Since a few weeks I have the Oppo 203 BD-Player and am thus absolutely satisfied.
The picture resolution together with the SonyVPL-VW500 in 4K is very impressive. The music transmission is at least as good as with its predecessor Oppo 105 darbee I had so far. The Oppo is still an omnivore - it continues to accept all CD / DVD formats - CD, SACD, DVD, BD, Dual-Disc.
Unfortunately, the Oppo has no web apps more to directly Netflix, YouToub, etc. to stream. I have therefore bought a NVIDIA Shield Andoid-TV Box. Thus and the loadable apps, e.g. KODI, lots of films, series, TV stations with 4K content can be streamed via the 4K-HDMI In port at the Oppo. Brilliant!
The Oppo provides an absolute top quality for its money.
M since 1980 - Series 100! Main: 861v8, 818v3, UHD722, 2-DSP8000SE, DSP5500HC, 4-DSP6000 S, DSP6000 R, Oppo 203 4K, MacMini M1 16GB-Roon 4TB SSD, NVIDIA Shield, Sony VPL-VW500-4K, Samsung OLED 77-4K, iPad Pro, Turntable: Acoustic-Solid Royal/Ortofon SPU Royal N, PPA Quad P24 2.: G92DAB, 2-DSP3100,3-DSP33, M1500, MacMini+Explorer2 3TB SSD, MS200-Roon
On the audio side, the UDP-203 has internal Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, and you can pass bitstream audio output to send Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks to your AV receiver.
The player's HDMI audio output is set to Auto by default, or you can lock it in to bitstream or PCM. Should you opt to use the analog outputs instead, the player uses the eight-channel AKM 32-bit AK4458VN DAC chipset. You can adjust the DAC's filter characteristics; and, just like with previous players, you can do a complete 7.1-channel speaker configuration, setting crossover, size, level, and distance for each speaker.
For this review, I stuck with digital output through HDMI. Audiophiles might be interested to know that OPPO intends to introduce a step-up, audiophile-oriented version of this player that will basically replace the current BDP-105. We don't know the exact release date or pricing for that model yet.
I would hold off buying a 203 for now. In my opinion it was released to market way too early.
Stutters and freezes on 4k UHD disk. Bluray 3D judders. Non 3D Bluray is ok.
I have a year old LG OLED (ie Non HDR) and the LG currently upscales way better than the Oppo.
All of this may eventually get fixed by firmware fixes but they are few and far between since the release before xmas. I believe there is a private beta that fixes 3d Bluray playback.
I bought one because my 93 expired in October so I thought Id get the 203 as a replacement. I really wish Id delayed now and let the bugs get ironed out.
Check out the avforums 203 owners thread if you want more frustrated user feedback.
I started to read that thread and was overwhelmed with issues and gave up. It sounded a lot like the days of the first DVD players when the "follow the rabbit" on the Matrix thing would crash some players.
My OLED LG (this years with HDR) upscales amazingly good as well.
My Phillips player has been flawless. 3D and all. If I had to choose I'd pick 3D over 4K. Mind you it's always 4K with the upscaling.
- Fiddler (IMHO)
If you think listening to music is fun, try learning an instrument. HT: G61RSL, 4x5K, 5.5KHC, 2xSC6000, Transporter, HD621, Philips BDP7501 4K, Tivo, 65" LG OLED 4K C6 Computer: Foobar2000, 5K, Mojo, HiFiMan HE1000 V2
I have had a play with the 203 and the Sony VW500.
I found you can get a lot more out of the VW500 than first realised and thats thanks to the Oppo.
Select a different picture mode - I use Bright cinema - contrast 97 iris open max high lamp mode. Then same settings for normal picture - gamma 2.6 Rec 709 etc.
Here is the clever bit if you select strip metadata on the Oppo for HDR setting it will output BT2020 and 4k. This will likely wash out your image and crush your blacks.
Go into the player picture menu and increase brightness to +8. Then the trick is to re balance the colour by increasing the colour on the PJ until it balances back out - I used a few references of demo footage to do this - not ideal but a method
Now a calibration for P3/BT2020 colour would be ideal but until the player firmware settles down it seems silly to do this. With colour set on 85 I was able to get an amazing image resembling WCG and 4K just no HDR. You can tell because the UHD demo clip that runs before quite a few films looked terrible intially then after this looks more like how its supposed to.
So now were getting best part of 2/3 of the benefits of UHD from a display that doesnt support it.
While this is not accurate atm it to me is much better to watch
861v4 LPSU, HD621, Bryston 9BSST KEF Reference 3 and 2c, 2 X SVS SB13 ULTRA Audio PC: JPLay, LPSU, JCAT, PPA Studio Cables XLO Limited, Unlimited Edition and Signature Sony VW500 Isotek Titan, DIY Mains and Clean Signal Earth Solution
Main system - Sources (Kodi-HTPC, Vero 4k, FireTV, Sat) into Trinnov Altitude 32 (8-16) (+Roon), Trinnov Amplitude 8 amp & Vivid Audio (Giya G3, V1.5) and REL Stentor III speakers. Others: F80 + Raspberry Pi and other Pi systems.
If you look at the Oppo release notes for the firmware updates they have reduced the colour for strip meta data feature in the latest firmware.
People complained of oversaturated colours so they have by the looks of things just reduced them massively lol to the point where there is hardly any colour at all.
Lucky can fix it with a bit of thought process
861v4 LPSU, HD621, Bryston 9BSST KEF Reference 3 and 2c, 2 X SVS SB13 ULTRA Audio PC: JPLay, LPSU, JCAT, PPA Studio Cables XLO Limited, Unlimited Edition and Signature Sony VW500 Isotek Titan, DIY Mains and Clean Signal Earth Solution
I would hold off buying a 203 for now. In my opinion it was released to market way too early.
Stutters and freezes on 4k UHD disk. Bluray 3D judders. Non 3D Bluray is ok.
I have a year old LG OLED (ie Non HDR) and the LG currently upscales way better than the Oppo.
All of this may eventually get fixed by firmware fixes but they are few and far between since the release before Xmas. I believe there is a private beta that fixes 3d Bluray playback.
I bought one because my 93 expired in October so I thought I'd get the 203 as a replacement. I really wish I'd delayed now and let the bugs get ironed out.
Check out the avforums 203 owners thread if you want more frustrated user feedback.
It took a bit less than 3 weeks from release to the release of the first beta and 3 weeks or so from there until the release of the official firmware version of that beta. It's a bit over 3 weeks since that official release. .
Now I'll admit , 3 weeks is a long time to wait . But I've had mine since before they were available , and I've still not plugged it in !!!
Although I plan to. Soon. I'm even going to buy a 4K disc to watch !!!
Relaxing room 1: Vizio P65, Oppo 203, Emotiva XMC-1, Beolab 5.3 speakers. And a big headache getting it all to play together.
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