One of the electrolytic capacitors in my, to that point trusty, old Linn Classik Movie has emptied itself into the player, resulting in a short circuit and a lot of smoke. My local dealer would be able to repair it, but not for cheap, as it would take several hours of work.
Before I decide what to do, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the current disc players. I can live without the amplifier and tuner. Blue ray would be nice, the ability to play both US and European DVDs is important to me.
Watching movies is no longer that important to me, a nice and solid model would be sufficient.
I use Sony UBP-X700 and really like it. Plays most discs. It has no on board DAC, but will play through TV, an AV receiver or external DAC. I play mine using HDMI ARC through Linn DSM, but coax is available too. It streams too, but never use that feature.
I hardly ever watch films, but I have some music Blu Rays, SACDs and old TV series on DVD. It plays them all.
If you want something better then Cambridge Audio does a really top notch universal transport, but I’m haply with the Sony.
I use an Oppo BDP-93 Blu-Ray player that has been tweaked to play all region DVDs and also Blu-Rays. For the latter you just need to remember to switch it out of standby pressing the number relating to the region you want; 1 for A, 2 for B etc… I have to say, it works well, has a great picture and even sounds pretty good too. Not expensive either, so a strong recommendation from me.
Pioneer, seem to have stepped up to the plate about taking Oppo’s market, they have a very high grade universal player that was recently well reviewed in HiFi News, retailing in the UK at around £2,200 (UDP LX800) , their comment was in overall sound it was a smidgeon less than their similar audio only disc player
a couple of questions more, if you don’t mind. What kind of tweaks were necessary for the Oppo to play discs with different regional codes and would they work for the 103 as well? The latter is easier to get than the BDP 93.
The player was purchased new as all-region. I believe that in order to play any region of Bluray it requires a special chipset to be fitted. AFAIK these are available for BDP-103s as well. I would imagine that the internet is your best resource here for finding out who can do this for you. Alternatively look for a player where it has already been done.
We use the Cambridge Audio 650BD and it is excellent. I play SACDs on this. For all other discs, I output the audio via Toslink to my Uniti for decoding. Sounds excellent. My unit is about 9 years old and it has proven reliable. The latest ones may be worth a look.
The second hand prices of Oppos are quite high, perhaps unsurprisingly given the praise they get from you. After digging around at the usual places I found an Arcam BDP 300 in perfect shape for a good price.
Looks good now, however valid such a statement can be after a few days.
I second the op stating that Pioneer is the one hear to consider namely the LX500. It’s an all in one box which is performance wise unbeatable for the price and whether playing 4k discs cd’s or SACD.
When my $NZ 2000 Cambridge Audio Azur 752BD blu-ray player died recently, I replaced it with the Panasonic DP-UB820. Both the sound and picture are superb and it is excellent value for $NZ 600
