It depends on your system.. I have an all analog system (RCA/XLR)... i have no HDMI at all... For stereo i would like the capability of having balanced stereo out, and would appreciate better D/A chips in the analog section...

This is also the reason i do not own a new apple TV.. i have no way to connect it without buying a HDMI-> component converter, and i have read that those are hit and miss on output quality....

For purely upscaled DVD playback and stereo, isnt having a bluray player a little overkill. Half the awesomeness of bluray is the lossless audio and I believe that can be done only over HDMI. But I understand yah, if you don't need or can't utilize it, whats the point, and you should get the best player that fits your system.

one thing I've always noticed to, is that the people having problems are very vocal about it, and the ones that don't, well you don't hear from them very often. The squeaky wheel gets the grease or something like that.

I have a BDP-83 as well, and I've had plenty of freezing issues. A lot of titles lately have been stuck at 00:00, and it has taken several times of powering down and powering back up before it finally loads. I actually had to use the PS3 to play Game of Thrones because of the number of times it just wouldn't load. I did install the latest firmware the other day, so hopefully that does actually resolve a lot of it.

well here is someone what has both the ps3 and the oppo. Have you done a comparison between the two on DVD upscaling or Bluray playback? notice any differences. Is there a reason why you choose to use the oppo instead of the ps3 as your first choice in playback? I'm guessing loading times.

On the DVD upscaling, I notice no difference. The PS3 isn't the fastest at loading, but then, neither is the OPPO. I suppose the main reason I use the OPPO first is because the PS3's fan noise is just slightly noticeable.

thanks for the input. I hear ya on the fan, the old fatboy in the home theatre room can get loud sometimes. It also sreams bloody murder sometimes when inserting a dvd, not during playback just loading the dvd, scared the crap outta me the first time.

I blame the horrible and retarded bluray format for the long load times. The DVD format is better in every possible way except picture quality (obviously) over bluray.

/end rant

That said bluray load times aren't really too bad on my HTPC. At least every appliance I've seen takes longer to start up.

Just wondering if you had installed all the latest firmware updates on the 83? They just had one last week.

As I said:




The firmware came after I already watched Game of Thrones.