Posted Mon Jan 25, 2010 at 01:00 PM PST by Mike Attebery
We finally have the details on Oppo’s new, lower priced Blu-ray player.
The BDP-83 took the home theater world by storm last year, by offering a high end feature set, Anchor Bay video processing, and quick loading times at a remarkably low price. Oppo’s been teasing the announcement of their new, more economically priced Blu-ray player for a while now, but it looks like they’re going to just make that January deadline.
Oppo’s new player is known as the BDP-80, and it’s just under the three hundred dollar mark at an asking price of $289. It’s got a lot of what made the BDP-83 great, but it’s a player with a different purpose.
While the BDP-83 was intended as a standalone player, the BDP-80 is meant to be a digital video/audio transport device. There’s no Anchor Bay in the new player. The main decoder chip handles all the video processing with the help of some custom firmware. For the most part, the BDP-80 wasn’t meant to output directly to your TV.
“The BDP-80 is incredibly well suited as a digital transport to feed into an external video processor, a high-end A/V receiver or display device with built-in video processing,” says Oppo. They also recommend it as a fine standalone player for those with small to midsized televisions.
Oppo made a few other changes for the BDP-80 as well. It’s got a plastic front panel, rather than the aluminum of the BDP-83. It still plays back Blu-rays at 24 frames per second, but it won’t do the same with DVDs. It loses the dedicated analog outputs of the BDP-83, instead opting to share them with the 7.1 channel outputs, and the remote glows in the dark instead of being backlit.
The BDP-80 still features those quick load times the 83 was known for, it’s got SACD playback with the option of PCM output over HDMI, support for MKV files, and a gigabyte of internal storage.
Source: Oppo
See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.
The latest news on all things 4K Ultra HD, blu-ray and Gear.