I have been waiting to get into Blu-ray for a while and will continue to wait for a while longer for two reasons: (1) I want to see what Outlaw implements in the 990 successor in terms of the new audio formats, video processing, etc., and (2) I want to see what Oppo does for its rumored BD player (I'm hoping it will play SACD and DVD-A). If that means being left out in the cold a while longer, so be it.

rubbersoul,

The other player I was considering is the upcoming Sony BDP-S550 which, according to this press release, will be approx. $500.

Upcoming Sony Blu-Ray Players

It has on-board decoding and 7.1 outputs as well, no word on SACD support though.

There's a nice chart here detailing the audio abilities of various available and soon-to-be-available blu-ray players:
Blu-ray Player Audio Support

I'm not completely sold on the PS3 either but it's additional ability to act as a networked media server is kind of swaying me a bit as well...

-John

The BDP-S550 looks like a good mix of feature set and price, especially for the huge installed base of home theaters without the latest HDMI support at the receiver/processor. I wonder if its arrival will lead to a price drop on the BD50, as the two are going to be clearly matched in head-to-head competition in the marketplace.

Like RCF051, I am very interested in seeing what OPPO brings to the table when the time finally comes. There were rumors that they might be ready to offer some hints this summer, although the last time I talked to anyone there they were still tight-lipped about Blu.
Aside from the PS3, Sony has so far lagged behind in hardware development for Blu-ray. Samsung has been out in front when it comes to speed to market, but that has not been much of a kindness to consumers since it also meant the first ones out of the gate were pretty rough around the edges. Panasonic and Pioneer have done well, by and large, especially in the last year or so (starting with Panasonic's BD10A, I'd say). I was pleased with what Toshiba did for hardware on HD-DVD, but what they've done since throwing in the towel is a bit disappointing. Rather than use that experience to produce good Blu-ray or Blu-ray/HD-DVD hardware, they are trying to market upconverting DVD players as equal to HD players - which, having seen some of the top video scaling available today used for DVD (the Anchor Bay chips in OPPO's 983H) alongside a trio of true HD sources (cable, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray), strikes me as just obnoxious and deceptive. I'd much rather see them leverage that HD-DVD experience to give them an edge in building Profile 2.0 players than try to mislead and confuse consumers.

I wrote to Oppo in regards to there invovlement with Blu-Ray and this is there response.

I thought it would be informative.

We have not yet aligned ourselves to the Blu-Ray high definition video format. The primary reason for this is that we feel that the current hardware solutions are not mature enough to be implemented and released by OPPO Digital. Our operational motto is to "make a mature product better". The Blu-Ray specifications are continually in flux, and we can't afford to create a solution which will become obsolete within a year.

We are vigorously investigating all current and future hardware solutions, however we do not know when we will commit to them.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.
2629B Terminal Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Service@oppodigital.com
Tel: 650-961-1118
Fax: 650-961-1119

That's been their standard response all year...

I'm Pleased to see that Oppo is sticking to their guns on this. They have a business phylosophy that works and has provided a great service to the user community. I' d hate to see them become another "Me too , quick-to-market" company.That could only drive up costs and reduce quality.

It might be there standard response but if it is they are still not letting the cat out of the bag...if there is something in the bag.
My opinion is that I am sticking to my guns with holding off on Blu-Ray because I do not want to regret that I did not have enough patience to wait for that Grand Slam player.
My main concerns are simple:


Fair pricing
Excellent picture quality
Good Quality Blu-Ray Discs...Why do some discs give poor picture quality and sound or at least no better than standard discs?
HDMI,DVI,Component
Capability of use with any receiver or processor

Let's get on with it!!!! They are not inventing the wheel but reinventing a better one.

Interesting article, the inital discussion compares uncompressed PCM to the Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD MA but further down it compares the lossless and lossy schemes.
http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby_TrueHD_DTS-MA_versus_Uncompressed_PCM

Now I'm swaying back towards getting a PS3 + one of these (instead of a stand-alone with internal decoding):
http://ir2bt.com/

-John

Gamer or not, the PS3 is quite a good Blu-ray player and it also has excellent credentials as a home media center, with the ability to play audio, video and image files, and to stream media from a UPnP server. At the price of $399 for the 40GB version (which will be expanded to 80GB in a new PS3 model to be released in the Fall), it is really hard to beat, even if you never play a single game on it.

That Home Entertainment Magazine article deserves very close analysis. I honestly think that DTS and Dolby stacked the deck in those tests. Note that the sample audio they chose featured very sparse audio textures: a little dialog, a couple of instruments. That kind of texture is not difficult to compress. Where lossy compression schemes are a liability is in dense audio textures in which the compression scheme starts throwing away ambience and inner details that it assumes won't easily be heard.

In tests that Soundhound and I did in his studio years ago, comparing DTS and Dolby DD5.1 tracks, the difference between those two -- and what they threw away -- was quite easy to hear. And, of course, the audio quality of any compressed track pales compared to the original, uncompressed audio stems such as Soundhound could play from his ProTools console.

I welcome the new, lossless schemes. Their increased quality is readily apparent--even the comparatively limited improvement of DD+--and is as important an addition to HD disc as the increased pixel resolution, IMO.