I have seen recently on Audiogon and eBay that the Oppo Upscaling DVD players, the DV-980H and DV-981H especially, sell used for more than they cost new.

Why would that be? I'm just curious. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Usually discontinued or to-be-discontinued products drop in price...

It's an unusual trend that I frankly can't explain. I might understand selling for close to the original retail price (especially the 980H), but I recently decided to sell off my 981HD on Amazon.com Marketplace because it was not being used and I was able to sell it for $299 (about $70 more than the original price).

The 983H selling for full retail or more I can almost understand - it's a really good universal DVD player and can be made region-free in a few seconds with just the remote control. The 980H and 981HD are good players, but neither was quite as remarkable as the 983H (the 981HD uses the Faroudja chip, which was starting to be a bit old when OPPO started offering players with it about five years ago, and the 980H uses the Mediatek chip for scaling and deinterlacing duties). Both can also be made region-free, both have proven pretty reliable, and both have been well-supported by OPPO Digital over the years. I suspect some of it has to do with the popularity of the BDP-83, but I really can't explain it.

Well, I thought that there might be some hack available to make them dispense beer or something.

But now I more tend to believe it's some sort of stampede. $299 for a 981H when there are bluray players out there for less? Not to mention Oppo's own that for $200 more is head and shoulders over the 981?

I wonder how Oppo might be looking at this phenomenon now that they've discontinued them. They might have been able to make some more sells...

It's bizarre - I was surprised a month ago to discover that used 981HD's were still selling for full retail price, but couldn't get to the box until a week and a half ago. By then, the Amazon offers ranged from $500 to $700 for used or new 981HD's. I have no idea who would be buying at those prices. Amazon had the original retail price set at $299, though, so I offered mine for that and sold it in two days. It's likely to taper off once the new lower-cost BLu-ray player arrives in the next week or two.

I suspect that whatever stock of 980H's and 981HD's they have left are held back for warranty support.

Wow, the prices on Amazon make my head spin. I have mine (980H) on eBay as we speak. Not so sure how well I'll fare, but I have no regrets, the bid is almost at my original purchasing price and there is plenty of time left. The recent ones sold for around $200, thus I'm a bit late in the game.

But you're mentioning Oppo's new offering for a cheaper unit? As usual I have no idea. Could you, please, elaborate a bit? I was thinking of a BP-83, but a lite version, with not so good an analog audio stage would make perfect sense for me, as I have a separate setup for music. Do you have some info you could share, please?

There's no information available yet - just an announcement from OPPO that they will be revealing a new lower-cost Blu-ray player soon. They made an announcement on Facebook and Twitter a little over a week ago and suggested that the announcement would come within a couple of weeks, so we are likely to hear something soon.

Looks like "early January" might turn into "late January" if January at all...
My 980H found a new home and now I'm not sure whether I should go for the BDP-83 or wait for the new one, for I'm not all that interested in a stellar analog section, if this is where the cheaper one will lack.
Is there any hint, anywhere that you know of, as to what the features set of the new player will be?

Thank you very much,
Alex

The closest thing to an official summary of features has been an analogy offered by OPPO to several people. They have said that it will be similar to a 980H with Blu-ray support. As you know (since you had one), the 980H had DVD-Audio, SACD, and a 7.1 analog output based on some widely-used Cirrus DAC's (not the top-of-the-line Cirrus DAC's found in the BDP-83). It also used the Mediatek chipset for video processing rather than a separate processor like the Faroudja or the ABT2010. There's still no specifics, but it's the best we've got for now.

I bought a used 980H six months ago for $125 (eBay) and use it exclusively for CD / SACD / DVD-A playback through its HDMI output - connected to my Onkyo 886. In the case of SACD this allows me to send a DSD signal direct to the 886.

While I bought it purely as a convenience item to play SACD and DVD-A (replacing a Denon 2200) quite unexpectedly (I must admit) this did result in a noticeable (although not dramatic) improvement in sound compared to using the 2200's analog outputs / 886 analog inputs. I think the fewer A/D conversions were likely the reason. Increased "clarity" with multichannel SACDs, especially in the surround channels, is how I would best describe the improvement.

It is probably the first time ever, after using countless pieces of gear, that I have noticed such a difference between analog and digital signal paths.

It now has me convinced that a digital source and purely digital signal path (as much as possible) is the only way to achieve the highest sound fidelity possible.

Keeping the signal in the digital domain as far into the process as possible is almost an article of faith, but isn't it possible that at least part of what your hearing is the diffrence in the DACs?