This has been discussed and reviewed quite a bit lately.
There have been some great podcasts about it at AVRant and the HDTV and Home Theater podcast.
While rebranding has been going on for a long time this is just not a "rebranding" issue. It is also an issue of a company buying a device, that sells retail online for $500, removing the case and dropping that case into their own case and selling it for 7 times the price. It is exactly the same device in another case.
They also tout it as THX certified. It failed a portion of the audio testing, sub area, and should not have been "certified". Lexicon and THX have gotten around this by stating that the "video" portion of the player has been certified. What ??? It says THX certified not THX video only certified. That smacks of false advertising.
The BD player was given glowing reviews by a specific reviewer and apparently never looked at the set or did any testing. The reviewer said it was even better than Oppo's higher end BD player when it was the exact same player as Oppo's lower end model...What ???
Whether "rebadging" is the norm or manufacturers use varied parts from a specific supplier, power supply, drive unit, crossover, etc. may be also the norm this is not the case in my thinking. This is someone lying about a product and selling that product for an obscene price over the original product. It is all about trust. We find a brand we love and tend to stick with that brand because we trust them to make a good product and sell it for its' value. This is not the case.
I certainly do not have the budget to buy gear in this price range but were I in such a position my trust of the company would be gone and so would my business.
