Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Is the 861 a dead end?

I wasn't aware of the Philips player! Great find! But just to be sure, does the Philips have an HDMI input?

In my case I have a first world problem of being caught between two proprietary systems. A Meridian system with DSP speakers which wants everything decoded to PCM before it hits the HD621 and a Kaleidescape system which cannot decode the high res audio formats to PCM- it can decode the core audio. I've been waiting many years for someone to invent some kind of decoder box. I've looked to Bluray players with HDMI inputs but due to a chipset limitation they could not accept the high res formats for decoding. This new Oppo 203 player is the first one I've found which can do this. It accepts the full signal from my Kaleidescape over HDMI and then splits the signal for video out- which I use as pass through- and audio which I tell it to output LPCM and it is decoding. I'm very very happy with the result. Its the sonic version of going from a nice computer monitor to one with a higher pixel density. Or more specifically I think there is greater refinement to the sound so while the dynamic range might not have increased it sure sounds like it has and there is more life and "air" to the sound.