Wow, this is one of the most egregious consumer electronics scams I’ve ever heard of. Lexicon put out a player called the BD-30, which they said was an enhanced Oppo BDP-83. The Oppo costs $500, the Lexicon $3500. Well, when the testers at Audioholics got their hands on the Lexicon, they cracked it open to check out the guts and found “it was in fact AN OPPO BDP-83 PLAYER, CHASSIS AND ALL, SHOVED INSIDE AN ALUMINUM LEXICON WRAPPER.”
It’s literally an entire player, put inside another player, with buttons over the buttons and everything. I can’t believe any company would be so callous as to do this in the first place, and then so stupid as to think reviewers wouldn’t notice.
Of course, it’s still a perfectly good player — they tested it against its Oppo twin and found absolutely no difference, and the Oppo BDP-83 is one of their favorite players. In a last little joke, the Lexicon is THX-certified while the Oppo isn’t, despite their being the exact same device.
Now, if they had put it in a nicer case, even the way they’ve done it here, and charged an extra hundred bucks, I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye. But three thousand dollars more! Jesus Christ! So remember the name, people: LEXICON. Stay far, far away from these swindlers.
[via Wired]
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
