Did some more reading especially on the tech differences between Dolby Vision and HDR10 modes especially the bit depth, nit mastering, and amount of colors they're capable of displaying. Decided I do want to get a DV capable player, so it's looking like it will be the 820. Guess I should have spent the extra 150 for an Oppo 203 back at the time instead of getting the x800 1st gen oh well. I get to pay for it now.
I did the same - sold my Oppo 203 for $400 more than I paid after Oppo killed their BD players, and got the 820 due to the tone mapping. That has been really helpful for my projection setup, until I get a projector with it built in. The 820 is not built the way you'd like a $500 disk player to be and I'm also disappointed in the lack of features compared to the Oppo, and the ergonomics - the eject/load button being on top in particular. But that one feature - for projectors - makes up for a LOT. For the OP it doesn't matter though b/c he's using a TV.You have to go into the $1k range now to get the build quality and close to the features of the Oppo. The Pioneer UDP-LX500 seems to be the closest.
I sold my Oppo to get the 820 because of the tone mapping...I regret my decision. The 820 isn't a bad player, but it doesn't have the built quality of the Oppo. I'd be concerned about long-term support from Oppo though...at some point, firmware updates will no longer come. Then again, the Panasonic has needed a firmware update for a while due to some minor disc issues, but they don't seem to be interested.
Well, hopefully the 820 will last long enough for me to benefit from the tone mapping via getting a projector. We don't plan to live in this house forever and I definitely want to be able to add a projector into the mix in the next house. The current house just doesn't really work for something like that.
I think Oppo said they would offer support on the players for 7 years, that would leave a little under 6 years of support available. Not a forever solution by any means but still offers a decent bit of coverage.
Might depend on the budget you set for a projector. More projectors now have some kind of TM built in and that's really where you want it so that it works with all sources, but I'm not sure what the "entry level" for that is in current projectors. (Obviously Craig & Mike can speak to that more.)I end up watching a lot of movies on my AppleTV from a streaming source these days* and sometimes it's noticeably an issue without TM. I have a JVC RS-500 which is 3 generations behind the current 4k lineup. Won't have budget to upgrade for a while yet so the 820 helps some.*I was buying a fair number of 4K BDs but ran out of space so I need to get rid of some, but as streaming quality has increased significantly my desire to own all but the most cherished movies in physical form has waned.
The biggest drop off for me with streaming is the audio quality....whenever I do direct A-B comparisons for people they always pick out the streaming due to the drop off in audio depth. Videophiles can see a difference but it has gotten a lot harder over the years, that's for sure.
Yeah I have a hard time picking out the video differences, but the audio can be really obvious as in my Cloverfield Paradox example above. I also watched the Episode IV disc from the Star Wars 4K box set the other night and compared to the 4K/Atmos streaming version on Disney+ you could hear the difference there as well. Especially some of the bass in the early scenes boarding the vessel. Streaming was a more hollow/boomy sound and didn't reach as low. Though I just remembered I do run with Audyssey's Dynamic EQ on for most of my inputs except discs with a -10 offset. However, while that might account for some of the boomy bass, if the really low end frequencies were there those would have been boosted as well. That wasn't the case so they were just missing. On that old of a track even with the remixing, it was subtle but if you've listened to both versions it's definitely obvious.
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