It's a very nice machine! Smarter would prob be for HT fans to wait for proper 4K/UHD Blu-ray players at this stage (esp at this kind of money). They are just around the corner...
Pretty much aimed at the 2 channel crowd who want the ability to play blu-ray from one box and probably will pay the extra for the fact that it matches the rest of their Arcam setup. For anyone else I think it would be a tough sell.
I would be more interested to see what Oppo have waiting in the wings for 4k blu-ray or even the current BDP-105 as Steve mentions in the podcast.
I don't doubt it will sound good but my biggest issue with Arcam in recent years has been their software bugs, lets hope this is not one of those cases.
I'm on my third. This one works fine but has a mark through to bare metal on the top right corner of the front bezel. Steve...could you have a look at yours?
First player had a dead transport, second was slightly fussy with discs and had a blemish on the edge of the bezel. Third is perfect in operation except for the slight damage in transport. If it wasn't £1200 I wouldn't care as much!
There were no marks on the review sample that I was sent Damian and it was a brand new unit. However for £1,200 I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a player that's free of any marks or blemishes!