Goodbye to an honoured and excellent brand

Perhaps you could call it a coda to an outstanding symphony of audio/videophile tech.

Oppo Digital, the company whose products have won it many awards over the years – and which deserved them – has announced it's winding down its operations.

Say it isn't so, Oppo!

The announcement on the company's website as of April 2, came as a big surprise to me. I've been reviewing the company's products since they first appeared on the North American scene and have yet to find one that wasn't a great addition to whichever market niche it was invading. From TV's to DAC (digital-to-analogue converters) and high-end headphones, the company has offered a consistent string of remarkable performance and value, culminating in their release last year of two4KUHD universal networked disc players.

Those two UHD players, to me, at the high-water mark of Oppo's presence, but they're also merely logical next steps in the company's line of products. I first reviewed one of their up converting DVD players when the company was just getting established here, the DVD-970HD, and noted at the time that it offered more bang for the buck than it really had any right to.

Shortly after that I tried what I believe is the only TV Oppo ever offered, a 20 inch LCD unit that came with a DVD player built in and offered so much flexibility of connection it wasn't funny. The only real issue I had with that TV was that it was "old fashioned" "full frame" at a time when