New Oppo Blu-ray Player

High-performance Blu-ray Disc manufacturer Oppo Digital followed through Monday on announcing the release of its long-promised Ultra HD Blu-ray player, which will be the first of its kind with pending support of Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) in addition to HDR10.

Like many Oppo Blu-ray players, the new UDP-203 will also bring high-quality music playback, with support for most of the leading Hi Rez Audio formats, and “universal disc” playback compatibility, including support for: Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, CDs, DVDs, DVD-Audio and SACD discs, among others.

Most importantly, the Oppo UDP-203, which will be available shortly through the Oppo web site for a $549selling price, supports the playback of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs, outputting 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution, a wide color gamut of up to the Rec. 2020 standard and the HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR systems. The company said its player will have the necessary hardware to support Dolby Vision following a planned firmware update in early 2017.

Both HDR10 (which is standard on all Ultra HD Blu-ray players) and Dolby Vision (which is voluntarily supported by manufacturers) will produce refined contrast, greater brightness, and expanded color for new levels of clarity and detail. Dolby Vision will add such advances as up to 12-bit color support (the minimum standard is only up to 10-bit) and dynamic metadata for scene-by-scene color grading on supported content and displays.