IIRC, the UDP-203 doesn't rip SACDs. You have to go back to the 103/105 or earlier.
There's some amazing classic British TV on blu-ray at Amazon UK... The Persuaders, The Professionals, The Prisoner, The Avengers. Lots of good modern shows too... Pyschoville, Inside No 9, Luther, The Missing, Broadchurch, Ripper Street... Nordic Noir series like The Killing, Forbrylheisen, Borgen, The Bridge.
Getting to see TV from other countries is the best part of being region free. Movies usually end up here, but not all TV does.
I'm actually Still debating whether to get the OPPO. I'm pretty satisfied with the Samsung 4K plater. Region free advantages aside, Is it that much better than all the other 4K players out there?
BD playback on an Oppo should be identical to BD playback on another device. It should be the same with UHD. All of these players are just decoding digital bits, and as long as there's no scaling involved (in other words, if you're watching HD material on an HD screen, UHD material on a UHD screen, etc) then the player isn't really doing any image processing, so you should just be seeing what's on the disc.
Thanks Josh. That helps. So the 203 has vudu built in?BD playback on an Oppo should be identical to BD playback on another device. It should be the same with UHD. All of these players are just decoding digital bits, and as long as there's no scaling involved (in other words, if you're watching HD material on an HD screen, UHD material on a UHD screen, etc) then the player isn't really doing any image processing, so you should just be seeing what's on the disc.
The Oppo shines in a few different areas. To begin with, it's got the best upscaler in the business, so if you're watching a DVD on an HD screen, in my experience, it does a better job of upscaling that DVD than any other brand of player. Though I'm not UHD yet, I would guess that their BD to 4K upscaling would be similarly impressive. The other great advantage of the Oppo is that it has a fantastic DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for audio, so if you allow the Oppo to decode the audio instead of your receiver, it may do an even better job. But since advanced audio formats like Dolby Atmos need to be decoded by the receiver directly, this may not be relevant to many users.
The Oppo UHD player supports HDR 10 and Dolby Vision. I think the Samsung player supports HDR 10 but not Dolby Vision. To the best of my knowledge, no discs currently exist that are encoded with Dolby Vision, but that may change in the future. If your TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, then it's a moot point.
Assuming your Samsung has the same HDR capabilities as the Oppo, I wouldn't expect UHD playback to be different from one device to the other. I think the Oppo will do a better job of upscaling your DVDs and BDs to UHD than any other player, but the improvement may not be enough to justify the price.
When I was only watching movies on a 50" TV screen, I couldn't really tell the difference between the DVD upscaling that the Oppo did compared to my regular, non-flashy Samsung BD player. When I added my 100" projection screen, I did notice a subtle but measurable difference between the Samsung and the Oppo. If you're watching on a TV, it may not matter. If you're watching on a projection screen, you may notice a difference there.
If region free is the only goal, you can purchase an inexpensive modded player from a place like 220 Electronics or Bombay Electronics for little over $100.
YMMV, of course. I don't regret buying the Oppo. Like I said, it does a fantastic job upscaling DVDs to BD. It has Vudu streaming built in which was useful to me (before the Oppo, I didn't have a device that could access Vudu). It does the region free thing, which was a big factor in my purchasing. And it can convert video formats as well as playing other formats in their native frame rate which my projector does support - so I can watch native PAL video as PAL, instead of it converting to NTSC. All of those features are useful to me, but the Oppo isn't the only way to get them, nor the cheapest.
YMMV.
Thanks Josh. That helps. So the 203 has vudu built in?
Not entirely true. Besides, if you're watching Blu-ray (the majority of our content for most of us) with the UDP-203 on a 4K display then either the player or the display is scaling 1080p to 2160p depending on your preference:
Thanks Josh. That helps. So the 203 has vudu built in?
Yes, I believe I said that, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. What I was saying was, when you use an Oppo to play HD material on an HD display with no scaling, like watching a BD on a 1080p screen, there should be no difference in playback between an Oppo BD player playing a BD at 1080p and a Samsung player playing a BD at 1080p. But Oppo usually has better scalers, so watching a BD upscaled to UHD will likely look better on an Oppo than it would on a Samsung.
Same idea with UHD discs - when watching a UHD disc on a UHD TV, both the Oppo and the Samsung should be putting out an identical signal, presenting the data from the disc without any scaling. The only difference would be whether that disc included some form of HDR (like HDR 10 or Dolby Vision) and whether or not your player can read that data. I believe the Samsung can do HDR 10 but not Dolby Vision, but I am not 100% positive. I believe there are no physical discs that contain Dolby Vision. So while in theory it seems the Oppo might have the edge on that front, the Oppo's ability to play Dolby Vision discs doesn't matter if there are no Dolby Vision discs in existence.
I was referring to the 103 -- which I own -- having Vudu built in, as part of the reason why having an Oppo was was more useful to me personally than having a cheaper player. I don't own the 203 so I can't comment on what apps it does or doesn't include.
Is the 103 still available?
Neither of the current gen Oppo players have Darbee and Darbee doesn't support 4K resolutions, only 1080p.
Is the 103 still available?