They had 20 or so of them sitting in their front area waiting to be picked up
I recall the email saying that we would need to update the firmware, but I asked and they said the player came with the most recent on it already. The guy laughed when I told him it was quite a bit heavier than anything else I've bought from them; it is about 2X the size of the 980, and 3X the weight.
I had one issue where it didn't seem to retain the audio settings when I turned it off and back on, but it seems to have saved them now.
One annomaly I did notice is that if I turn off the TV while hires discs are playing, the audio cuts out for a second on both DVD-A and SACD. It did not seem to do this with BDs. Normally when listening to either of these formats, I turn off the display. The Pure Audio mode turns off the video output, but I like to turn the display as well. I am also running it through a HDMI switch, so it could be some kind of handshake thing; no big deal now that I know it does this, though I will likely report this to Oppo.
The thing I am most impressed with thus far is BDs with uncompressed audio tracks. WOW
I thought DTS-HD sounded great, but the level of detail and presence is nothing short of staggering on the tracks I listened to. It was like listening to a well mastered SACD with high def video at the same time
This alone was worth waiting for. I am going to have to go back and check out my catalog for titles with uncompressed audio. The first one I could think of was House of Flying Daggers - Echo Game scene. There are two parts to this scene, the obvious one being the echo game itself. The sound on the echo game was jaw dropping, not to mention I could easily pick out things that I had never heard before like people whispering in the background (you can actually hear the dialog, not just whispering), and the drums were thunderous. The second is a little more subtle, right after at the end of the confrontation where they are walking in the beads; as the sword slides through the beads it moves from side to side and the separation and movement is even more realistic than ever. As the beads flutter, it sounds like you are IN THE ROOM. Good stuff.
Video wise, I don't notice a big improvement over the PS3, though I had to tweak brightness and contrast down slightly for the Oppo. I will have to throw in the included disc, which appears to be a calibration disc or perhaps just a demo disc? I hadn't read about that.
Probably the one and only thing I am not totally jazzed about is the remote, which is a bit more bulky than before and not quite as nice as the one for the 980 (though this one is backlit) but that will all be programmed into my universal anyway. Again, a very minor thing that makes little difference to me in the end because I almost never use the remotes that come with the unit except for setup. I will have to get used to the IR though, since I have grown accustomed to the bluetooth capabilities of the PS3
I was hesitant about the price before, but let me just say that I have no complaints about what I got for what I paid. Considering what I have paid for universal players in the past, this player represents the same kind of performance and VALUE that I've come to expect from Oppo.
