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 Post subject: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 04:39 
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I planned to buy an OPPO 205 this year.
But as the price was increasing a lot, I searched for alternative.

I found some people here were talking about Cambridge.
After hours of searching, I found that, with Cambridge CXUHD you can have the same quality of picture for around half of the price.
No DAC inside the Cambrige, but as I have an external DAC, it is maybe a better solution for my AV configuration.
The cheapest OPPO I could found in Japan were at 260.000 yens ! The CXUHD is under 100.000 yens in all electronic shop around here (yodobashi camera etc.)

I decided to jump in it. I ordered it, and I will recieve it next week !
Can't wait to see the player !

Does someone has any experience of the player ?
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 05:23 
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mimylovesjapan wrote:
I planned to buy an OPPO 205 this year.
But as the price was increasing a lot, I searched for alternative.


Judging from YAJ, Japan prices are in line with eBay USA: 230K~330K JPY or 2K~3K USD.

Fingers crossed for you if OPPO finally decides to manufacture one last batch at the original 1.3K USD price.
=> Register your interest here just in case: https://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-udp-205/

However, if DAC is no issue, why not jump on an OPPO 203??

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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 06:19 
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Yes I thought OPPO 203 would be a good solution, but, in Japan it cost around 140.000 yens... far from the 100.000 of the CXUHD (you could say 90.000 yens, as I could get 10.000 yens point from yodobashi)
Plus, I read some forum that, without DAC in, there is less interference in the machine, and you can get a better general quality of sound at the end.
(As I don't have any sort of knowledge in the field of electronic, nor I could compare the OPPO and the Cambridge yet, I can't say if it is true or not...)
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 08:19 
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I don’t get why any BR player is worth that price. What do you get? Isn’t the image identical on every BR player? At least the ones with super DACs give you something you can’t get on a $60 Sony.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 09:35 
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I wanted to buy a SACD player for long time. A transport player, because I already owned a DSD DAC.

For many years I played DVD and bluray with cheap players as playstation, or PC drives. The players were everytime overheating, sometimes doesn't read movies, fans are doing loud sounds, etc.
I finally stopped to watch movie on thoses supports.

I wanted to buy an "all metal" designed player.
Not only because it is cool designed and strong, but also because I want to encourage AV company to create good quality players with good materials.
I love beautiful machines, and don't want the market only sells little plastic player at 50 dollards.

The Cambridge will allow me also to read 4K movies in the future.
I also wish the DVD upscale will be good.

But I understand that in field of digital, 1 bit is 1 bit, and the image quality does not change so much between players.

edit : about DAC, I think, but I may mistake, OPPO 205 doesn't take in charge natively DSD128, it seems to convert it in PCM. My DAC can do it natively, then I thought it was a better idea to not buy the Oppo. Also, my Audio configuration is stereo, then I don't need multi channel DAC.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 15:39 
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Yeah, I guess I’d like a $950 box around my $50 DVD player too but at some point it isn’t really “quality”, it’s just a metal box. :) Decoration. I can for sure see the issues with PC drives and PlayStations (the mechanical noise level alone is terrible) but I’ve never seen a stand-alone video player of any kind in any era overheat.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 17:16 
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signofzeta wrote:
I don’t get why any BR player is worth that price. What do you get? Isn’t the image identical on every BR player? At least the ones with super DACs give you something you can’t get on a $60 Sony.

It worked for me since I wanted a 4K blu-ray player and also a player with 8 channel outs so I wouldn't have to upgrade my receiver to get the full effect of the newer Dolby and DTS surround codecs. Plus, I no longer have to keep my Pioneer DV-45A machine connected to my system anymore since the Oppo also has DVD-A and SACD playback.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 20:24 
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So do you guys all have lame DACs in your AVRs? I could use eight line level outs for sure...but in reality I’d probably just use one TOSLINK instead to save like a cubic foot of space at least behind my rack.

Being able to play SACDs would be nice but it’s waaaaay easier to download that stuff as DSDs. I learned this when I starting looking into it. SACDs are so rare and expensive, it’s way easier to just buy downloads for $15-30.

The user experience itself is more worth paying for for me. Like, does it load fast and play all regions and let you skip the jail warnings? That would be priceless.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 20:31 
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That's why none of my SACDs sell on ebay.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 21:10 
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signofzeta wrote:
So do you guys all have lame DACs in your AVRs? I could use eight line level outs for sure...but in reality I’d probably just use one TOSLINK instead to save like a cubic foot of space at least behind my rack.

Can't get the full bandwidth of the latest Dolby and DTS codecs through a TOSLink or Coaxial. Only HDMI will pass them to a receiver for the receiver to do the processing.

It is important to note that digital audio signals, such as 5.1/7.1 multi-channel PCM, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS:X, and Auro 3D Audio cannot be transferred via Digital Optical connections - These formats require HDMI connections.

If you're using TOSLink or Coaxial with a blu-ray player, you're getting a scaled down version of the soundtrack.
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Being able to play SACDs would be nice but it’s waaaaay easier to download that stuff as DSDs. I learned this when I starting looking into it. SACDs are so rare and expensive, it’s way easier to just buy downloads for $15-30.

It's also easier to download a movie rather than buy the LD/DVD/Blu-ray, but where's the fun in that?
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 22:09 
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If buying stuff is more fun than listening to it, sure. I want to spend time listening instead of shopping on eBay. Quality is identical. The LD analogy doesn’t really work here...especially since there are WAY more download-only DSDs than there are SACDs.

I didn’t know about the new surround standards being HDMI only though. I don’t even have HDMI on my AVR. That explains a lot.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 23:13 
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yeah, and this is my main problem now...
I just realize that I need an other DAC for my Cambridge...
Because my has no HDMI in.

Someone could help me to find a good DAC decoding DSD through HDMI ?

And yes signofzeta, I just bought a bloc of metal for 950 $, but I am happy with.
You know, you can also buy 2 different eggs :
- 1 for 10 cents, produced in a big factory with thousand of chicken living in 30cm² space, with 24h/24h light to make them lay twice a day.
- 1 for 40 cents, produce in a farm, living outside, sleeping well.
The egg will have the same taste. I can say it because I tried manytime to compare it, and I love eggs^^
But I made the choice to buy the 40 cents eggs.
Because what you pay is not only what you get, but also the condition it is made. And you can help to construct the future by paying things more than the average.
Sure, it depends also to your wallet. Many years I bought cheap things, because I had no money, i was happy to watch good quality movies for less money.


Last edited by mimylovesjapan on 21 Jun 2018, 08:05, edited 1 time in total. _________________
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 21 Jun 2018, 00:56 
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signofzeta wrote:
If buying stuff is more fun than listening to it, sure. I want to spend time listening instead of shopping on eBay.

I guess I'm doing it wrong since I've never bought a SACD off of ebay . . . :lol:
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 21 Jun 2018, 01:17 
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elahrairrah wrote:
signofzeta wrote:
If buying stuff is more fun than listening to it, sure. I want to spend time listening instead of shopping on eBay.

I guess I'm doing it wrong since I've never bought a SACD off of ebay . . . :lol:

No Kidding, I don't think anybody buys them on ebay.
I have 3 and 2 are sealed, 2 are classical but still haven't sold any of them :crazy:
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 21 Jun 2018, 04:01 
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You could get a w/e BD player and one of the old OPPO dvd players. Those are much cheaper and give you all the same functionality besides BD. I paid like $90 for my Oppo dvd player and it's great. @Zeta it does load fast and play all regions, but skipping the warning BS is another story entirely. Wish I could get that out of a player, but oh well I've also got anydvd for when I feel like watching on my PC.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 22 Jun 2018, 15:44 
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signofzeta wrote:
The user experience itself is more worth paying for for me. Like, does it load fast and play all regions and let you skip the jail warnings? That would be priceless.

There are region mods for the Oppo that grants you playback of any region for all disc media that it's capable of. Arguably, you'll never find a player with such wide compability as a modded Oppo (only thing missing is essentially HD-DVD) and still maintain high quality as far as user interference, image quality, DAC and customization goes. It's also the only UHD-BD player I know of that can strip the metadata for HDR which makes it possible to create your own tone curve, both for material played on the Oppo as well as signal that's being fed to the player through its HDMI input. The modded version can also sync .srt-files during playback of any disc format which is a fantastic feature. Upscaling and deinterlacing is also top notch, especially for standard definition as it's not creating any haloing or other artifacts. It's also very friendly to home theater enthusasts with Cinemascope screens, as it offers a native 21:9 mode which I'm not sure exists on any other UHD-BD player. I've never used the Oppo for SACD or DSD files so I cannot comment its performance in that regard.

Should also be noted that while most Blu-Ray players have similar performances in terms of picture quality, nearly all of them do have a slight modification on the tone curve. So far, the Oppos are the only one I've seen measurements of that are practically identical to that of a NIST certified pattern generator. Whether or not that's worth the money is all up to you, but to me I honestly saw no other choice but the Oppo UDP-203 as I prefer to have as few sources as possible and want high accuracy. Its design and accomplishment is brilliant if you ask me. It seems like everything today is just plastic fantastic and all companies just release their stuff ASAP just to get a new model a year later with features you cannot get on the older one. Oppo however tried to grand their customers as good service as they could and only released new models if the previous one was significantly outdated.

I'd like to point out that things seem bright for Oppo Europe at least. They don't have any Farewell message on their site anymore.
https://www.oppodigital.co.uk/index.html
...And it seems like a German company called Heimkino Klohs will take over their business on this continent at least. Let's hope for a continuation of this brand. :)
https://www.heimkinoklohs.de/
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 24 Jun 2018, 02:18 
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Still can't grasp why I'm unable to sell any SACDs, must be a joke that I'm not in on :?
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 24 Jun 2018, 04:40 
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rein-o wrote:
Still can't grasp why I'm unable to sell any SACDs, must be a joke that I'm not in on :?


Try Discogs as well but it really depends on what you are selling.

Just like for LDs, limited boxsets, jazz, classical and Japanese releases tend to command higher value:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=sacd&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1&_sop=16

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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 24 Jun 2018, 05:25 
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Yeah, I see the joke now.
My SACD just passed for 10 bucks while others sold theirs for 25 :crazy:

Welcome to Ebay and the tax juggernaut.
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 Post subject: Re: Cambridge CXUHD, an alternative to OPPO ?
PostPosted: 10 Jul 2018, 12:30 
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I recieved my CXUHD last week and could try some movies / SACD on it !
Here is a little point :

positive points :
- The player is zone 2 / A restricted (because of Japan) but it can also play zone 1 DVD and also PAL and NTSC ! As lot of my european bluray are zone free, I can play 99% of my movie collection !
I think this is because the internationnal version of the player is for US. But as they sell it in Japan, they had to open the Japanese zone !
- The player is really a beauty.
- The remote control is also very beautiful and confortable.
- The movie quality is very good for DVD and bluray. With very natural colors. Coudn't test UHD bluray yet.
- SACD / CD playing is smooth.
- The player is perfectly silent.
- Didn't had any disc non playable for now.
- the DSD to PCM conversion (because I don't have a HDMI DSD DAC for now)
- pure signal option (disconnect the video board, to have a pure audio transport)

negative points :
- SACD signal, DSD (normal) but also PCM (!), is not passing through digital out. I had to use the HDMI out connected to the DVDO edge to redirect the digital signal to my DAC !
Without the Edge, I couldn't get the high resolution PCM signal from the player. Then be careful if you plan to read SACD throught your own DAC. You will need something to take the signal passing through the HDMI.
- impossible for now to remove the horrible wallpaper. (I will try again)
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