"Production models can play PAL DVD titles in native PAL High Definition video mode (720P/1080i @ 50 Hz) as well as native NTSC High Definition video mode (720P/1080i @ 60 Hz); they will be able to play PAL DVD titles with NTSC HD TVs in NTSC HD resolution."

p_n

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So far, it's seldom seeing a product doing everything well. Mostly it's build around (commercial) trade-offs/ compromises. In this case, the difficulty for the design teams most possibly was to make the electronics deal with as many playback-formats as possible, with as high a standard of reproduction-quality for each individual format as possible.

Each customer it's own needs and interests: each their own product. In this case, as said, the Oppo gearing towards higher playback-quality, the Helios towards more playback-flexibility.

p_n

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Just to clarify (I can be dense):

By "playback flexibility", do you mean the number of formats that a player can read?

By "playback quality", do you mean the degree of the player's fidelity to the source?

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Yesterday I bought a Canon DC50 camcorder (doubling as digital camera), a 'higher'-quality/ high-compatibility piece due to a high 'maximum bit rate' MPEG2/ high effective pixel count of 3690K (against 2000K-ish of most competitors), even (especially?) compared with HDV and AVCHD gear.
I'm not by far like a second Quaserman in both my knowledge and/or my handling of this topic, but having shot with several different HD camera's (all around the $1.5K mark) last two weeks did learn me some. Non-HDV/AVCHD movies look more natural to me: not primarily a technology or cost issue, but a performance one (damn: do I, man of all things blue-ray and up-converting, write this?: it is what I experienced buying a camcorder though...).

p_n

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