Received mine last week and watched one BD, few DVDs, one CD, and one SACD. Quality of the unit from a manufacturing standpoint seems noticeably better than my 981. DVD upconversion is at least as good (? better) than my XA2. Sending source direct to EDGE and have EDGE do the deinterlacing and scaling is no different than have 83 do it; this is no surprise since the 83 has the same VRS chip as the EDGE (and DVDO iScan VP50 Pro !). My Integra DTC-9.8 was unable to receive DSD from SACD so I switched OPPO to LPCM for SACD and listened to Roxy Music's Avalon album. Sound was superb and there was more dynamic range compared to listening to same SACD through my 981. CD bitstreamed to 9.8 was similarly excellent. Integra DTC-9.8 can't do multi-channel Dolby Digital TrueHD at 24-bit/192KHz (it will do Stereo only), while the BDP-83 can't do multi-channel DTS-HD Master at 24-bit/192KHz (it will do multi-channel, but at 96KHz). I should be getting full 5.1 channels at 192KHz when the BDP-83 is decoding the Dolby Digital TrueHD signal and sending it as LPCM to 9.8, and I will try to confirm this. Load times with this player are very fast. The XA2, as great a player as it is, is unbearably slow in comparison. I have not yet checked the 7.1 or the 2-channel analog outputs. The Oppo has separate Cirrus Logic DACs for 2 channel and multi-channel outputs, and the 2 channel sound with the higher end DACs is apparently better; rumor is that all but the wealthiest audiophiles will be very happy. This player is certainly worth $499 if use is for DVD, BD, CD, and SACD/DVD-A. If use is limited to BD and you already have a player like the XA2 for upconversion, then it may be reasonable to get another BD player. I will report more later, and look forward to impressions of others.

John
Our HT