At first glance, the UMC1 was tempting, if used in conjunction with the 990 it could be the best of all possible worlds for the price of an SMS-1 , right ? WRONG!
From all accounts the EMO equalization doesn't amount to much.
The video processing is inferior to what you would get straight from an Oppo BD-83.
There are a lot of inputs, it will process most formats ( less DSD) and it will process everything to HDMI. If that's all that you want, $699.00 is a sweet deal. Go for it.
This ain't no 997, or at least what I anticipate the 997 being.
I don't have a UMC-1, but don't think your summary is very accurate. All the reports of the video processing have been quite good. Whether it's better or worse than the Oppo I can't say, but the Oppo is very good. Many people would say there's no need to perform any processing from an excellent source like the Oppo.
I do agree that the Emo-Q auto calibration program doesn't sound ready for prime time yet. Emo needs to work on that, toss auto setup altogether, or license Audyssey or something similar (this option gets my vote).
After the firmware update, all the reports I have seen have been pretty positive (except for the Emo-Q issues). Notably and most importantly, reports of sound quality (and video quality) have been excellent.
My summary would be if auto-calibration is critical to you look elsewhere (at least for now), but otherwise the UMC-1 appears to offer lots of bang (and good SQ) for your buck.
Perhaps the 997 will be better, but it's really impossible to compare the two since the 997 doesn't exist yet
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