Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog

All the good ideas have been gone in high end AV industry? Why work hard for something original when you can just license it and use your brand to warrant charging huge extra for the same electronics? Are high-end brands just becoming marketing and no real engineering or quality benefits…

In earlier blog post there was information that Ayre DX-5 bluray player was a modified Oppo BDP-83 blueray player. The repackaged device with new power supply changed the price from $500 to $10000.

Now there is another similar case. Now it looks there is even less modifications.

AV Rant #163: Bacon Wrapped Vegan blog posting says that Lexicon BD-30 looks like Oppo. Audioholics article Oppo on the Inside, Lexicon on the Outside shows that inside Lexicon BD-30’s beautiful chassis there is Oppo BDP-83. The article says that 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. The article claims that Lexicon actually put a full Oppo BDP-83 INSIDE of a chassis, slapped a label on it and is shipping it for $3000 more. Don’t take our word for it, however, check out these pics. Where they went wrong, however, was when they simply lifted the Oppo BDP-83 player and threw it into their own chassis without making any performance enhancing modifications – despite claims to have done just that. What they’ve done doesn’t seem to even begin to justify the exorbitant price markup

We live in a world where everyone is building products with other peoples parts. It is just not possible to design and manufacture many electronics devices (even very possible) from “ground up”.
For most companies it’s simply not cost effective to produce their own DVD / BD players or other very complicated digital audio/video device. So the high-end manufacturers that make this kind of devices need to take some shortcuts and use ready made components. What they are now doing on those examples doesn’t seem to even begin to justify the exorbitant price markup. Has high end industry become to state where High End is just repackaged consumer electronics with huge price markup?