondary audio. It instead falls back to the lossy steam, decodes that to LPCM and then does the mixing.
Interestingly enough the slim PS3 when bitstreaming quickly switches to LPCM decoding when asked to do any mixing, it can do this without a full HDMI handshake, and only a little blip in the audio. That's the same as what I've observed with the HDMI sound from this computer. It can change channel counts and rates without upsetting the picture.
