Welcome me to the 1990's!

[Rich-n-Texas]

Lol you clearly didn't sense the sarcasm in my post...

I didn't either, but OTOH I got my sarcasm detector from GM so...

I'm 29 years old, I've been building my stereo system for less than 2 years and was waiting out the HD wars before I purchased a player, and made my final decision to purchase DVD over Blu-Ray.

Can't argue with that because IMO the lines haven't been drawn yet between the two technologies.

Nevertheless, if money wasn't so much an object, I'd probably have a PS3 AND an Oppo 981 in my A/V rack. The Oppo's are clearly a good value and a major step up over the run-of-the-mill DVD players these days. And when an American company puts something like that out on the market my inclination is to support and reward them by giving them my business.

But I do have to agree (and this is where a functional Detector would be useful) that BD titles aren't that expensive. I purchased from Amazon, a "Legends of Jazz:" BD that was recommended by a member here that absolutely blows away any DVD in picture and sound quality in my collection. It ain't even close. Cost was $13.95 shipped. I own more concert DVD's than movies and my PS3 gives me excellent detail in both sight and sound. About the only thing I use my Progressive DVD changer for anymore is to load it up, crank up the volume and go do chores and such around the house.

In any event, both my DVD player and your Blu-Ray player will be obsolete in 4 years time.

This one I'm not so sure about. If more and more movie studios are getting on board with the Blu-ray format then I think four years is unrealistic, and even if it is, how many people keep their same equipment for say... five years? On the other side of the coin, you heard from one person who mentioned that he's still running Windows 98 (Good Lord JM!!!) so I'd say there's more than a 4 year lag for acceptance of new tech such as Blu-ray AND VOD. What components will one need to purchase in order to utilize VOD? I'm able to purchase VOD titles over FIOS which means an STB and a MoCa router are required.

However, the Oppo was a reasonably priced purchase for me, and I can enjoy tens of thousands of titles costing next to nothing (I don't rent media, but this is a personal preference). To be honest I couldn't care less about the higher definition video or audio quality offered by Blu-Ray. I own a 2-channel stereo system and 90% of my time is spent listening to music. But for that occasional time when I want to enjoy a movie, its nice to have the best upconverting DVD player ever built, in terms of video processing.

It was certainly the right solution for you. Enjoy!