Upcoming universal player releases any new info?

Simple suggestion: buy a Denon or Marantz and have it modded,or buy a used Esoteric DV-50, and don't worry now about next generation players. Within 9 months there will be bluray and hd-dvd players, and there are other pressures to move away from players and into pc-based systems. Format development will continue to evolve, and the 'universal' of the future may be quite different. So just set yourself up to enjoy the discs that exist now and don't look for long term stability in high resolution or cd players.

The top player right now for 2500.00 or less is the Onkyo sp 1000 for audio and video and build quality.
Its been compared to the Marantz 9500, Pioneer 59avi, Denon 5900 and 3910 and came out on top in every category in both reveiws.

I have personally compared it to the 5900 and 3910 and it is superior whith film based dvd as well as audio.

The dv-50 would be a small improvement for audio and a downgrade for video,from what I have heard from an actual owner of both.
EVS,as well as RAM East are looking to have mod packages for the sp 1000.

As far as hi def dvd goes, I doubt you will see any player for at least a year, with 3-4 more years of waiting for enough source material to make buying a player feasable.

Greg

Where can the reviews of the SP1000 be found?

The only pro reveiws so far are in German and French as this is a newer model.
Go to the avs forums dvd section under the Integra dps 10.5 (same player) and you will find somewhat translated versions of both reveiws of the sp 1000 as well as dozens of owner opinions and comparisons to other universals.
There are also the links to the actual reveiws if you can read German and/or French.
The sp 1000 sells for around 5k U.S.in the east and Europe and 2k in the U.S. and Canada.

Skip the first 2-3 pages of the thread as it was speculation before these two players were released.

If you read the entire thread, you will find nothing negative except a firmware upgrade needed for hdmi/dvi hookups.
This is a problem with pretty much all hdmi to dvi players and the patch is on the way.

This is the only universal I have ever seen get a unanimous thumbs up like this, in the 2.5k and under class.

Greg

I agree with Greg. I have an Integra DPS 10.5, and had a Denon 3910 for about a month. The longer I had the Denon, the less I liked it. The Integra (Onkyo) is built better than anything I have seen yet. The video is the best I have seen too...even with the alleged HDMI->DVI bug mentioned above.

In my system, the 10.5 replaced a Lexicon RT-10 which replaced a Theta Carmen II. The Lex had the nicest sound of the players I have had, but the video was not even in the same league as the 10.5.

I don't mean to say that the audio is bad on the 10.5 at all, because it is not. And I still can't say why I think the lex was better with the audio.

I must also say that it seemed to me that the 10.5 took some "burn-in" time, which I will never understand. But for this player, it improved on its "presence" (a stolen adjective from Greg on the AVS Forum). I am hopeful that the modders Greg mentioned will come up with some improvements that will take the audio beyond the DV-50...with any luck.

Dave