Oppo BDP-83 BD/DVD/DVD-A/SACD/CD Universal Player User Feedback

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My view is that the better players have better audio quality with LPCM digital audio outputs, be it CD over spdif or BD over HDMI, and wonder if the Oppo continues this trend? In particular, when playing through your Onkyo, how much improvement do you get when switching from lpcm to bitstream?

BTW, I don't think I've ever heard you say "exceptional", "incredible" or "wow" when describing any product before. Pecker will presumably be along shortly to complain about inappropriate use of hyperbole in AV circles.

Lucky bugger,

Nick

Mod Edit: Keeping it short and sweet for this thread see post 7, and no, Pecker won't be discussing it here.
 
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BTW, I don't think I've ever heard you say "exceptional", "incredible" or "wow" when describing any product before. Pecker will presumably be along shortly to complain about inappropriate use of hyperbole in AV circles.

yes not normally my style at all, prefering a more feet on the ground approach but this is a bit special.

Playback and features

Remote is a departure for Oppo. It is backlit and well laid out though is of the study plastic variety. Works well though and I am using channel B so not to mix up with my national Oppo collection here (983, 981, 971 (straight and SDI'd) and 970. Must get around to getting that 980 one day ;) Remote doesn't have the class of the player but no real complaints here. Channel A is the same as the DVD players, and I will use my Oppo region B2 player, if we ever see it, on the channel C.

IR can be passed from other Oppo devices like the excellent HDMI switch box around the place.

Set up wizard is simple and easy to get you going. Tag owners will remember this well. Menu structure is a typical home based ones as opposed to a Sony style one. It will be familiar territory to all.

CDs play fine
DTS CDs I am not sure about atm!!
SACD play fine (inc DSD output)
DVD A sometimes plays but is still a little flakey (though only just added this capability to the firmware in the last week and this was expected)
Dual discs I also got playing!!! Which considering they are not supported and the discs was scratched was quite an accomplishment
DVDs play fine
Blu rays play fine
Haven't got around to other formats yet.

So just throwing a random assessment of discs at the player all seem to work atm though it is obviously very early days. I have experienced no glitches or drop outs except on DVD A and CD DTS but this is on a digital connection but at this stage I don't even know if it is an Oppo issue or Onkyo. Analogue may be different again.. The discs appear to run fine

The player is region locked, I can confirm that ;)

There is plenty of information available on the player if you need to find out what it is doing. The player is a speed king and POTC 1 loaded in just over 25 secs I think, tbh it is difficult to time due to other components in the system now becoming the limiting bit. Certainly on par with the PS3 and probably better at certain things. A quantum change from my original Samsung 1000! It basically behaves like a normal DVD player and I can't see anyone being bothered by timings once you get to this level. Waiting 5 mins is a different kettle of fish and is now a thing of the past for me.

Setting / and features out of the box seem to have been well considered as the defaults and I literally plugged the unit in and was up and running in seconds.

At this stage I am starting to feel quite guilty as I usually find all the chinks in a players armour in 30 mins but this is looking more and more like a throughbreed. My desire to even bother to try a Pioneer 91 are going very rapidly (when they bother with the firmware update)

PSU is multi voltage. Player is fully loaded with digital and analogue interfaces. [a digital only one could give decent cost savings here].

For those that hate black bars, well this is the player for you. I spent many minutes playing last night on this. It has a smart Zoom feature with well set out presets. Cool feature if you want it. Usual quality restriction apply but great feature. One I didn't expect to like as an OAR purist.

All sorts of bit depths etc, many of which I can't even exploit in my pretty upto date system so very future proofed for that new projector in 2 years time.

Firmware updates are by CD-R and USB. Worked well on the 983, see no reason that it won't again. I hope the front USB2 socket will allow updates, have to wait for an update, which knowing Oppo will not be too long. It will make updates very easy. The player will also let the user know when updates are available as well if you want (and are connected).

Layer change fast and faster than their 983. It should not bother anyone.

Cooling is essential for all the processing under this hood and it appears the majority of this is done passively (and silently) but with a fan for back up. Best of both worlds and a quiet solution on my system. Good stuff.

Looking just at DVD playback features, the 83 looses these features of the 983, MR and component output at 1080p but the 83 adds these 24p output with ‘NTSC' disc, 480i over HDMI, source direct, new controls for edge enhancement, detail enhancement, NR and a fun Demo Mode.

tbh it would really be easier to state what this player doesn't have and that is wireless capability. Pretty much everything else has been put in there. It is a hugely complex player, certainly the most complex I ever have tested and reminds me more of the latest receivers than DVD / CD players of old.

Calibration disc allows set up of HD or SD VC1 or SD MPEG2 and there is a whole pile of SD and HD stuff on there.

Any suggestions for PinP disc? In the setup you can enable PinP and still have bitstream as the HDMI output. I will test to see if bitstream drop to PCM for PinP.

MORE TO COME
 
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Any suggestions for PinP disc? In the setup you can enable PinP and still have bitstream as the HDMI output. I will test to see if bitstream drop to PCM for PinP.

MORE TO COME

Resident Evil: Extinction? the manual mentions TrueHD will be sent DTS bitstream over HDMI/optical/coaxail with Secondary audio ON could you check that Nic?
Cheers.
 
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Video quality digital

SD via HDMI performance is at least on par with the Oppo 983, so basically top flight. Best I have seen from an HD optical player directly. In fact things like 24p output take it a stage further in my book. PAL performance is equally as strong as NTSC (though is more difficult to do due to region restrictions. The gut hunch is it is doing things right on the films I have seen. Can't find my First Contact disc though. For people who want to compare with Toshiba XE1, then this player is demonstrably better. Against the 983 it is hard to call, I am not sure I could call it. Compared to my battle ship SD DVD player references (Tag DVD32rs, Onkyo 1000, Toshiba 9500 and Arcam 29) then this player is better than them all. No one is going to be disappointed here. Films look right and it passes the major test without incident.

HD via HDMI delivers a glorious vibrant and punchy picture which everyone will love. It appears to be a text book implementation of DVDO / ABT technology. Those that are familiar with DVDO / ABT gear will have a good grasp of the capabilities already. I see no obvious signs ‘post processing' when defeating the options (edge, NR etc etc) and the player really can operate as a source direct transport which is really great. Feeding a HD 1 directly clearly shows how much better the technology is in this player compared with the HD 1. No one is going to be disappointed here.

All video performance really seems top draw and it is much easier to use than any other player I have had to date. Despite the complexity of this player, it remains easy to use and fast to operate, especially jumping between chapter where it is MUCH faster than say a PS3.

MORE TO FOLLOW
 
The player is region locked, I can confirm that.

Nic,

Just in case (forever the optomist :thumbsup:) would you mind just giving the 983 region reset handset code a go?

Region free: 1) No disc 2) Press Set Up 3) Press 9210 4) Press 0 5) Press Set Up
 
just to satisfy the two rude emails I had, here some pictures :) sorry todays paper is not in there :cool:
 

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Nic... excellent review :thumbsup:

I am also interested in the 7.1 analogue outs, as that is how mine will be connected to my 640R.

Also by any chance can you watch HD movie trailers (Quicktime/MOV) from a USB stick? This would be awesome if it supported this. Also are you in a position to connect an external HDD to it and play lossless audio tracks, like FLAC for example?

Thanks,

Gazza.
 
no testing tonight, afraid I have just been watching films :D Guess that is what it is all about after all. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow when bitstream vs PCM will be revealed :) and then analogue thoughts.

Had a fun saturday. Night all.
 
PAL performance is equally as strong as NTSC (though is more difficult to do due to region restrictions.

Nic,
Could you explain what you mean here with 'more difficult'?

So it would mean as long as the PAL-DVD is region-code 0 there is nothing to worry about - it wouldn't be difficult?

I have a quite few of these DVD's: a lot of classical music DVD's have a region code 0 (and some are only available in NTSC). Therefore for me it is important that a switch between these modes can be done easily.

Jürgen
 
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If you want to test a disc you don't always have the luxury of it being the correct region, therefore I have to burn a region free copy 'just for testing'. This is not about what we might have in our collections to play but what I need to test atm. It plays region 0 and 1, no surprizes there. As I have a net book (with no CD / DVD drive or even hard drive) as my main laptop at home and use laptops at work than don't allow burning it is not a trivial thing to do. Unlike some, all my films are legitimate copies with coding and therefore this apparently 'simple' task becomes much more difficult to do, as many of my legitimate region 0 collection are 'NTSC' based.
 
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just to satisfy the two rude emails I had

:suicide:


:thumbsup: Great stuff Nic. :smashin:

Sorry if I've missed this somewhere, but can you set different set-up/output options for the various formats, ie. SD and BR?
 
:suicide:


:thumbsup: Great stuff Nic. :smashin:

Sorry if I've missed this somewhere, but can you set different set-up/output options for the various formats, ie. SD and BR?

Do you mean video outputs?
 
Nic,

Thanks for all of the info so far. Have you tried comparing source direct mode to 1080p mode for BR (without a VP) and if so what did you think?

Also, is it possible to set source direct for BR and 1080p for SD (without the need to switch back and forth when changing discs)?

Richard
 
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I did :D but now you ask, what about audio too? :cool: :D
I am interested in the audio option too. As I would have BD via analogue outs and SD via coaxial. With the BD55 I had to just leave it at the analogue setting, as you had to change the options back and forth.
 
Hello. :D
Say if your hooked via the Multi's plus optical/coaxial as well can you have bitstream DD/DTS over spdif and PCM over the analogues without the need of any "player" settings change?
Also,if your this method (one or both audio connections) usually it's HDMI to the screen so does stereo still get sent?
Cheers.
 
I did :D but now you ask, what about audio too? :cool: :D

Re video

Source direct will give you 480i / 576i on DVD, 1080P@24 with Blu ray films and 1080i with 'video' and SACD. You don't need to do anything. So if you have a VP or Pioneer display or a receiver with good deinterlacing / scaling then jobs a good one. HOWEVER these better be good as the onboard decoding is pretty damn awesome!

Will fiddle more with audio later. Proceed decided to pop a fuse (again) just when I started DTS testing!! The joys of 252v mains :(.
 
All video performance really seems top draw and it is much easier to use than any other player I have had to date.

Could you please clarify what are your points of reference for BD.
 
Okay, took a while to work this one out. If I stop HDMI audio going out of HDMI socket and play a TrueHD track. With secondary audio off I get DD (as expected). If I engage secondary audio I get DTS. Now I can't work out how to get my Tag to tell me what variant it is (I presume 1500 level), have tried shift and audio but can't get it reading what I want. But basically this will please many I am sure.

Edit now confirmed at 1536bps.
 
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Nic,

Thanks for all of the info so far. Have you tried comparing source direct mode to 1080p mode for BR (without a VP) and if so what did you think?

Also, is it possible to set source direct for BR and 1080p for SD?

Richard

Source direct is available on all formats. There is a simple button on the remote that will let you toggle between all the 6 or so options available whilst playing. Real doddle to use. It just gives you best of both worlds. As an SD MPEG2 decoder it is top flight and up these with the best SDI'd players I have here.
 
Nic you been able to check out the USB device audio input yet ? & when you say some DVD-As wont play can you elaborate ? TIA. Excellent review, who needs mags !! :smashin:
 
Okay, took a while to work this one out. If I stop HDMI audio going out of HDMI socket and play a TrueHD track. With secondary audio off I get DD (as expected). If I engage secondary audio I get DTS. Now I can't work out how to get my Tag to tell me what variant it is (I presume 1500 level), have tried shift and audio but can't get it reading what I want. But basically this will please many I am sure.

Edit now confirmed at 1536bps.


Hi Nic,

Unlike PCs, I think it's SHIFT followed by AUDIO but I assume youve found that now! With DTS Master Audio does it also re-encode to 1536?

Of course, now..... when you test audio....... how does analogues True HD compare with re-encode!!!!!!

PS - well appreciated all your good work Nic
 
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Nic you been able to check out the USB device audio input yet ? & when you say some DVD-As wont play can you elaborate ? TIA. Excellent review, who needs mags !! :smashin:

DVD A are just early days with any capability only days old but I have had some stuff running. SACD support is rock solid at PCM and DSD.

Re USB device, just for fun I dropped a few MP3s and DVIX onto a USB memory stick with loads of other stuff on and plugged into the front of the player. All played without incident.
 
Nic

Will you be testing the analogue out in comparison to machines like the 3800 or 91 ?

I am personally getting more and more impressed with the analogue out of the 3800
 
nothing planned atm but if it was any of these players I think it would be an 3800 as I recon this has the best audio of the players I have heard up until now. It was certainly the best when I tested stuff a month or two ago and for me is the best bit of the 3800. My interest in the 83 is to see what it's abilities are rather than to put it in 'competition' with others though I understand some will want a heirachy. I think I am much more likely to make comparison wrt to SD performance rather than HD. wrt to audio, I am still unsure, analogue audio is of interest to a few of us (well us two and Nick!!) but is rapidly becoming less of an issue for most others.
 
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