High Quality Universal Player??

Obviously, the Pioneer is a much better built machine. The power supply, chassis and circuit isolation are reminiscent of the top Denon players of the 90's, but with today's top digital technology. Too bad it doesn't have USB input for Tidal streaming. I real deal breaker for many.

Dave

The Pioneer does have two USB inputs, one in the front and one in the back, and one can access a server with the 88FD to play files from the server. I am not a Tidal subscriber, and I am not sure if one can get Tidal with the 88FD currently. I am guessing not currently, but Pioneer has begun to support Tidal in the past year or so for some of their AV receivers. The 88FD is updateable.

Rwwear - With respect to the Oppo UDP-205, I am considering it, too. I actually bought the Pioneer for my living room, but I have been very impressed with it in my main audio system as a disc player. I am waiting to read owner impressions on the UDP-205’s audio performance. It seems it will have the newest, and presumably best, ESS Sabre dac. I just wanted to put the Pioneer in the mix for the consideration of others who are researching universal players. It really is a nice player for optical disc playback. For a point of reference, I have owned the aforementioned Sony, a Modwright Oppo 83-SE, an Audio Aero Capitole, a Cary 306/200, and a Naim 5i.

Cool thaluza, every opinion is pertinent.

"The Pioneer does have two USB inputs, one in the front and one in the back, and one can access a server with the 88FD to play files from the server."

I stand corrected thaluzza. Thank you. It is very hard to tell from the small pics on Pioneer’s website and I missed this in the text: "The BDP-88FD is also designed to play high resolution music content from USB, disc, and hard drive devices."

This Pioneer looks like a real contender in this <$2k marketspace. However, the only review I could find said that it only supported streaming from YouTube and Picasa for those that are interested. 

Dave