BD's can be authored as audio only and there was even a concept for it in the format spec (Profile 3 is for audio-only), but it has not been picked up by anyone - at this point, there is no established format for audio-only BD. Most music BD's have some video component, at least for navigation, and many at this point are concert discs that include video. If you exclude video, there will always be a bunch of discs that are hard (or impossible) to use. You also will make it a lot harder to set up the player without an on-screen menu, as these players are complicated.

The biggest problem is likely one of market. If they build an "SE" player but skimp on the video section, then they are marketing it solely to the "audio player" market - they are alone with a relatively costly player that has a good analog section (less and less often used in home theater setups) and a merely average video section. That would limit them a lot more than if they have a good video section, as that player would be able to complete with more expensive products from Denon, Marantz, Pioneer Elite, and the like. If they were a bigger company, they might be able to justify building a "BDA-95" that had a no-holds-barred analog side and just enough video to allow a setup menu and on-screen display for disc playback. As it stands, though, that's probably impractical.

Gonk, I think I understand how the market would frown on a single purpose player but it just seems a waste to have a CD player in a stereo setup that has a ton of video capability that will never really be tapped. My original thought was whether oppo would dip their toes in the audio-only given they are marketing video players both with and without high end audio. We'll have to see if the 93 and 95(?) make a number of 83SE's available on the used market as folks look to upgrade and then I might be able to justify adding a used 83SE to my stereo setup.

As long as we are asking OPPO to do something interesting, lets ask them to build a high quality turntable with either HDMI,Toslink, RCA and USB outputs.

Perhaps I am missing something regarding the 83 versus 83SE, 93, and/or 93SE. Assuming you have a state of the art high end processor--and let's just dream a little and say it is an Outlaw 998--with HDMI inputs and outputs, why do you NEED (or perhaps WANT) an 83SE, 93, and/or 93SE rather than a simple 83?

Note that I have not bought the 83 because I have not wanted--out of laziness more than anything--to pass the 83 sound signal via multi-channel audio to my current Outlaw 990. Although I plan to buy the 83 (possibly on the secondary market as newer OPPOs come to market) once I can use an HDMI cable to pass the sound signal (hopefully to my Outlaw 998), I am wondering if there is any appreciable benefit to purchasing the 83SE, 93, or possibly 93SE instead.

All comments are welcome.

Ed

The 83SE (and presumably the 93SE/95) is going to be beneficial for someone using the analog outputs. At least when comparing the 83 and 83SE, the differences are solely in the analog audio domain. If you plan to use the HDMI output for audio, there's not a very good reason to step up to the SE.

The BDP-93's full specs are not yet known. If you are interested in streaming video (Netflix and the like), the BDP-93 is going to offer some of that while the BDP-83 does not. If you plan to add a 3D display and want 3D support in your player, the BDP-93 is going to provide that as well. For a lot of folks, though, the BDP-83 does the trick. And for folks who have good video processing elsewhere in the system (we'll use your example of the Model 998 and theorize that it'll have a chip comparable to the ABT2010), the BDP-80 would even be a good option. Of course, both the BDP-80 and BDP-83 are now only available on the used market since a parts sourcing issue caused them to have to halt production sooner than they might otherwise have done.

It would be nice if they made the BDP-83 work with Netflix. That BluTV thing was very (not just pretty) lame.

BluTV was pretty underwhelming. I have gotten some good use out of the DLNA support on the BDP-83, though. Unfortunately, they tried to implement Netflix on the BDP-83, but the SoC simply isn't capable of doing it.