Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Player Thread

[Gremal]

Originally Posted by Paulo Elias

Curiously, people pay too much attention to this region free business, but it is the intrinsic merits of this Oppo player that truly matters, specifically its audio merits. A friend of mine, who is a dedicate audiophile, has two Oppo players at home, and the 980H is the one used for audio. His gear is state-of-art, so I couldn't have a better reference. My gear, on the other hand, is a lot more mundane, speakers and all, but still the 980H shines!

That is very well stated, Paulo. The Oppo has a solid reputation of superior audio compared to more popular disc machines costing in some cases thousands of dollars. Oppo's support for SACD and multichannel is also an asset to audiophiles, and the existing player is a favorite of Stereophile's Kal Rubinson, who really knows his stuff and has great ears. One would have to be crazy to not get very excited at the prospect of the Oppo BD player in the works, regardless of its region status. Studios have a right to protect their intellectual property in the areas where they have legal authority to distribute it. The BDA has to respect that, and so should Oppo and so should we. That's the view from here.

One of my audio buddies is beta testing Oppo's BD player and I plan to check in with him regularly to get his impressions. Maybe I can even convince him to bring it over for a spin.

[Paulo Elias]

Originally Posted by EWL5

Let me be more specific. Region free talk was forbidden from the thread I am subscribed to that is basically a thread dedicated to beta testers of this player due to an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) by Oppo. You can talk about region free all you want in the other threads (and it would only be met with nothing more than speculation for this player). Sorry for the confusion.

Early word from the beta testers is that it sounds better than the 983 DVD player, which I think was already an improvement on the 980!

Thanks for that info! I am always cautious with words, since people may become a bit sensitive to what you say.

Regarding the Oppo audio features, I made several observations about its performance, trying to compare the analogue outputs with HDMI. I also contacted Oppo to ask their opinion. They were firmly convinced that HDMI is better, by the way, but at any rate these are just options for connections. You can also drive the signal to external upsamplers or digital processors, with interesting results, which means that the Oppo is a very flexible and useful machine!

That is very well stated, Paulo. The Oppo has a solid reputation of superior audio compared to more popular disc machines costing in some cases thousands of dollars. Oppo's support for SACD and multichannel is also an asset to audiophiles, and the existing player is a favorite of Stereophile's Kal Rubinson, who really knows his stuff and has great ears. One would have to be crazy to not get very excited at the prospect of the Oppo BD player in the works, regardless of its region status. Studios have a right to protect their intellectual property in the areas where they have legal authority to distribute it. The BDA has to respect that, and so should Oppo and so should we. That's the view from here.

Yes, well, the studios have their rights and I understand that we have ours, all of them based on the principle of fair use. Personally, I don't think it is funny to buy two or more players, in order to watch movies from other sides of the globe, because I am not a wealthy person and I love movies.

I also feel compelled to tell you, my friend, about facts that you may not be fully aware of:

I have been in this hobby since the days of VCR and Dolby Surround, and for that reason I am 100% sure that what happened to DVD was nothing short of disgraceful. The format was introduced in the US as region 1 and exported to other countries, and that is how I managed to get my earlier discs. At that time, manufacturers and pressing facilities in Brazil were reluctant to adopt as a consumer medium, probably courtesy of the laserdisc, which was never produced locally. It took more than two years for the R4 DVD to take off. In fact, some of the earlier discs were code 0 pressed by independent labels. As a result, by the time the R4 players and discs were released for sale, most users had already grown a considerable R1 collection. Many player manufacturers quickly realized that, in order to sell their R4 players, they had to do something about region coding. I witnessed, believe me or not, Philips reps handling pre-programmed remotes to unlock players in warehouse stores, and they were swiftly followed by the competition.

Now, it so happens that this is one or largest video markets in the Americas, In actuality, it does not matter, except for local distributors, whether exactly you purchase your software, as long as it is legally bought, agreed? In due course, the Brazilian video market had a substantially larger offer of anamorphic DVD's than the US. Wouldn't it be the case of other folks turning their players into multiregion too?

But I suspect that many US studios, despite the digital paranoia surrounding DRM, learned their lessons. Many DVD discs today are authored code free, here and in the US, and RCE is only a sad reminiscence of those earlier days (no RCE discs were produced in this country). I believe that those lessons were the ones which drove Toshiba to design HD-DVD as a code free medium, something that should have occurred, in my humble opinion, with BD video as well. At least, the Blu-Ray people were sensible enough to include all of the Americas and Japan in the same group, and this, I suspect, is not a mere coincidence, because studios must be fully aware of the market flow.

With BD video, we Brazilians are facing the same situation all over again, except that in most cases, subtitles for Brazilian Portuguese are already included in the masters of US and Japan releases. The so-called "Brazilian release" is currently an over priced, imported version of Japanese and US discs, packaged into a thicker, DVD-like, Blu-Ray case, with translated covers. True, there is already a Sony pressing in Manaus, north of the country, prepared to author and press the discs, but when?

I have a longer story of involvement in this business as a hobbyist, but I don't want to bore you with details. Suffice to say that I was the one who once wrote to Columbia, to convince them to include Portuguese subtitles in their US releases, and they did that in the first version of Lawrence Kasdan's "Silverado", a long time ago! Releasing discs with foreign subtitles is, until today, a cheap and useful way to increase sales!

Sorry for the long writing!

One of my audio buddies is beta testing Oppo's BD player and I plan to check in with him regularly to get his impressions. Maybe I can even convince him to bring it over for a spin.

That would be an excellent initiative and I do hope that you post your findings, provided that it doesn't imply in disrupting any previous disclosure agreements.

I firmly believe that Oppo's design philosophy is to make their best in the audio section of their players, regardless of the price.

[EWL5]

Paulo, although your 980 is an audiophile grade player in its own regard, I believe the BDP-83 ups the ante. Don't know if you heard but there is the option of going DSD directly to the built-in DAC's of the player for output via analog. This is almost unheard of in a universal player and definitely stands on its own in this price class. So with the new player you can:

1) Bitstream DSD via HDMI 1.2+
2) Convert DSD to PCM and out via HDMI 1.1+
3) DSD direct to the DAC's and out via analog

The level of flexibility in this upcoming player for SACD is unreal!

[Paulo Elias]

EWL5,

The 980H does all this too! That's why the Oppo support endorses HDMI. As I said I tested both HDMI and analogue outputs and I preferred HDMI, only that my gear is not a reference to anyone: I use an Onkyo SR-605 and JBL front speakers. These are decent speakers, but surely not reference units.

The HDMI handshaking between the 980H and the 605 precludes DSD over HDMI. I tested setting up the 980H to that effect, the player accepts the setting but it continues to playback multichannel LPCM for multichannel at 88.2 kHz sampling rate. The 605 is incapable to decode DSD anyway, but it does playback LPCM competently.

I expect superior audiophile grade components in the new BD player. I am not sure if it would significantly affect performance over HDMI in a system like mine though.

[EWL5]

Originally Posted by Paulo Elias

EWL5,

The 980H does all this too! That's why the Oppo support endorses HDMI. As I said I tested both HDMI and analogue outputs and I preferred HDMI, only that my gear is not a reference to anyone: I use an Onkyo SR-605 and JBL front speakers. These are decent speakers, but surely not reference units.

The HDMI handshaking between the 980H and the 605 precludes DSD over HDMI. I tested setting up the 980H to that effect, the player accepts the setting but it continues to playback multichannel LPCM for multichannel at 88.2 kHz sampling rate. The 605 is incapable to decode DSD anyway, but it does playback LPCM competently.

I expect superior audiophile grade components in the new BD player. I am not sure if it would significantly affect performance over HDMI in a system like mine though.

From Electronic House:

http://www.electronichouse.com/artic...ersal_blu_ray/

"We did not stop at just video performance. We further refined the audio stage, including the addition of discrete stereo outputs and increasing the power and efficiency of the power supply. For SACD playback, the BDP-83 supports direct DSD over HDMI and DSD-to-analog without any PCM conversion, a very unique feature."

AFAIK, DSD to analog is unique to this new Oppo BD player and does not exist in the 980 or any other previous Oppo player.

[shooter3295]

The more I hear about the new OPPO,...the more I like it. Let us hope OPPO keeps the price reasonable. It is quickly becoming a "must have".

I bet they are going to be scarce for the first few months.

[EWL5]

Originally Posted by shooter3295

The more I hear about the new OPPO,...the more I like it. Let us hope OPPO keeps the price reasonable. It is quickly becoming a "must have".

I bet they are going to be scarce for the first few months.

Oppo is currently being overwhelmed by emails from people wanting to participate in the EAP. Each email is read individually by customer service. I'm sure they've already met their quota for EAP and then some!

[Paulo Elias]

Originally Posted by EWL5

From Electronic House:

http://www.electronichouse.com/artic...ersal_blu_ray/

"We did not stop at just video performance. We further refined the audio stage, including the addition of discrete stereo outputs and increasing the power and efficiency of the power supply. For SACD playback, the BDP-83 supports direct DSD over HDMI and DSD-to-analog without any PCM conversion, a very unique feature."

AFAIK, DSD to analog is unique to this new Oppo BD player and does not exist in the 980 or any other previous Oppo player.

To the best of my knowledge, dsd to analogue conversion does not require conversion to pcm, except for HDMI or firewire transmission. In this case, the 980H either outputs DSD over HDMI or converts it to analogue via a simpler and smoother filtering process than typical PCM to analogue decoders. Sending DSD via HDMI is an incredible feature per se, given the price range of the 980H.

Previous to the Oppo, some of the Denons, namely models 2200/2900, are reported as doing the same DAC process, but I cannot confirm this, because I never had neither of these units. Some other players will offer bass management or some other feature, pre-processing the DSD to PCM and then to analogue.

In the 980H, if you set your speaker configuration ("Down-mix") to 5.1, all speakers to Large and Subwoofer to ON, no bass management is made inside the player. I was advised by Oppo to use this setting with HDMI also, which will avoid sending pre-processed LPCM multichannel for every signal processing, including DSD.

This is the best info I can offer to you. It would be advisable to contact Oppo to clarify this point even further, for the sake of accuracy.

[jkwest]

I was really hoping to get some eye's on from CES this year...but, I haven't even heard if Oppo was even there...any newer previews/hands on with this player so far this year?

[oppopioneer]

I contacted Oppo about if they have a bd player coming out soon that will replace the bdp-83 that will be HDMI 1.4 and 3D compliant, they responded back saying they are looking into it but nothing coming out soon.

[EWL5]

Originally Posted by oppopioneer

I contacted Oppo about if they have a bd player coming out soon that will replace the bdp-83 that will be HDMI 1.4 and 3D compliant, they responded back saying they are looking into it but nothing coming out soon.

Not surprising. Oppo is the type of company that will sit back, research the feasibility and economics, and then decide whether or not to come out with a 3D product. Since it's such a small company, they cannot afford to do R&D and/or re-badge someone else's product if 3D doesn't take a hold. Oppo is a very shrewd company. It's no wonder that many companies have licensed their designs and marked it up!

[oppopioneer]

Originally Posted by EWL5

Not surprising. Oppo is the type of company that will sit back, research the feasibility and economics, and then decide whether or not to come out with a 3D product. Since it's such a small company, they cannot afford to do R&D and/or re-badge someone else's product if 3D doesn't take a hold. Oppo is a very shrewd company. It's no wonder that many companies have licensed their designs and marked it up!

I wonder though how much of Oppo's internal parts are patended and designed by Oppo in-house. For example the Anchor Bay chip was chosen by Oppo to be put in their players. I think Oppo cherry picks which vendor's products to put in their players, they'll pick only the highest quality products from other companies though, I give them credit for that, they don't cheap out in that department. One of the few electronic companies that still tries to make most of it's own patended products in-house is Apple who have far greater quality control compared to other companies.

[EWL5]

Originally Posted by oppopioneer

I wonder though how much of Oppo's internal parts are patended and designed by Oppo in-house. For example the Anchor Bay chip was chosen by Oppo to be put in their players. I think Oppo cherry picks which vendor's products to put in their players, they'll pick only the highest quality products from other companies though, I give them credit for that, they don't cheap out in that department. One of the few electronic companies that still tries to make most of it's own patended products in-house is Apple who have far greater quality control compared to other companies.

Quality components don't guarantee a great product. As a matter of fact, the only components I consider high quality in the Oppo would be the ABT video chip and the DSD to analog DAC's. However, a cheap power supply and other innards in the analog path have sabotaged the usefulness of those DAC's. The Denon 3800 is bursting with high quality electronics and I prefer the analog sound coming from it compared to the Oppo. As an overall package, however, the Oppo feels more complete than the Denon due to having more positives. It really boils down to how the parts come together that makes a product great.

[neo_reloaded]

Anyone have trouble with the 2012 menu not working right? When I click an option, the new layer that appears does so on top of an existing layer, so it's very difficult to read (multiple layers of transparent text overlapping). And then you can't go back to previous layers because the up and down arrows seem to not do anything at that point.

[oppopioneer]

I'm in a dilemma, I have a bunch of old family videos on VHS that I would like to record/convert over to cd so I can watch in my bd player. My bd player is a Pioneer Elite BDP-23FD. The cd's I have to copy on are Memorex 16x DVD-R discs, and the others are Philips CD-R discs. Does it matter which cd's I use that will work in bd players? Does the Pio player recognize and read those kind of discs or would I need a universal player like the Oppo bdp-83?

[Blove23]

Originally Posted by oppopioneer

I'm in a dilemma, I have a bunch of old family videos on VHS that I would like to record/convert over to cd so I can watch in my bd player. My bd player is a Pioneer Elite BDP-23FD. The cd's I have to copy on are Memorex 16x DVD-R discs, and the others are Philips CD-R discs. Does it matter which cd's I use that will work in bd players? Does the Pio player recognize and read those kind of discs or would I need a universal player like the Oppo bdp-83?

It plays them without a problem!

[oppopioneer]

I contacted Oppo about what is the best method/process to update the machine when a firmware update is available. This was their response in email:

For Firmware Upgrades we generally recommend using the CD or USB methods, as BETA Firmware will not be accessible when using Ethernet.

If you want to use the Ethernet output, you need to connect the player to your router (if applicable) or modem using an Ethernet cable.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.
2629B Terminal Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Service@oppodigital.com
Tel: 650-961-1118
Fax: 650-961-1119

[HDTV1080P]

A issue using the Pioneer PRO-141FD and PRO-101FD with a OPPO BDP-83

I have the OPPO BDP-83 set to up convert everything to 36 bit deep color when connected to a PRO-141FD and PRO-101FD. The blacks are very deep and the overall picture quality looks excellent even though all source material on Blu-ray is native 24 bit color depth.

On two different OPPO BDP-83's and two different Pioneers I am able to reproduce a minor glitch when the OPPO communicates with the display. Perhaps this problem only occurs when the OPPO tries to communicate with the Pioneer and might not happen on other brands or models of displays. Also I did not try turning off 36 bit deep color to see if the glitch goes away. I am not sure if the problem started to occur after the latest 1224 firmware update or if the problem was there before.

Normally before I turn on the OPPO BDP-83, I first will switch the Pioneer display to the HDMI input that the OPPO player is connected too or switch the Pioneer A/V receiver to the HDMI input that the OPPO player is connected too. After doing that I turn on the OPPO BDP-83. Doing this every time produces an excellent picture with deep black levels and excellent results with 36 bit deep color upconvert.

The problem (The gray black level glitch)

Once and a while I started turning on the OPPO BDP-83 before I switch the Pioneer display to the HDMI input that the BLU-RAY player is connected too or before I switch the A/V receiver to the Blu-ray HDMI input. Almost every time when I turn on the BLU-RAY player first I noticed that the OPPO main menu appears to have grayer or lighter blacks. Then when I play a movie the black levels are terrible since they look gray. To fix the problem I have to power cycle the OPPO BDP-83. Then once I do that the picture is excellent with deep blacks and excellent image again.

The correct order to turn on equipment to get the deepest blacks and best picture quality

1. First switch the Pioneer PRO-141FD or PRO-101FD monitor or A/V receiver to the BLU-RAY HDMI input.

2. Second push the OPPO BDP-83 player power button to power up the player.

Ways to reproduce the gray blacks and overall lower picture quality (I am using 36 bit deep color and firmware 1224, I did not try other firmware or try turning off deep color)

1. If the OPPO BDP-83 has been turned off for a couple of hours then power on the OPPO BDP-83 (a warm player will not reproduce the issue, it has to be off for awhile).

2. Now switch the Pioneer PRO-141FD or PRO-101FD input to the BLU-RAY HDMI input. If you have a A/V receiver then switch the A/V receiver to the BLU-RAY HDMI input mode.

It would be ideal if OPPO would release a firmware update to fix this issue

[oppopioneer]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

A issue using the Pioneer PRO-141FD and PRO-101FD with a OPPO BDP-83

I have the OPPO BDP-83 set to up convert everything to 36 bit deep color when connected to a PRO-141FD and PRO-101FD. The blacks are very deep and the overall picture quality looks excellent even though all source material on Blu-ray is native 24 bit color depth.

On two different OPPO BDP-83's and two different Pioneers I am able to reproduce a minor glitch when the OPPO communicates with the display. Perhaps this problem only occurs when the OPPO tries to communicate with the Pioneer and might not happen on other brands or models of displays. Also I did not try turning off 36 bit deep color to see if the glitch goes away. I am not sure if the problem started to occur after the latest 1224 firmware update or if the problem was there before.

Normally before I turn on the OPPO BDP-83, I first will switch the Pioneer display to the HDMI input that the OPPO player is connected too or switch the Pioneer A/V receiver to the HDMI input that the OPPO player is connected too. After doing that I turn on the OPPO BDP-83. Doing this every time produces an excellent picture with deep black levels and excellent results with 36 bit deep color upconvert.

The problem (The gray black level glitch)

Once and a while I started turning on the OPPO BDP-83 before I switch the Pioneer display to the HDMI input that the BLU-RAY player is connected too or before I switch the A/V receiver to the Blu-ray HDMI input. Almost every time when I turn on the BLU-RAY player first I noticed that the OPPO main menu appears to have grayer or lighter blacks. Then when I play a movie the black levels are terrible since they look gray. To fix the problem I have to power cycle the OPPO BDP-83. Then once I do that the picture is excellent with deep blacks and excellent image again.

The correct order to turn on equipment to get the deepest blacks and best picture quality

1. First switch the Pioneer PRO-141FD or PRO-101FD monitor or A/V receiver to the BLU-RAY HDMI input.

2. Second push the OPPO BDP-83 player power button to power up the player.

Ways to reproduce the gray blacks and overall lower picture quality (I am using 36 bit deep color and firmware 1224, I did not try other firmware or try turning off deep color)

1. If the OPPO BDP-83 has been turned off for a couple of hours then power on the OPPO BDP-83 (a warm player will not reproduce the issue, it has to be off for awhile).

2. Now switch the Pioneer PRO-141FD or PRO-101FD input to the BLU-RAY HDMI input. If you have a A/V receiver then switch the A/V receiver to the BLU-RAY HDMI input mode.

It would be ideal if OPPO would release a firmware update to fix this issue

So to easily clarity:

Turn on the tv and a/v first, set it to the HDMI input that the bd player is connect to, then turn on the Oppo last, right?

[oppopioneer]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

[CENTER][B][U][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri][SIZE=3]
It would be ideal if OPPO would release a firmware update to fix this issue

Just email Oppo right now and tell them this, they will update it send a firmware update out. They're excellent with quick replies to customer questions and requests. They're amazing. Make sure you use the CD or USB method to update.