Playto Oppo BDP-103d/105D?

[Harblar 29]

So, I've been searching around for the best options for controlling and playing my media collection. With the iPad app about to hit the apple store I can't help but wonder if there isnt a better way to play my files. than through an HTPC.

 

The HTPC is great in several regards, but still, it can be tempermental in getting everything to play nicely together. Get Blurays looking nice, and the HD-DVD's and SD content looks choppy. Smooth that out and the blurays stutter. Only solution ATM is to be on the ball with the keyboard and mouse to make manual config changes to the pc. While it works, it's pretty inelegant... and lets not even mention the fact that to get 3d movies to play requires an external player and a whole other can of worms.

 

Before I ripped all my blurays to mkv I had an Oppo BDP-83 Bluray player. This played everything i threw at it Fantastically! (dvd's, blurays, cd's... anything, with no changes needed in the configuration whatsoever) I dare say I have yet to get anything on my HTPC to look as good or play as smoothly. The one thing it won't do is play files over the network... but the new BDP-103d and 105d will. They even support MKV's. (and a whole ton of other formats)

 

So... onto my question. Since the iPad app has a really slick method of selecting where a movie will playto is it safe to assume that one could simply tell that app to play to this Bluray player (which I'm pretty sure is DLNA compliant? Has anyone done this yet (with an Oppo BDP) using the desktop server? If so, how were the results? Were the videos Transcoded or sent direct to the player? What about Lossless audio and subtitles?

 

The Oppo handles tons of formats, so if you could play direct to it and let it handle the decoding I have to figure the results would be stunning, to say the least! 

 

The BDP103d/105d also is compatible with the Roku Stick, so this might be an option as well. I don't know much about the roku stick and dont know if it would passthrough the file to the player or if it would get transcoded before being sent to the the stick. If it would passthrough to the player, this would also be a very viable option.

 

Anyway... I'm half tempted to buy a BDP103d ($599 not bad considering the video processing power) and give it a shot. Just thought I'd see if anyone else had thought of or tried it first. This could be an awesome option for people looking tor audio/videophile grade playback in a deticated hometheater environment, yet still wanting the simplicity and easy of use of MediaBrowser.

 

Thoughts?