Best Blu Ray video and for 2 channel transport?

Don't get me wrong the 983 is really good.. Not sure when you had the panasonic however, maybe it has had some speed updates.

The oppo takes about 30 seconds from startup on a dvd and goes thru all the B.S. FBI warnings etc... Its fast, but still pretty sluggish..

As the panasonic it will take about a minuet to load a BD, which is maybe anywhere from 15 to 25 seconds slower, not an issue in my mind. The regular DVD seems to load as fast, however no doubt the blu ray player does have to boot up from off and will add some seconds..

Beyond that I was a little shocked that the Panasonic so far easily outshines the audio on the Oppos... Could be a taste issue, I don't know what DACS are in the panasonic, the best is pretty much one from Cirrus, and Oppos do use a Cirrus, but a lower end one, not Cirrus best chip anyway.

Good luck, the oppo is a good unit no doubt, and also will be able to play all you want in titles minus blu ray with as perfect as it gets... I just had to go up for the heck of it, and really looking to take advantage as really I don't own a ton of DVD's about 200 which I dumped about 1/3rd of them in trade for some new blu ray discs, I rarely keep many as I always trade them back at some point, so figured I don't want to get stuck with 1000 dollars worth of DVD's over the next year when already they are starting to be worth about a buck each at best on trade now.

I don't think DVD is going away, however I argued a point about SACD years ago, this is in reverse, but I truly believe that DVD will start to become as limited as SACDS in the next couple years, very fast turnaround I have a feeling, because the blu ray tech is pretty damn good now, and I see just about everybody recently bringing in a lot more rentals, a lot more stock of it, and a lot more people I know already own the machines and they love to get the best out of their 2000 dollar investments in panel tvs, so I do not believe Blu ray will be even close to a SACD issue at all.

It has way to many capabilities for all mediums.. Video games, Movies, DATA storage, and of course quality HD transfer, so its not really much of a niche product at all the way I see it, thats kinda like saying the new and improved smaller, faster, better cell phones will not sell and become a novelty, this is not SACD for sure. Plus SACD on a few fronts can prove superiority, but blu ray everybody can see the quality and quantity advantage so it will sell mainstream as it already is.

Only thing I see being corrected and I think it will happen quickly is the Blu ray disc pricing scheme... They need to more quickly come down to the 18 - 19 dollar range... People will not want to pay 25 to 30 a disc for sure, not for long anyway.. But I also feel many will just buy "Nothing" opposed to buying more standard DVD's they will just rent them until the blu discs become more affordable, and they are starting too.

I got my Panny from Amazon a few days before you started this post. I just got my 983H today and have ran my test DVD's through it (music videos which I am very familiar with from watching and listening to them over and over). Nothing special, but stuff I love and know very well. Here are my initial impressions: The Oppo default picture on my Sony CRT dispay is set a bit too dark (as it was with my friend's Oppo). A minor brightness adjustment + a bit of contrast and it was fine. Once tweaked the picture was lovely. I would say the colors occur to me as overall just a bit more natural than the more punchy colors I recall on the Panny (at default). I don't think that is anything more than a matter of tweaking...maybe. The picture itself is excellent on both players. I'd give the edge in the upsampling in terms of sharpness to the Panasonic, believe it or not. It occurred to me as a bit sharper. I prefer the more natural colors to the more punch, exaggerated colors. With one of my vids I was getting a strange artifact in jump cuts in dark scenes on the Panasonic though. For a milisecond I'd see a checkerboard (pixelated) effect in the shadows, this occurred in almost every cut where there were predominantly dark areas in the frame (common in stage concert films). That does not occur with the same vid upsampled on the Oppo. The significant difference, which I cannot fully understand or explain, and which delights me, is in the digital output via my Modwright Transporter - The Oppo is clearly and without any doubt more immediate and engaging. This holds true with CD performance as well. I don't really get that as both should be feeding the same digital stream to the Modwright TP, but the Oppo output commands more attention while the Panny was fine, but didn't have the same kind of immediacy. I wish I'd held onto the Panny to do a direct comparisons now, but this is how it occurs to me, and that actually comes as a surprise. I'd expected the Oppo to be a clear winner in video and didn't expect to hear any differences via the digital out. Anyway, I'm happy as a clam with the Oppo and I'm sure the memory thing would have really been a problem with both me and my wife. I hope Panasonic updates that soon as it's a real fly in the ointment for me, in an otherwise near perfect BD player. I'm not experiencing any unusual lag times with the Oppo and it is certainly faster than the Panasonic in starting up and cuing up and almost everything else. My Panny was current and needed no firmware updates. My Oppo is also current and probably one of the last ones they made. Can't account for the differences in our experience there... Go figure. One difference in my experience of the two players is that I had to use the Panasonic lamp cord AC power cord, while I'm using a TG 688 on the Oppo, FWTW. I've not tried out the analog output of the Oppo, mostly because I'm not interested and won't likely ever use it. I also did not try the analog outs on the Panny. I'll be very curious to see where BluRay goes from here. I do hope it makes it as it's clearly a superior format. Until they start releasing an abundance of films that actually interest me to watch on that format I'll be sticking with DVD.

Got me thinking, yeah I am going to try the Sony 350 and see what it has, being it does have the coax out on the lower model, the upper has nothing to offer accept a 7.1 output and like a sony link hdmi or something which I have no use... So I realize in the future with no Disc memory at least for a couple discs, the panasonic is going to be a problem.. And a Sony transport should be pretty good, I believe the oppos actual had a sony as well as raysonics used a decent sony transport that I had in the past.

Yeah the oppo is probably a little more film like, the panasonic is a bit more well "Digital blu ray" look... The oppo is a great machine, surprised about the digital out too myself! The oppo does sound good as a stand alone machine even without dac, so it does have a good solid transport and dac in it.

As for the panasonic with the memory issue, I will have to dig in further... Maybe I will have to stave it off as well this is a bit of an annoying issue due to not holding even 2 or 3 discs... The oppos hold 10 disc memories which is plenty.

As for startup time no doubt the blu ray players going thru the boot process takes a little time, but you can just leave the player on which actually I did all the time with the oppo as well, it does not draw any real power anyway just the display which I had set to off all the time. So this speeds up retrieval time on both units really, and keeps them warmed up a little for audio playback as well.

I also just suggest leaving your DAC on all the time, again without a signal its not pulling anything but does help for sound.

Thanks for the update!! I will be evaluating the memory issue... I will also go ahead and do some head to head comparisons with the transport sound on the panasonic against a couple other DVD players including the oppo, right now I am waiting for a DAC so in a couple weeks I will have the answer, and I have 30 days to return the panasonic if it does not "Pan" out :-)

Denon, Marantz, Pioneer Elite, NAD all make excellent units with good transports and better BluRay than the entry level units. Oppo will be coming out with one soon.

I don't think you'll improve on the Panny with the Sony 350, but I'm making that assumptions simply from the spotty real-world feedback. It's also an older machine in a technology that seems to change daily. Boy, as far as BD players, I'd stick with the Panny or wait for the Oppo myself. Your description of the differences of the pictures is spot-on: The Panny seemed more punchy and digital while the Oppo occurs more film-like. I did not try tweaking the Panny's video fine-tune controls and there may be some latitude there, but I could easily live with the imaging I saw both on DVD and BD. I really cannot explain the optical output and will look forward to yours and others feedback there. I think my Modwright Transporter DAC is capable of 96khz streaming, but even on PCM the sound of the Oppo seems better IMO. Then again, I am going from aural memory which is NOT always that reliable. I am just struck by the sound with the Oppo and was not either struck the same way, nor disappointed with the sound of the Panny. Anyway, I appreciate your input as well. I'll look forward to hearing what you end up deciding on. If I were really into the BD thing I would have kept the Panasonic. I think that's huge bang for the buck, especially in the video department.