We've been longtime fans of Oppo's disc players, but as much as we liked the company's BDP-83 Blu-ray player, its $500 price puts it out of reach for most buyers. With that in mind, Oppo has released the BDP-80, a lower priced Blu-ray player that looks to keep much of what we liked about the BDP-83 for only $290. It's available today.
The easiest way to see the differences between the new BDP-80 and the BDP-83 is to check out Oppo's comparison chart, but the short story is that it keeps most of the BDP-83's features, but has a step-down video processor, can't output DVD at 24 frames-per-second, and it lacks some customer-installation-friendly options like an RS-232 port and IR inputs and outputs. It's also worth pointing out that the BDP-80 doesn't make any mention of streaming media services, which are widely available on competing players.
Of course, we'll have to get the BDP-80 in for testing to see how well it performs, but our experience with Oppo's step-down DVD players has been uniformly positive. Our initial impression is that this should be a solid option for home theater fans who put a premium on performance, but can't afford the BDP-83.