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 I'm sure the day will come when my optical media is as outdated as 8-track, but for me that day is still a long way off.