Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat BluRay Player Suggestions

My old Oppo BDP-83 has finally given up the ghost.

Any suggestions for a modern Bluray player replacement would be welcome.

I'm half thinking about upgrading mine & I'd either go for a Panasonic UB9000 or a Reavon X100.

I'd also shortlisted the UB9000, but haven't had time to watch anything much recently, so it's on the backburner. By all accounts, it's very good.

Depending on your budget the Sony UBPX800M2 at £269 is well worth a look.

I compared this with the Oppo 203 and was amazed at how close the performance was for less than half the money. In the end I bought both with the Sony in my office system.

Well, after looking at reviews and the suggestion here, I have ordered a Panasonic DP-UB820EBK. This has most of the processing power of the UB9000 and is less than half the cost. My logic is the same as for the Sony suggestion - it is good value for the performance and I don't have any SACD or DVD-A discs.

Sounds like a good plan, I'll take a look too :-)

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts once it's in situ Malcolm. I previously had a Pioneer something-or-other & while the picture & SQ were great it just felt a bit flimsy & was very buggy in operation. That, in part, encouraged me to look at flagship models, as much for their build quality as their supposed SQ & PQ advantages.

I have now got the UB820EBK installed and fiddled about with the setup a bit (but I suspect that I can do better with practice). Picture and sound quality seem very good and pretty much indistinguishable from the Oppo I had before.

As queried above, the build quality of the unit is OK and it looks very smart but it doesn't have the weight like some of the £1K units. However, once you have it in position, you basically never touch it except to put a disc in so I am not sure this is an issue. It runs very cool so this should aid longevity.

There are two HDMI outputs but, like the UB9000, they are not totally independently configurable so if you output 2K to a projector via HDMI2 and a HD621 you have to change settings (turn off video from HDMI2) to allow 4K to the TV via HDMI1. As you don't watch both at once this is not really a hardship.

Pretty good so far.

Thanks, Malcolm. I’m seriously considering this option now

Thanks for the feedback Malcolm; it sounds like a great little unit and at relatively modest outlay.

I'm now thinking about a new BD player & may well go for one of these. Are you still happy with yours Malcolm?

Yes, pretty much.

The front panel display is pretty basic but you can see everything on the OSD. The case is not as sturdy as the top range models but, as you basically never touch it this is not an issue. It runs very cool.

The video quality is very good and basic DVDs are upscaled very well. For audio, I have it set to output Bitstream (rather than decode in the player) and let my processor do all the conversion so I cannot comment on its audio abilities.

Is it worth the money? Yes, I think so.