Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"It's an Oppo BDP-83. Normally we'd launch into a statement like this with more tact. We may, for example, wax eloquent about the Lexicon BD-30's beautiful chassis or it's billet aluminum front face. We could tell you about the heft of the unit, or the fact that comes double boxed with enough padding to warrant throwing it off the FedEx or UPS truck while it's still moving. While all of that is true, the Lexicon BD-30 is still an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Player. And what's more, it's not just using the same parts - they actually stuck the player inside - chassis and all. This would be OK, were it not for the $3000 premium over the Oppo and THX certification."

Part of me thinks that if you are willing to drop over $3,000 on a Blu-ray player, you deserve to get duped. But lots of other companies re-badge lower priced products as other products (like Toyota/Lexus for example), but in most cases those are not 100% duplicates. I wonder if this is happening with Oppo's knowledge or if Lexicon is buying these through the retail channel.

"Here she is -- the world's very first universal Blu-ray player. Oh sure, we may have heard of Denon's absurdly expensive DVD-A1UD first, but that bad boy just got delayed for a second time over in Japan. OPPO, on the other hand, has managed to push out a few hundred of these BDP-83 decks to brave beta testers across America, and we were fortunate enough to score one."

It is not as cheap as your basic Blu-ray player, but it has just about every feature you could want from an optical disc player. Okay, it won't play HD-DVD, but it does handle DVD, SACD, CDs, AVCHD, MKV and of course, Blu-ray discs. Also of note is that it uses the Anchor Bay chip for de-interlacing, upscaling and general video quality goodness that's normally only seen in much more expensive players. The BDP-83 looks to provide the best value if you're looking to update your video player. Sure, something like the PlayStation 3 lets you play games, but its DVD playing abilities just are not on par with what the Anchor Bay chip can provide. With Engadget holding a beta unit in their hands, I'm sure we'll see a more thorough review soon.