Best hardware DLNA renderer?

You have a few options. One is to get the DLNA rendered integrated in the DAC. The PS audio perfectwave with bridge would be in a good choice. They show used a lot - very reasonably priced.

The thing to look out for in anything that beats the 103 is not so much "horsepower", but clocking accuracy and quality of powersupply.

First, if you do not use any of the analog outputs, it is advisable to disconnect the powersupply from the analog board in your Oppo. This should improves performance of your digital transport.

You can wait for someone to build an Oppo 103 based optimized as a digital transport. It will happen eventually. Expect $2-4K pricerange. Again, look for clocking and powersupply upgrade.

In fact, MSB just release a player based on the Oppo 103 - which is probably the best DLNA streamer money can buy at this point in time. They rebuild the whole digital section and it has upgraded clocking and power. The base configuration will set you back $6600, but you can throw $16,000 worth of upgrade options at it (clock and power). Probably out of your pricerange....

Another option is to upgrade your 103. You can get a linear powersupply for below $300 (check for "Dr. Lee"), and there are DIY or installed clocking upgrade options as well.

thanks Edorr for the guidance. I rarely use the analog outputs so I'll try disconnecting their power. I was also contemplating a next system upgrade to be a system power conditioner which may bring in additional benefits. And I'll start investigating the PS Audio DLNA server.

DLNA is a surprise to me, I was expecting MP3 like performance and instead got playback that was more musically natural than the JK MkIII asynch USB to SPDIF with none of the tweaking and PC resource stripping used. Harmonic colors are much more correct, I'm not being ambushed by random aggressiveness and vocals never have a "sandpaper" edge. No Jplay or Fidelizer needed and because the PC is running in "normal" mode I can use all the remote options with JRiver MC in theater mode.

With my Perfectwave DAC, DLNA streaming (using the $800 PS Audio bridge) was equivalent to using a $2000 music server, a $2000 Offramp5 USB converter with optional $1000 powersupply and $1000 digital cable, so close to 10x better price performance....