I haven't played a disc (movie) in over 6 years and currently don't have any disc-based device even connected in my home theater. I will never buy another disc-based product and the ones that are kicking around here will never find themselves connected to a home theater again.

As for music discs, that's now been over 10 years since I last played music from one. A music CD as a primary playback medium is about as out-dated as the 8-track tape as far as I'm concerned. When I buy a CD today, it goes into an a small inbox pile, then it gets ripped and then put into storage as a backup/archive.

Sad, so sad....

Indeed XenonMan... so sad. For too many folks, it's become about quantity over quality. Kind of like in the food industry. Supersize us with large portions and quantities of sugar coated and fat laden foods instead of serving a smaller but tastier, better prepared and healthier meals.

Then you must be watching compressed streamed 720P content over the Internet and not reaping the full potential of your 1080P display, if that's what you have. If you don't have a 1080P display, then you obviously don't have much too loose but if you do, you should try a Blu-ray sometime. Anyone with normal vision can clearly tell the difference provided you sit at the appropriate distance from your TV.

Then why are you following the release of the 978 and what are you looking at getting out of it?

I heard that folks were wondering where I went, so I thought I'd check back in.

I have not been checking the forum lately - in fact, I haven't been checking any forums lately. I can't even remember the last time I logged in at AVS. My responsibilities at work have increased, and we've had a significant backlog of projects that I've had to help manage and/or design. At this point, I don't see the work load easing up for at least a few months, and between that workload and obligations at home I just don't have much time to be active in my old haunts. I do hope to return here once I've reached a better balance of work, family, and play. In the meanwhile, I'm still really interested in hearing the Model 978 (especially after my experience with Sabre DACs in the BDP-83SE and BDP-95), and I still try to find time to unwind and enjoy my Outlaw speakers and amps. It just so happens that it's easier to be patient when I don't have time to wonder how its going...

Before I disappear again...

This is something that I've talked about with OPPO a lot. Having tested both products, I agree with them that there are a lot of differences. They've got a strong experience base for the hardware and software requirements of playing discs, and a growing experience base for playing data files/streams, but the design of interface, switching, bass management, room correction, surround processing selection, and other things (jam's list is a good one) are very different. They have never worked with the sort of audio DSP systems-on-chip that a surround processor uses, and their experience with disc player SOC wouldn't help much. It's a lot different, and it would be a major R&D investment to get into a market that is even more cut-throat than the high-end player market (albeit in a very different way).


In contrast, I've looked at options for migrating from physical disc to hard drive storage repeatedly over the years, and never felt that the labor and hardware cost involved (hours spent transferring hundreds of disc to the computer, hard drive storage costs, costs to include redundancy for the inevitable drive failures, and media appliance costs to gain access to the material from at least three or four locations throughout the house) was worth it to me. While plenty of good options for ripping CD and DVD exist, I'm still content to pull a disc off the shelf and put it in the player - and with a reasonably good player, the results will be as good as or better than the media-less alternative. (My BDP-83SE, RR2150, and Outlaw Bookshelves will handle any disc I have in the house and sound great doing it, while getting equal performance from that system without the 83SE would cost a great deal.) Meanwhile, ripping BD is also feasible, but with the same trade-offs and up-front costs for redundant storage. I'm sure the day will come when my optical media is as outdated as 8-track, but for me that day is still a long way off.

Glad to hear my impression was wrong. It would've been a sad day for the saloon if you'd left for good.

Also from me. Stick around Gonk and say hi once in a blue moon.

Good to hear from you, Gonk.

That's also my reply to twistybox's post above. I don't mind taking a CD or DVD out of my media shelves and sliding it into a player. And, if a HTPC or NAS provides me with same quality audio as the likes of an OPPO 95 and Outlaw 978, etc, it is still way too many hours of disc ripping that I will take out of my life. I do see the appeal of convenience though, so as alway, "To each his own". The music and the movie experience is what it's all about.

While I would agree that it is still necessary to buy physical media to acquire audio/video content, it has ceased to be the most convenient way to play it back...at least for me. Audio CDs get immediately ripped to FLAC (lossless) and video content gets immediately ripped to high bitrate 1080p H.264 and unmolested DTS or Dolby digital audio tracks. I can play all of that content with a simple $99 Roku hockey puck connected to my theater receiver. No muss...no fuss. You could also go the route of building your own small media server and connect that to your system with a simple HDMI connection (unless you're still using your Outlaw 990...heh). You could build a really state of the art system that will easily play any content you can throw at it for about $500-600 (including 128GB SSD for the OS and a 2TB data drive). Personally, I'm comfortable going the Roku route for now and I just keep all my media on network attached storage in a closet. I can't imagine going back to physical media again after experiencing the convenience of doing things this way with no loss in audio quality and no perceived loss in video quality.

Best,