Oppo BDP-83 BluRay player.
Posted by: tonym on 17 July 2009
I took delivery of one of these players yesterday, to replace my Panasonic BD55 - a pretty good player actually but I just fancied something a bit better, and I can relocate the Panasonic somewhere else.
The Oppo's been adapted by CRT projectors (the UK dealers) for multiregion DVD and, pretty uniquely, for A B & C region BluRay discs. I can't try the latter feature because I haven't got any region A or C disks, but it works fine on region 1 DVDs. In addition it can play DVD-A and SACDs, plus more types of video files than you can shake a stick at, on either disc or USB.
Having owned an Oppo DVD player previously (still got it) I was expecting good things, and so far I'm not disappointed - very well packaged and finished, excellent documentation and the best setup procedure and menu operation I've seen. Nice big clear remote, backlit buttons.
The player's very sophisticated and offers lots of setup options but using the quick setup routine it was up and running in a flash.
I'm using its analogue 7.1 outs into my AV2 for HD sound formats, and configuring these was very easy. I'm also using SPDIF for "Standard" DD/dts.
Once it was all set up I popped in a SACD followed by a DVD-A. Not bad! Alas, the 555 sounds much better, but then one would expect it to! (Not had a chance to give TDSOTM 4.1 DVD-A special Alan Parsons mix a try yet.)
Anyway, I watched a couple of BluRays last night (The Bourne Ultimatum & Jeff Beck in concert at Ronnie Scott's) and I was very impressed. The normal view is that when it comes to Bluray there isn't much difference in the various players but the Oppo was significantly better than the Panasonic, having an almost 3-D picture with a lovely colour rendition and very deep blacks. The sound was streets ahead; Quite surprising as I thought it was pretty good with the Panasonic before. The Oppo certainly loads in discs a whole lot quicker than either of my previous BluRay players.
Another attraction is the Oppo's "Source Direct" which bypasses its internal scaling - important to me because I use a Lumagen video processor. The DVD I played looked very fine indeed. (If I had a long enough HDMI cable I'd try bypassing the scaler & see what sort of a fist the Oppo makes of things.)
So far I'm very impressed with this player. I suppose at nigh-on £600 it's not quite the bargain the Oppo DVD players were, but then I don't know how it compares with the £1K-plus players from the likes of Sony, Pioneer and Denon; I suspect pretty well.
The Oppo's been adapted by CRT projectors (the UK dealers) for multiregion DVD and, pretty uniquely, for A B & C region BluRay discs. I can't try the latter feature because I haven't got any region A or C disks, but it works fine on region 1 DVDs. In addition it can play DVD-A and SACDs, plus more types of video files than you can shake a stick at, on either disc or USB.
Having owned an Oppo DVD player previously (still got it) I was expecting good things, and so far I'm not disappointed - very well packaged and finished, excellent documentation and the best setup procedure and menu operation I've seen. Nice big clear remote, backlit buttons.
The player's very sophisticated and offers lots of setup options but using the quick setup routine it was up and running in a flash.
I'm using its analogue 7.1 outs into my AV2 for HD sound formats, and configuring these was very easy. I'm also using SPDIF for "Standard" DD/dts.
Once it was all set up I popped in a SACD followed by a DVD-A. Not bad! Alas, the 555 sounds much better, but then one would expect it to! (Not had a chance to give TDSOTM 4.1 DVD-A special Alan Parsons mix a try yet.)
Anyway, I watched a couple of BluRays last night (The Bourne Ultimatum & Jeff Beck in concert at Ronnie Scott's) and I was very impressed. The normal view is that when it comes to Bluray there isn't much difference in the various players but the Oppo was significantly better than the Panasonic, having an almost 3-D picture with a lovely colour rendition and very deep blacks. The sound was streets ahead; Quite surprising as I thought it was pretty good with the Panasonic before. The Oppo certainly loads in discs a whole lot quicker than either of my previous BluRay players.
Another attraction is the Oppo's "Source Direct" which bypasses its internal scaling - important to me because I use a Lumagen video processor. The DVD I played looked very fine indeed. (If I had a long enough HDMI cable I'd try bypassing the scaler & see what sort of a fist the Oppo makes of things.)
So far I'm very impressed with this player. I suppose at nigh-on £600 it's not quite the bargain the Oppo DVD players were, but then I don't know how it compares with the £1K-plus players from the likes of Sony, Pioneer and Denon; I suspect pretty well.
Damn... 
Still, that's one hell of a price increase over the standard one. Good move on Oppo's part though.
Still, that's one hell of a price increase over the standard one. Good move on Oppo's part though.