This is a very good discussion. I've had some similar conversations with some other OPPO Digital beta testers - after all, even the BDP-80 is more expensive than the typical offerings from companies like Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung. They all play the same discs, so why spend more on a player like the OPPO?

First question: what are we considering "similar gear"? My Model 7500 and any surround processor you might pair it with combine to cost a hell of a lot more than even a really good receiver at Best Buy. I could also find some pretty decent bookshelf speakers for a good bit less than I paid for my BLS's. Neither comparisons are really apples-to-apples, though. What do we look at when we are finding comparable gear? A five-channel 200W amp with RCA and XLR inputs from Rotel, Parasound, Anthem, or somebody else is going to cost more than my 7500 did. My BLS's also compared favorably with more expensive tower speakers from Paradigm - in fact, I had a slight preference in favor of the BLS's. The same would not be true for a $300 pair of speakers from Best Buy.

Second question: does service and support matter? When you have a question about how to set your new product up, do you want to have a phone number for support, web site for support, and company-hosted user forum for support? Or do you want to rely on the sales kid at Best Buy and a tech support call center in India?

The third question isn't really a question. It's a frustrating statement of fact: "boutique" brand surround processors and receivers are a problem right now. Emotiva's long-delayed UMC-1 has been out for six months and is still riddled with bugs, as well as a few problematic design decisions that the company has no plans to change. Parasound cancelled two processors and a receiver earlier this year (all reportedly based on the same basic hardware platform as the UMC-1). Sherwood's R-972 has also struggled with bugs, which led to Outlaw cancelling the Model 997. Anthem has had some success sustaining the AVM platform in the HDMI era, but it's come with a drastically increased price tag - where the AVM20 was only roughly 2x or 2.5x the price of an Outlaw processor ($2000-$2400 vs. $900), the AVM50v is almost $6000 and the Dv2 is almost $7000. Hopefully this situation will improve over the next year or so, but right now it's a very real problem that affects more companies than just Outlaw. This is the area where I hope the Model 998 can mark a turning point - going back to the formula that produced the Model 1050 and Model 950 (products developed from the ground up to Outlaw's specs by design teams that included folks at Outlaw and outside team members). The Model 990 was a huge success and was a great example of pre-HDMI surround processors so I understand why they pursued a similar development cycle on the Model 997, but the last three years or so have been a wasteland for many companies and it's possible that any course they chose would have run into similar problems.

In the end, it's probably relevant to consider something that I have often pointed out to OPPO beta testers who were concerned that their players can't compete on cost with the most widely-used players. There is no single product that is the right fit for everyone. It's true of speakers, TV's, surround processors, amps, subwoofers, cars, houses, and anything else in life. I think it's good to remember that plenty of folks don't want or need as sophisticated a system as many Outlaw customers have. Outlaw can't compete head-to-head with the entry-level receivers offered by Sony or Yamaha or Onkyo any more than OPPO can compete head-to-head with Sony or Panasonic or LG - they don't have the R&D resources or the sales volume to make it cost-effective, so they have to focus on offering some quality benefits and much better customer service at a higher price point. This means that they don't compete against the most prominent products offered by the big retailers, and that there are many customers for whom their offerings aren't the best fit. For the folks who can only afford or only want to afford a $400 or even $700 receiver (which is not a bad thing, by any means), Outlaw will have a hard time filling that niche. Any offering they have in that range will quickly be "outdated" compared to the latest products at Best Buy, even if it sounds better. Companies like Outlaw and OPPO do compete with lesser-known brands and more expensive brands that may be offered by those same dealers, though. I'll briefly pick on Lexicon as an example: they had (may still have) a 7x300W amp that was a close cousin of the Model 7900, and they have a Blu-ray player that is a BDP-83 in a different case. The amp retailed for almost three times as much as the Model 7900 and the player retails for around seven times as much as the BDP-83.