Last week saw the the death of an innovative camera brand, and this week will see one the world’s best audio and video divisions start to wind up. It’s the end of Oppo Digital.
It’s never good to see great companies go down, and yet that’s exactly what is happening over at Oppo Digital, the arm of Oppo unrelated to the smartphone division that most people connect the brand with.
This week, Oppo Digital has announced that it “will gradually stop manufacturing new products”, though “existing products will continue to be supported” and that means warranties will also still be valid. In fact, while Oppo Digital has no plans to release new products, it will still release firmware updates from time to time, meaning current 4K-compatible Blu-ray players made by Oppo could still see updates for a few years yet.
Locally in Australia and New Zealand, Oppo’s distribution is handled by Interdyn, and its directors reached out to Pickr to say that it has enough stock to fulfil “current demand levels for much of 2018”, though advised that anyone keen for an Oppo device before they ran out should do so earlier, rather than later when products become scarce.
“It brings us sadness to say that Oppo Digital products won’t be manufactured into the future,” said Evgeny Vizelman, Director at Interdyn.
“Interdyn has been planning around this development and we continue to grow by bringing exciting new brands to market,” he said, adding that Interdyn’s “latest additions include SVS and Roon”.
As for what this means for Oppo Digital, we’re looking into that. Oppo Digital’s Blu-ray players have become the gold standard for Blu-ray, while its headphones provided some of the best use of planar magnetic in a small and compact size, and it would be a shame to see that just fade away, lost to future generations.
We’re checking to find out whether Oppo Digital’s efforts won’t mean its hardware will be produced by anyone else in the future, but right now that seems to be the end of the PM headphone series and the excellent UDP Blu-ray drives.
Oppo’s mobile division won’t be affected by this change, and will remain. Maybe we’ll get to see Oppo Digital’s headphone tech make its way to the Oppo phone boxes. Maybe.
