Lexicon is well-known in the high-end circles of audio and home theater enthusiasts, with a great reputation for building high-quality products that justify their equally-high price tags. Home theater customers looking to get a Blu-ray to match the rest of their Lexicon equipment, or just looking for the best of the best, received good news back in September when Lexicon introduced their BD-30 Blu-ray Player.

There was no secret made about the fact that their new player was based on the Oppo BD-83 Blu-ray player, and Lexicon representatives told attendees at the September CEDIA show that Lexicon would be using the Oppo player as a foundation to which additional improvements would be applied. Given the great reviews that the Oppo player has received, it certainly sounded like a good idea for Lexicon to start with a great player and make it better.

However, the end result resembles a repackaging of the Oppo player without any noticeable improvements, according to a recent review by home theater site Audioholics:

According to the reps at the show, Lexicon had merely taken components of that player and tweaked them to make it their own - adding technology and making improvements to what was a good basic building block.

What a load of hogwash. When we received the player the first thing we did was open it up to get a look at the inside. Imagine my surprise when I found that not only did the Lexicon share the same boards and transport as the Oppo - it was in fact AN OPPO BDP-83 PLAYER, CHASSIS AND ALL, SHOVED INSIDE AN ALUMINUM LEXICON WRAPPER. As far as we could determine, Lexicon didn't change a single thing in terms of the hardware. Heck, they didn't even lift the boards out of the chassis, opting instead to cut out the bottom of their own chassis to accommodate the venting locations, and putting a darker blue filter over the Oppo's VFD display to give it a slightly deeper hue.

Worse yet, it appears that recent firmware upgrades released by Oppo to fix some issues found since its release are not available for the Lexicon players. You can read the full article on the Audioholics web site by clicking on the Read link below.

So, what does this mean for you, the home theater enthusiast and Lexicon fan?

From the looks of the Audioholics review, you can buy the OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player for $500 and save yourself $3,000 off the list price of the Lexicon-branded unit! What could you do with $3,000? Most home theater enthusiasts have no trouble answering that question, so this just reinforces the value that the Oppo BD-83 represents in the upper tier of Blu-ray players.

Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Player

What do we think of the Oppo BD-83?

On paper, it seems like a great player and the company was very open during their pre-release testing, even if it seems a little high-priced for the average consumer application (read our comments). But nothing takes the place of getting something in and checking it out in person, and we are doing just that. Stay tuned for our review of the Oppo BD-83 in the near future!