Audiophile Musings: Oppo BDP-103 Impressions

I experimented with the realm of streaming digital audio and video about two years ago with the purchase of a budget Buffalo 0.5TB RAID-1 NAS and a frugal WD TV Live streaming media player. Both units worked well for my experiment but the NAS developed a network controller problem and was replaced last November with a Seagate 2.0TB RAID-1 NAS. Now I had plenty of storage for all of my digital music, my video library, and my digital images. Pandora and background music has never been more pleasant lowering the demand on my analog record collection.

Yesterday, the WD TV Live finally died for good after the last firmware upgrade (plays for two songs and then hangs). Even backing the firmware out to the earliest version available still did not remedy the problem. So it was either wait for another firmware upgrade or toss the beast and get something better (anybody want to buy a used third generation WD TV Live?).

I have been eyeing up an OPPO BDP-95 of my friend's but he has decided not to go for the new BDP-105 after reading mixed reviews about its performance. So my compromise to my real desire is the OPPO BDP-103. It does not have half the DACS that the 95 or 105 have but again this is background music. Plus, I get to toss that terrible SONY and get a player that has good picture quality.

The OPPO BDP-103

Today, it shipped from California and should be here in about a week. My wife, the REAL videophile, has Skyfall already on the table waiting for its arrival. Then comes Terminator Salvation, AVP, and - well, you can see that I will be auditioning the sound mainly from the video system for the first few days anyway.

So stay tuned for the newest addition to our system and we'll see if all of this hubub can be observed from a subjective - but intimately familiar - point of view. This should prove to be interesting.

Related ArticlesSee all entries about the OPPO BDP-103 in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3; see all entries about the OPPO BDP-105 in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 and the updates here and here.

Also, see the simple FRED diode modification to the BDP-105 here.

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny

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