newbie here to the site. need recommendations for a blu-ray player to hook up to my 950. i know i am somewhat limited in choices but that's ok, i honestly dont understand alot about the abbreviations and jargon and whatnot with blu-ray ect. but i want to upgrade from my oppo 970 to something that will play blu-ray and normal dvd's. cheap is good of course but ease of use is also good. any tips/suggestions and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

To be able to use the new audio formats (Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD) as well as the discs that have uncompressed multichannel PCM, you will need a player with a 5.1 channel analog output and onboard decoding of those formats. One option that you may be able to find at a nice price is the Panasonic BD50 - it doesn't have a 7.1 analog output (which the BD55 and Sony S550 do offer), but the 950 doesn't have a 7.1 input anyway - and otherwise it is as full-featured as those two players. The layer change on standard DVD's won't be as fast as the 970HD, but the DVD scaling and deinterlacing should be pretty close (my 980H had an edge over the older BD30, but the differences between 970HD and BD50 should be reduced).

so is that best bet/deal or are there other ones that would fit the bill in case of black friday sales??

For pairing up with the Model 950, the BD50 is probably your best bet for features vs. price. I don't know that you'll see black Friday deals on it, but that's because it's been discontinued - so you can get a decent price on it right now. Also, the players most likely to get big mark-downs on black Friday are going to be ones that lack the combination of onboard decoding and multichannel analog output.

hmm, so, do you happen to have any idea on much difference blu-ray will be compared to "normal" dvd's on a 42" plasma at 10 feet over an oppo 970?

reason i ask is that next feb. i will be getting a severance pkg from work which means $. so i can afford a more expensive blu-ray player. but, i dont want to spend the $ if the difference is not going to be worth it.

The move from DVD to Blu-ray is pretty darn significant - even the best DVD players (like my OPPO 983H, which is a noticeable upgrade from the 970HD or 980H) can only do so much, and a good HD transfer will be at a different level than upscaled DVD.

hmm, so should i wait till next feb. then so i have more $ to spend or will a sub $400 one be almost as good?

If you wait for the BDP-83, you can expect to get better standard DVD performance and maybe a few other extra features (SACD, for example). I don't know how much difference in Blu-ray performance you'll find, though.

the 83 will work fine then with the 950? and any idea on price?

Yes, it will work fine with the 950. I don't know about the price yet, though. Minimum of $500, possibly closer to $700. My SWAG is that it may likely be $600, but don't hold me (or OPPO) to that...

oh, its the oppo deck then! i had forgotten the model number for it. well, if they do offer a trade-in program then maybe it wont be too bad a price

No trade-in, but the 970HD has held its resale value very well because of a hacked firmware version that lets it upconvert via component with copy-protected DVD's.

oh, they decided not to offer a trade in program?

I've not ever heard them talk about a trade-in program. I could have missed it, but I follow them pretty closely. Seriously, though, that 970HD that you bought at least a year and a half ago (since the 980H replaced it in the summer of '07) for $150 will sell on the used market for at least $100, possibly closer to $120. You'll probably want to sell it somewhere with an OPPO-aware audience, like Audiogon - and it may sell even better if you point potential buyers to the component upconversion hack thread at AVS in case they have an HDTV with no DVI-HDCP or HDMI inputs.

hmm, that might work...on that oppo thread...i have yet to hook the 950 up or really look at the book yet, so dont know the answer to this question. could i just buy a blu-ray for blu-ray and use the oppo for "normal" dvd's??

Yes, you could. You'd want to use the multichannel analog input for Blu-rays, and you could use coaxial or optical digital for DVD's.

i apologize for asking you all these questions but i just get real confused with all the different wiring possibilities and stuff. so when you say use coax or optical digital for the oppo, how does that translate to wiring? such as "connect this to that" ?

Let's say that you have both a Blu-ray player (we'll use the BD50 as an example) and the 970HD. Here's the quick list for audio setup:

• six analog audio cables (left, right, center, left surround, right surround, and subwoofer) from the BD50 to the 950.
• coaxial or optical digital audio cable (whichever one you want to use) from the 970HD to the 950.

Video will depend on your display. If you can, you would want to run HDMI from both players to your TV (just skip the 950 in this case).

ah hah!! so i can skip the 950 then for the hdmi cables! if that is the case, why do people want to upgrade the pre/pro if it doesnt have hdmi if you can route the video via hdmi and skip the 950?

They want to connect HDMI to the processor because it can carry audio - replaces those six analog cables we were just talking about...

so just make sure the display has 2 hdmi inputs and i am good to go then? sounds good. and the panny bd 50 would still be the player of choice?

Make sure the display has two HDMI inputs, or get a separate HDMI switch (like this one , although there are plenty of others).

will do. now the bd50 seems to be selling for around $400 at all spots...will the sony 350 work for me? it seems like it should but....

The S350 does not have a multichannel analog output, so you would be giving up Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution and Master Audio, and multichannel PCM audio tracks. That's why the BD50 is going to be a better choice in your case.

Just to throw my two cents in, I recently bought the Sony S550 and with the gracious help of gonk, got it hooked up through my 950 and the analog ins and the picture on my Toshiba 65HX81 is stunning (even though I am using component, no HDMI) and the sound is just amazing (Cars on blu-ray is a must). Would never have thought the sound would be so much for enveloping but it is. Sony was running a deal for $150.00 dollars off your first $300 purchase if you signed up for their SonyCard (visa). getting the player for $250 was a deal-maker for me but I had been researching both the 550 and the Panny 55. Sony may still be running a deal but I heard it may only be $100 off. go to Sonystyle.com to check. So far everything I've played has worked and have had no problems at all. It's quite the player. hope this helps.
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will one of the sharp's work or am i looking at just the sony and panny at the lower price point?

There's not much info around on the Sharp 21U (a co-worker bought one recently but I don't think he's unboxed it because he's searching for the cheapest player he can find and things that he may return it for a better deal). The 50U will decode everything except DTS-HD Master Audio and has a 5.1 analog output. The 20U will decode DD+ and TrueHD only (with a 48kHz/24bit hardware limitation) and has a 5.1 analog output, but it's a Profile 1.0 player and I don't recommend any of the players released prior to last fall (when Profile 1.1 support became mandatory).

This thread at AVS offers a great overview of audio support from different Blu-ray players. You'll notice that there are a few different players with onboard decoding and 5.1 or 7.1 analog output (Samsung 2500, Pioneer Elite 05FD, Marantz 8002), but the prices tend to be higher for that capability.

so it would seem its the sony and the panny unoess the samsung 2500 goes on a real nice price drop

I've been doing some research as well, except I'm using the 1050 still. I'll still be hooking up the DVD to 5.1 analog inputs. Anyway, I read a lot of bad things about the 2500 - and Samsungs in general. I wanted to buy one because I have a Samsung TV.

If you look on Amazon, the Panasonic BD-55 is actually cheaper than the BD-50. The Sony also gets good reviews, but I've had more reccommendations for the Panasonic so I'll be going with that one.

Hope you don't mind me asking for more advice, but I lucked out and got a great deal on a 983H that will be arriving next Wednesday. I am planning on using HDMI directly into by TV and connecting to my 950 through coaxial. I've read your review of the unit and that has helped point me in the right direction but wanted to know if there was anything specific I needed to do to make sure everything runs smoothly. thanks, I appreciate it.

Not much - leave the digital output set to raw for your audio, set the output resolution to whatever is best for your HDTV, and I'd suggest taking a little time with a disc like Digital Video Essentials or AVIA to calibrate your TV once the player is hooked up.