Oppo Goes Low January 25, 2010 — When Oppo introduced the BDP-83 universal Blu-ray player for $500 (see UAV's review here), it set the price/performance standard—in fact, many consider it to be the benchmark against which all other Blu-ray players should be judged. After upgrading the BDP-83's analog-audio outputs late last year, resulting in the BDP-83SE for $900 (profiled here), the company today adds a third model to its lineup, the BDP-80, which will carry a retail price tag of only $289.

Like its predecessors, the BDP-80 is a truly universal disc spinner with the ability to play Blu-ray, DVD, CD, DVD-Audio, and SACD discs, which very few other players can do. It also includes 1GB of internal memory to support BD-Live and BonusView as well as a USB 2.0 port for media files stored on a USB device. So how did Oppo reduce the price more than 40 percent? By designing it to be more of a transport with a Source Direct mode that leaves the processing to an outboard device, such as a pre/pro, AVR, or dedicated processor.

Yet the BDP-80 can also serve as a standalone player with the ability to upconvert DVDs to 1080p, provide constant-height processing for anamorphic displays, and decode all current audio formats to PCM or analog via its 7.1 analog output, so it must have internal processing. Oppo eliminated the Anchor Bay VRS video processor found in the BDP-83 and reconfigured its MediaTek chip—which provides audio decoding in the earlier player—to perform both video processing and audio decoding in the BDP-80. Additional cost savings were achieved with a smaller chassis, plastic faceplate, and less-expensive analog-audio section.

Even at $500, some buyers find the BDP-83 too pricey despite its stellar performance, so it makes sense that Oppo would introduce a less-expensive model. On the other hand, the BDP-80 probably requires a high-quality outboard processor to look and sound its best. Will it become the ultimate value proposition among Blu-ray players? Only time—and a full review—will tell.