Oppo Digital in a few short years has become a force in home entertainment, competing with, and sometimes embarrassing some of the well established giant conglomerates that produce audio visual components sold to mass markets. Their first products were feature packed "universal players" that could handle DVD video, DVD-A audio, and SACD/CD discs.  They also decoded HDCD, and could handle just about any video format through a USB input. They were priced at too good to be true prices, and performed at a level unseen at those price points.

A few years ago I bought an Oppo DV- 980H DVD player and was absolutely blown away by the quality of video playback, the feature set, connectivity, and ease of use. I thought audio playback was what you would expect for a budget component. Styling and reliability were well beyond what you would normally get for around $180. The DV-980H was also a  universal player, and had digital outputs, video up scaling, and a great user interface.

Oppo continued to update their products and blazing speeds. They redesigned power supplies, upgraded firmware, re-engineered signal paths and chassis design, and just plain led the pack.  The company began to get notice from the audiophile community with several positive reviews in the two major domestic hifi publications and all over the web. The ability to playback DVD-A and SACD was certainly an attention getter, as those formats have been completely ignored outside of the audiophile world. Oppo players began appearing as “special editions” and were even modded by third party companies to maximize audio and video potential.

But Oppo has not rested on its laurels. They have a line of Blu-Ray players that is already turning heads as the new format starts to increasingly make its way as the video disc du jour.  The promise of Blu-Ray offers unparalleled resolution, and enormous storage capacity. My brief encounters with Blu-Ray were quite impressive, but I had not yet tested it yet in my own set up. That brings us now to the subject of this review, the  BDP-93 Network Blu-Ray player. The BDP-93 also handles 3D Blu-Ray discs. It is priced at $499 and is available directly from Oppo and from various other online sources.

Internally, the BDP-93 is packed with cutting edge technology. I won’t turn this review into a technical white paper, but some of the BDP-93 design and guts deserves some mention.  First it offers cutting edge networking options, which allows the Oppo to act as a de facto entertainment hub. For state of the art video performance, Oppo says “the BDP-93 incorporates Marvell's Kyoto-G2 video processor with the second generation Qdeo™ technology. Qdeo video processing delivers a truly immersive viewing experience by rendering quiet natural video free of noise and artifacts for all types of content. For high-quality Blu-ray content, the BDP-93 faithfully reproduces the program just as the director intended; for DVD, the up-converted picture quality bridges the visual gap from your current DVD library to Blu-ray disc.”


The BDP-93 also incorporates True 24p™ Video. Oppo says “many Blu-ray Discs are recorded at 24 frames per second, the same frame rate as the original movie's theatrical release. The BDP-93 can faithfully redeliver the original frames using 1080p 24Hz output (compatible display required) for smoother motion and a flicker-free, film-like home theater experience.” Of course the player also decodes just about every digital format including, Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio™.

On the audio side, Oppo has taken great pains to improve sound quality and flexibility by tweaking an already soundly engineered circuit. The on board DACs can handle up to 192 Khz program material via LPCM. Audio can be sent to an external AV receiver or DAC via the HDMI or Coaxial/Optical outputs. Good quality analog outputs are also in evidence.