I dipped my toes into the Blu Ray waters again recently. I tried two Sony models that performed really well, but I cold hear the disc spinning. My older Sony BDP-S500 blu ray player is dead quiet.

On the new players, I enjoyed: the fast load times and the wifi. But I will keep my old player if I have too. When a movie has a quiet moment, I want it to be quiet.

Oppo seems to be well loved. But how silent are they?

Very nice machine, virtually silent. Only complaint ,the eject button is not lit.


Thanks alot eh made me look and now they have a new one sheesh.

The 103 is coming soon.. So is the 105!... The 105 being the high end version... The 105 will be in the 1,000$ price range...

I own a 80gig PS3 and an Oppo BPP83. The main reason that I purchased the Oppo was that it could be easily modified to play Blu-Rays and DVDs from other regions. If I wasn't interested in that I would have just been fine with my PS3. The one downside of the PS3 is that it is loud, as far as the fan noise. This can be easily worked around since it has Bluetooth controllers and remote control. In my previous house I put the PS3 in another room, so it was dead quiet . How the PS3 is future-proof, very quick loading, and very responsive on the remote control are what I like best about it. The upconversion is very close to the Oppo, as well. I like how the forward scanning is 1.5, 10 30 and then 120 times. It is just quick and easy to scan through a disc to pick up where you left off.

The only areas that the Oppo is lacking is in the scanning and remote responsiveness, bootup times (compared to PS3), and sometimes running into BluRays that don't play that well. The last issue with BluRays not playing well doesn't come up that often and it is more of a problem of the BluRays authored with the main goal of protecting the disc above even operating correctly, or consumers being happy with how they work and Oppo isn't to blame for this. They quickly put out firmware updates to fix such issues, but again, you may run into new releases (within the first month or so of release) with playback issues a few times a year if you want a lot of new releases.

Nick, one thing that would prevent me from every buying a PS3 for blu ray play back is the damn menues... I have a buddy who has one, and i couldn't even get the movie that i loaded to play.... I am not a gamer at all, so i have 0 experience with PS3 menue structure, i wound up tossing him the remote.....

The RF remote is a nice thing to have though!

Does the PS3 have source direct for video?

You can setup the PS3 to auto-play the BR discs when you load it. But lack of IR/RF is a pain. You have to use PS3 controllers or get an adapter to use IR.

I use a $15.00 IR adapter that lets me or others use my universal remote as intuitively as if it were a normal player... as long as it auto-loads. However, if you end up back at the PS3 screen, it can indeed be confusing for non-PS3 people.

Works for me because it is very rare any visitors would actually be using the remote.

Works for me because it is very rare any visitors would actually be using allowed to touch the remote.

FIFY

I'm thinking about the Oppo 103, it finally has more features that I want than the PS3.

Probably the first and last OPPO player I'll buy. Here's the problems I've had with mine.
1) Sometimes locks up. Have to unplug it to restart.
2) If there's already a disc in the unit and you want to eject it when you turn it on, and you don't push the eject button right away, you have to wait until it starts playing before the eject function will work.
3) I've noticed some jittery motion, where jitter motion shouldn't be on occasion that I've attributed to the OPPO player. Kind of like the video image is lagging a little. I use mine a lot. In the past I've had to replace my blu-ray players about once a year because they develop problems. I think the OPPO is no exception there.