Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Official Blue ray options - Denon, Arcam, Pioneer, etc.

Now that HD621 is sorted (have placed pre order), need to condider a BR source to go with the Tosh EP35, for me I really want a universal player as I see the G98 being redundant one day when a decent server solution is availble to replace the Sonus (great bit of kit). I also wish to open up the SACD catalogue for me.

Given that the Oppo is not availble in Europe, the Denon DVD A1UDCI may be an option. See that at CES this a bit cheaper now at $3,800 but still a lot of money. Does anyone have a UK price for this.

Given the HD621 will not decode then I assume there is some justification for having a higher quality player to do the decoding and money would not be wasted buying electronics that the HD621 bypassed?

Any thoughts on this, are there other univeral players that I have missed?

David

Depends on your timescales. I bought my 970 direct from Oppo in the States with no problems, so I'd be surprised if you can't do the same thing with their BR player. I like the look of the Oppo, but there are two things to consider: Will Oppo provide a BR Region hack (critical if you want to buy your BRDs from the UK; I don't, but the option would be nice) and, given Meridian requires players that decode the HD audio codecs internally, what will the quality of the audio be like?

UK price is �3299 I believe. It's supposed to go on sale here in March. I`m sure some geeks will be able to stick a multi-region chip in it at some point too (I've seen the current crop of Denon players modded already).

Sony announced a no holds barred ES unit at CEDIA. I think it is now shipping, but I haven't read any reviews of it. I'd hold off for the moment. The Oppo BD-83 unit is supposed to be introduced in February (we should know more from CES) and at $500-$600 plus Shawn's mod it should be a giant killer not only for Blu-ray but for SACD and DVD-A as well. For SD-DVDs, the Denon might have the edge as it's HQV Realta deinterlacer/scaler is probably a bit better than than the ABT solution in the Oppo - but at a significant cost differential.

At Bristol last February I was told by Denon that they would work to introduce a Blu player with Denonlink (i.e. cat5) for the audio so that video and audio would be separated by the player. This would be the ideal solution but I do not know if it applies to the A1UDC1.

You could also try and find out which player Meridian use to dem their kit with.

The new player boasts the 4th Denonlink so it would seem as if the above does indeed apply to this model (details below). It's certainly a real tank of a machine. It will have dual HDMI output too I think (I saw a shot of its rear a short while ago).

http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/...-players-hd-dvd-blu-ray/denon-dvd-a1udci

At that exchange rate I think I will pass. Hopefully Oppo will be releasing the BBDP 83 in Europe at some point, have registered my interest with them.

David

At least officially they won't - if I remember correctly not even a DVD Region hack...

There is a well-known region hack for my Oppo 970 and 980 players:

1) No disc
2) Press Set Up
3) Press 9210
4) Press 0
5) Press Set Up. Done!

One thing Im thinking about with the HD621, havent given the brain time to sort it all out yet, is if I have a video processor with different sources, each with its own settings, now I will have one video output to the video processor.... maybe let the VP do the switching...?

Jerry. I have a Radiance which has virtual HDMI inputs. That means you can switch external to the Radiance but have different virtual sources (i.e. configuration memories) which all use the same physical HDMI input. Or, I could switch in the Radiance. With the Meridian solution (PCM over HDMI only) I don't need the HD621's HDMI v1.3 switching and the v1.1 (or is it v1.2?) switching in the Radiance will do the job.

I also want to know if the HD621 has six receiver chips (HDMI sinks) (i.e. one per input) or just the one. If six, the HDMI handshake will be persistent even when the source is not selected. If one, the HD621 is simply a switch and there will be an annoying delay whenever source switching takes place. The Radiance has six receiver chips.

At the moment, I switch in the Radiance and HDMI output #2 (a constant audio-only signal on a blank 1080i60 video carrier) feeds my modified CLUX11SA.

VK, is your display connected to the CLUX or your Radiance?

Thanks in advance.

Tim