My opinion here is known via other discussions we've had - I believe all correctly engineered digital players should output the same quality audio/video unless they deliberately choose not to. With that in mind I see absolutely no point in going down the expensive route for the BR player (same dead-end route many of us went down with the 800). All you need is a player that decodes all codecs internally and IMO has DVD-like fast response startup/response times and that has no issues that compromise audio/video.

These pages list various players and their abilities:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=980672
http://www.idoblu.co.uk/page2%20Blu-ray%20Players.html

My current choice is the Sony BDP-S550, which also seems to be the one Meridian were seen using at CES. It's cheap, it does all the internal decoding, and response time is fast.

[edit]If you want universal BR players you currently need to go down the hacked route?[/edit]

Mark


My Music : My Cinema