I cannot use your sponsor because they don't ship outside the US. Even if they do, I don't want a refurb unit.Make sure you always give our sponsors a looksee!
http://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/item/yambds673bl/yamaha-bd-s673-blu-ray-player-bonus-hdmi-cable-35-value/1.html
This one looks awful close!
No worries..Sorry, I didn't realize they didn't ship across the border, their loss. And I don't worry about their refubs, because they are "factory refurbs." A4Less has proven to be a great e-tailor, and with their extended warranty, it comes out being better than the original warranty! I certainly understand your hesitation though. Let us know how you like it. Getting new toys is always nice!
I've played several BluRays and CDs since I unboxed it at Christmas. The player supports all the CD,DVD, and BluRay formats including 3D, as well as SACD. It also supports Miracast. In general, the unit appears sturdy but its lighter than it appears. The tray mechanism doesn't feel as solid as it does on my old Sony BDP-S360. The setup menu is easy to navigate and intuitive, at least to me. Loading times are much faster than the Sony however. From an video perspective, I have it set to automatically upscale everything to 4K and its HDMI output it's directly connected to my Samsung 4K display. The display is crisp and clean and so far, I haven't noticed any artifacts.
From an audio perspective, it does all the lossless high def codecs and the audio sounds good. An interesting note is this unit offers a "CD" playback mode when playing CDs. This mode can be accessed via a button on the unit or on the supplied remote. It slows the rotation of the discs to normal CD rotational rates to reduce effects of vibration and improve on error correction. I use it with "pure direct" mode of the player to play CDs and use the analog outputs of the player. Pure Direct turns off any non essential DSP as well as the display much like Yamaha AVRs .I did not detect any difference between this mode and normal mode going through HDMI interface. Truth be known, I only tried a few different CDs and the tests were unstructured. I don't own any SACDs so I cannot comment on its ability to play these.
I haven't tried any of its apps yet including Miracast.
I watched Total Recall (2012 version) Bluray of this movie to test the Yamaha as the audio track was NOT mastered correctly. ( https://www.amazon.com/forum/blu-ray?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2R11KXGJPWBTU&cdThread=Tx5YJSC90T4UMT ) My old Sony BluRay player use to freeze in chapter 6 at the same spot in time everytime. The Yamaha faired better in that it didn't freeze but there were audio dropouts through out the film.
I'm happy with the performance of this unit from playing discs of all formats and I really like its looks. I still miss and will always miss the "Yamaha orange" of the older Yamaha products.
I did switch to bit stream to try it out but this option only gave me Dolby Digital, not the lossless track. I forgot to mention that was with the extended cut, not the version played in the theatre. I wonder if that problem exists with that version?Very cool... love the idea of normal CD rotation speed. Sounds like a winner!
Interesting about the audio drops. That has to do with how the disc is encoded (seamless branching), which is done as a security measure. Some players with older processors have difficulty with Dolby TrueHD tracks paired with seamless branching... Total Recall was big problem one... in that causes the audio to momentarily drop at random times. These discs have scenes authored out of order, so the player has to skip around to piece the movie together. The OPPO-93 BD player was well known to struggle with this. I'm surprised your new player is struggling, too.
Weird.
The work around is to change output to PCM and let your AVR do the decoding. Codecs like Atmos and DTS:X require bitstream, though, so switching to PCM isn't a permanent solution.
Hmm... that's weird.I did switch to bit stream to try it out but this option only gave me Dolby Digital, not the lossless track. I forgot to mention that was with the extended cut, not the version played in the theatre. I wonder if that problem exists with that version?
Its the only BluRay I own that is giving me this issue.Hmm... that's weird.
I don't think the movie version matters.
For the record, I had audio dropouts on this title when I owned an OPPO 93. I eventually upgraded to the 103 and the issue went away.
For whatever reason, your player is having an issue with seamless branching. It really should only affect a handful of titles. In fact, outside of Total Recall... I can't remember experiencing the issue with any other discs while I used the O-93
