OPPO Bluray

**Audiodreamer** · **03-12-09, 07:51 PM**

Did any one happen to be chosen for an early adoption of the new Oppo bluray?
For watching movies, and user friendliness would I be better off waiting for the Oppo, should I hold off for the next generation of panasonic?

If I was going to make purchase now, it would have to be between the Samsung 2500 (because of HQV video processor), or the Sony 350, or 550.
What would be my most logical choice?

**Sonnie** · **03-12-09, 11:31 PM**

I am still holding out for the oppo player, but I am a good 30-45 days from finishing the HT room, so I can wait a little longer.

If nothing else, I will hold out for a next generation player.

**CharlieU** · **03-14-09, 12:22 AM**

Considering the $500 - $600 price for the Oppo, if all you want is a video player, you might do as well as far as picture quality with a lower priced player. If you want the SACD and DVD-A capabilities along with the picture quality of the Oppo, then the Denon at $4200 is your only other choice. The selling point for the Oppo is tons of features in one box. If you don't have a need for those features then you have a world of choices. Since the brands you mentioned are usually on display in a local store, you can demo each unit. Use the web to narrow down your picks and then hit the street to see them in action before making a final decision.

Tip: Never get on a forum and ask someone to make a choice for you. Some of these guys just love spending your money for you.

**Sonnie** · **03-14-09, 09:47 AM**

Having people help you decide what to buy is a good part of what forums are all about.

I am thinking more like $399 for the oppo player... and what I like about oppo players is their uncanny ability to upconvert SD to very near HD quality. I have tons of SD DVD's that do not plan to replace with the more expensive BD's... save a few of my most favorites. I also admire their overall quality. They are known for problem free players, unlike many of the other BD players that have surfaced for a few dollars less.

**CharlieU** · **03-14-09, 08:20 PM**

Quote:

Sonnie wrote:

Having people help you decide what to buy is a good part of what forums are all about.

I am thinking more like $399 for the oppo player... and what I like about oppo players is their uncanny ability to upconvert SD to very near HD quality. I have tons of SD DVD's that do not plan to replace with the more expensive BD's... save a few of my most favorites. I also admire their overall quality. They are known for problem free players, unlike many of the other BD players that have surfaced for a few dollars less.

The Oppo is being sold to the EAPers for $499, so don't expect it to go for less than that when it hits the market. I have the DV-980, but it's a music player for me. The Toshiba HD-A30 does a much better job with DVDs. It may be because of my TV which is DLP. (read some stuff saying Faroudja and DLP wasn't a good mix) From what I'm reading about the BDP-83 though, it's lightyears ahead of the 980 for DVD video quality. (and music quality)

**CharlieU** · **03-15-09, 08:52 AM**

I see that they are expanding the next round of the EAP to 300 vice the 100 they originally planned. Rumor has it that this one will have the firmware update to enable DVD-A.

I have my fingers crossed that I make it into this round, though it sounds like they should be pretty close to general release anyway. They will be sending out emails on Monday, but won't ship the player until Friday in order to update the boxes with new firmware. The new firmware is supposed to fix the bugs found so far and add DVD-A.

**Sonnie** · **03-16-09, 12:00 AM**

My 980 is every bit as good as my Toshiba XA2 was at upconverting when I had it. I am on a DLP LED Samsung 67" set. My 980 rivals the PS3 Blu-ray when I had it. The PS3 BD was better, but not leaps better and certainly not worth spending the extra money on the BD's just to get that small margin of difference.

**AverageJoe** · **03-16-09, 01:02 AM**

Quote:

CharlieU wrote:

The Oppo is being sold to the EAPers for $499, so don't expect it to go for less than that when it hits the market.

As one of the lucky 50, I kinda' hope not (sorry). If it goes for less than that, I could have waited for the final product and saved some money.

I've been using this player for a couple weeks now, and I can't find a thing to complain about. Both audio and video performance is extraordinary. So far, I've been particularly impressed with the multi-channel SACD version of Dark Side of the Moon - OK, I confess it's the first time I've heard it, so...

Not so much for performance, but for convenience are the USB ports on front and back of the player. My Yamaha receiver has the port on the front only, so it's nice to be able to connect a hard drive on the back, out of the way. I'm not sure the compressed files sound any better (I think so, though), but the interface is prettier.

Good luck to everyone on the EAP second round.

**CharlieU** · **03-16-09, 08:21 PM**

Quote:

Sonnie wrote:

My 980 is every bit as good as my Toshiba XA2 was at upconverting when I had it. I am on a DLP LED Samsung 67" set. My 980 rivals the PS3 Blu-ray when I had it. The PS3 BD was better, but not leaps better and certainly not worth spending the extra money on the BD's just to get that small margin of difference.

My 980 rivaled my PS3 as far as DVDs were concerned too. That wasn't a good thing.

I have high hopes for the BDP-83 in this area. There are so many factors involved in getting good sound and good picture that one man's nirvana could be anothers dog pile. In this case I'm seeing too many people with diverse setups bragging about the DVD quality not to want to see it in action myself. As of yet, I have not had a problem telling the difference between DVD and HD DVD/Blu-ray with the equipment I own. In truth, that's the way it should be. Right?

**Sonnie** · **03-16-09, 11:35 PM**

HD-DVD was spectacular on my Panny 2000, a little better than Blu-ray in my setup, however, both were very very good and definitely better than standard SD-DVD. The XA2 upconversion brought SD-DVD much closer to Blu-ray, not quite as close to HD-DVD. When I moved the PS3 to the great room on the DLP, Blu-ray was still just as good, maybe a tad better on the smaller DLP vs. the 97" pj screen. After getting the 980, I was stunned at how close it is to Blu-ray... it blew the PS3 upconversion away. It is not a matter of being able to tell the difference on my part, I can assure you that. I have seen Blu-ray on no less than 25-30 setups... some spectacular, some good, some not so good. My 980 falls in there with the "some good". It won't match spectacular, but the margin is just not worth it to me at this point. I would rather have the best upconversion I can get and keep buying SD-DVD's. The oppo BD player should do that well enough for me and I'll splurge all along on a BD... and pick up a few on sale or used every now and then.

**CharlieU** · **03-20-09, 09:25 PM**

Oppo must be hitting the bottom of the barrel with the new EAP. I received my invitation this evening. I'll post back with my opinion of DVD playback once the player is in my hands. If this one has the DVD-A playback activated, I'll post my thoughts on that too.

**Sonnie** · **03-21-09, 07:04 PM**

The bottom must go really deep because I still do not have an invitation.

**shift9999** · **03-21-09, 11:55 PM**

I picked up an oppo the other day on amazon for $299 and I cant really tell the difference. Bluray is still better than plain old dvd.

**Eric D** · **03-22-09, 10:08 AM**

Quote:

CharlieU wrote:

Oppo must be hitting the bottom of the barrel with the new EAP. I received my invitation this evening. I'll post back with my opinion of DVD playback once the player is in my hands. If this one has the DVD-A playback activated, I'll post my thoughts on that too.

Please remember to vote! The longer you take, the longer the rest of us have to wait!

For that matter, Vote early and often!

enjoy,

**CharlieU** · **03-22-09, 03:22 PM**

Quote:

Eric D wrote:

Please remember to vote! The longer you take, the longer the rest of us have to wait!

For that matter, Vote early and often!

enjoy,

My personal opinion is that since they changed this EAP to 300 participants, what I'm going to receive is basically a finished product. The beta testers have probably flogged the DVD-A piece along with the fixes to the bugs reported by the EAP50. I'd be surprised if anyone reports any show-stoppers. Be ready to be ~$500 poorer when April rolls around. (plus whatever you owe to Uncle Sam

)

**Sonnie** · **03-23-09, 11:19 PM**

I am worried more about the Uncle Sam part.

**CharlieU** · **03-29-09, 10:30 AM**

Quote:

CharlieU wrote:

My personal opinion is that since they changed this EAP to 300 participants, what I'm going to receive is basically a finished product. The beta testers have probably flogged the DVD-A piece along with the fixes to the bugs reported by the EAP50. I'd be surprised if anyone reports any show-stoppers. Be ready to be ~$500 poorer when April rolls around. (plus whatever you owe to Uncle Sam

)

I was wrong.

The current implementation of DVD-A is really rough. The player can not be set to bitstream if you want to play a DVD-A and only DVD-A's with a certain type of copy protection will play. There is some problem with the track to track transitions too. The Beatles Love DVD-A really loses its magic with the abrupt cutoff at the end of the track, a pause, then the abrupt start of the next track.

I'm seeing a lot of reports on lip-sync issues. I may not be as sensitive to it as others since I haven't noticed it on any of the movies I watched, but I have seen it on some of the Extras.

Now for the good stuff......

Just taking this unit out of the box, you start noticing little things that indicate Oppo has positioned this unit to be their top of the line player. They put some money into the packaging. The unit looks and feels solid and a press of the Eject button tells you that this is a transport that you won't find in a $199 player.

Comparing Blu-Ray playback to my first gen 60GB PS3, the Oppo was better in picture quality. The load times were fast, but I didn't have any Java or BD Live disks to test. Some have reported problems with BD Live disks though it could just as easily be a problem with their network vice the player.

DVD playback is clearly better better than my PS3, Oppo 980 and Toshiba HD-A30. On the poor quality disks it does a good job of cleaning up noise and artifacts. On the good quality disks it gives me the best picture I've ever seen from a standard DVD. With that said, on a large screen, you will still not mistake a DVD for Blu-ray or HD DVD.

Audio had me scratching my head. The 83 sounds so much better than the 980. The sound is much fuller (more mid-range?) and the soundstage is wider and deeper. If I was using analog inputs, I could understand the difference, but since I'm using HDMI to pass PCM and DSD, it makes no sense. I broke out my RS meter to make sure what I was hearing wasn't related to the volume. The needle bounced around too much with regular music so I used my Rives CD and determined the correct volume level to set my receiver to for the 83 and 980 with the 1KHz tone. After doing that I listened to CDs, SACDs and DVD-As and still came to the same conclusion, the 83 is the better audio player. Maybe someone can explain to me how 1s and 0s can sound different.

I still have more to try with this player before I vote. Right now I'm really undecided. If the vote was for another EAP round, my Yes vote would already be recorded. To release this to the general public in the state that it's in is a much harder decision. As I said before, without even turning this player on, it exudes quality. I think Oppo should do a bit more to ensure this feeling isn't shattered when the customer starts putting disks in it.

**Sonnie** · **03-29-09, 09:13 PM**

Thanks for the review...

**Mr.Lowe** · **04-03-09, 03:19 PM**

I have a samsung BD 1500 hooked up to a 52" Samsung LCD 750. The picture is amazing. I also have a lot of SD DVD's and they seem to be upgraded very well from the player. What is so good about this Oppo. Did I mess up and buy to early? Also does anyone know anything about the picture quality of the new Yamaha 765 reciever? On yamaha's website it says that the v663 and the v863 are HDMI ver. 1.3, but the 765 didn't say it was. I am just curious to see if there will be any change in the picture. I definitly don't want that. Thanks.

**SteveCallas** · **04-04-09, 07:49 PM**

How are the loading times when using a sd dvd? As fast as a normal dvd player?

**CharlieU** · **04-06-09, 06:48 AM**

Quote:

Mr.Lowe wrote:

I have a samsung BD 1500 hooked up to a 52" Samsung LCD 750. The picture is amazing. I also have a lot of SD DVD's and they seem to be upgraded very well from the player. What is so good about this Oppo. Did I mess up and buy to early? Also does anyone know anything about the picture quality of the new Yamaha 765 reciever? On yamaha's website it says that the v663 and the v863 are HDMI ver. 1.3, but the 765 didn't say it was. I am just curious to see if there will be any change in the picture. I definitly don't want that. Thanks.

If you are happy with your BD 1500, then you made the right purchase. I wanted a universal disk player to simplify my system. I was able to pull out the PS3 and Oppo 980 and put this box in their place. Another plus was getting rid of the PS3 remote and being able to control everything with my Harmony remote.

**CharlieU** · **04-06-09, 06:53 AM**

Quote:

SteveCallas wrote:

How are the loading times when using a sd dvd? As fast as a normal dvd player?

All disk types load pretty fast. You will have to have your beverage and snacks ready before you close the disk tray.

**Mr.Lowe** · **04-07-09, 11:19 AM**

The SD's load just plenty fast. I have heard of the loading times on the BD, but so far I have been able to load the blu rays plenty fast. just as any other dvd player.

**CharlieU** · **04-11-09, 10:14 AM**

The latest firmware has improved the DVD-A functionality of the player, but it's still not right. The problems aren't related to the sound. If the disk plays, the sound is fantastic. They mostly affect disk navigation and track to track transitions. I believe that we will see this player for sale this month.

**Sonnie** · **04-11-09, 11:09 PM**

I was told mid-April when griping to customer service about the EAP, which I learned was completely random and not first come first serve. Although I thought it hinged on EAP voting.

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