Vote or no vote, a co-worker of mine spoke with Oppo last night and they told him it would be available in two to three weeks. Seems like a short window to get the last minute bugs resolved.

Based on the current voting pattern, OPPO will get the 70 percent "Yes" vote they say they need to release. Given their track record, I don't doubt that OPPO will get things right, the question is how quickly. In my business, we would not advise a client to release a product with known issues unless it could guarantee they would be fixed shortly or that they would give a full refund (including shipping) to any customer who buys on the company's assurance that issues will be corrected and then fails to correct them in a timely fashion.

If OPPO does release in 2-3 weeks, that will start the 30-day clock for EAP participants to decide whether they will keep the machines, and I don't know what I will do if the issues aren't resolved. Some of it depends on whether OPPO keeps the price at $499 (the EAP price) or bumps it up some for the finished product. It's not like DVD-A is the coming audio format, but I'd like to be able to play the discs I have!

I don't think they'll launch without having DVD-Audio support that is truly functional. That may very well be in the next one to three weeks...

I, too, voted No. I don't have any DVD-A discs and few SACDs or HDCDs. But I have had problems with some CDs causing considerable vibration. OPPO says the next firmware update will address this by changing the speed of the transport. The problem is that there is no apparent issue with the CDs that have the problem. I have a 2-disc set where one plays fine and the other causes so much vibration you can hear the player over the speakers.

Otherwise, I think this is a great player.

It is kind of interesting to read comments of EAP members. There are actually a few who have gone from Yes to No since the April 6 firmware update. I''m sure OPPO can fix the problems, and I hope it will not give in to the pressure, particularly on AVS Forum, to release it before it's ready.

It's not like the old days where it was largely the electronics that counted. It's increasingly clear that software matters at least as much in components such as BD players and pre-pros, and we all know how well software usually runs out of the box first time around! :rolleyes:

FYI: My co-worker was quoted $499 for the finished product. Sounds like they've settled in on that.

Just a heads-up, folks - it sounds like OPPO has begun sending emails to folks at the front of the interest list, offering them the chance to place a "priority order." It sounds like these emails will be going out in small batches over the course of at least a week, possibly longer. I haven't yet seen any official word on the final price, but it sounds like at least the folks on the interest list will get a shot at picking one up for $499. Rumor has it that this list, which started some time last fall, may have grown to contain upward of 27,000 names.

Even if only 10 percent actually buy that number is pretty amazing considering the economy and the total absence of published detailed reviews (not to minimize yours).

Some might say that the interest grew from the great reviews the 983 got. But it is obvious from all the firmware revisions needed that the BDP-83 is not merely the next iteration in a series.

Oh, there's nothing iterative about OPPO's development of the BDP-83. The only hardware that the 983H and BDP-83 have in common is the video processing (and even that's not entirely correct, as the 983H was developed using a two-chip solution and only later revised mid-stream to use the 2010 one-chip solution that the BDP-83 has). Totally different platforms, built with different disc drives, different chipsets, different chassis, different remotes, and different analog sections.

Hey Gonk, I don't think I saw anything in the reviews about 'other' formats such as mp3, ogg, avi, etc. My present Oppo DVD player does these nicely (though I wish they would put the file menu display in smaller font to fit on the screen, hope the BD83 will use a HD font for this!). How well does the BD83 do on digital audio (and video) codecs? Can downloaded youtube videos be burned to disk an played?