Oppo 83SE replacement
Posted by: Dungassin on 30 May 2015
My multiregion (bluray and DVD) Oppo 83SE seems to developed a fatal fault. It now repeatedly stutters, has bad lip-synce, freezes, reports wrong disc, refuses sometimes to respond to the remote (even the original remote rather than my Harmony). It also had problems a few months ago with freezing, but the original UK supplier has now given up the business and gone to work for Oppo UK.
Oppo UK tell me mine is a USA model, and on the advice of their USA site, I stripped the machine down, and cleaned the heads and 'drive wheel'. This seemed to cure the problem for a while, but now things are worse than before, and repeat cleaning has not cured it. I have a suspicion that if I asked Oppo UK to repair it they would say no, as it is apparently a USA model, and there is no guarantee that it would still be multiregion on its return to me.So I think I have to bite the bullet and replace it.
Any suggestions for a replacement? Must be able to play blurays and DVDs from multiple regions. Preferably with analogue audio outputs, as I still have my Naim AV2. So must have optical or coaxial digital audio output as well as just HDMI.
Settling in very well, thank you. I was a little lazy and just entered the same distance and speaker volume settings (for the analogue setup) as I had been using for the 83SE. Checked them again yesterday with my sound level meter, and they were correct.
I have resisted the slight urge to try to A/B the analogue sound quality output against the 83SE to see if the possibly less good DAC chips in the 103 make any significant difference. That would involve plugging/unplugging of cables, and the 83SE hiccoughs/freezes to often.
Picture no better than the 83SE. I didn't go for the Darbee version, as I don't envision a 4K display in my study - couldn't accommodate anything bigger than a 42" display in there, as it's only 13ft by 8ft!
I'm just off to play the DVD of 'La Traviata' (using the coax digital output) which I bought at SWMBO's request, because it has one of her countrymen (Joseph Calleja) as Alfredo. I offered to take her to one of the final performances of La Boheme in London with him singing, but she said no, much to my surprise. 
Only other thing of note (not video related) is that my PRS Pauls Guitar intonation seems to have gone off, and I can't see how to adjust it (no little screws which to twiddle that I can see), so I suppose I'll have to get my local dealer to fix it for me (sigh).
So if I got a 103, I'd put it on my Naim rack, and run a long HDMI cable over to TV?
Put the analog output into Naim XS?
Sounds about right. If you do it that way (I'm assuming you don't have an AV amp as well?), then don't forget to go into the audio setup of the 103 and set the output to 2 channel stereo.
Settling in very well, thank you. I was a little lazy and just entered the same distance and speaker volume settings (for the analogue setup) as I had been using for the 83SE. Checked them again yesterday with my sound level meter, and they were correct.
I have resisted the slight urge to try to A/B the analogue sound quality output against the 83SE to see if the possibly less good DAC chips in the 103 make any significant difference. That would involve plugging/unplugging of cables, and the 83SE hiccoughs/freezes to often.
Picture no better than the 83SE. I didn't go for the Darbee version, as I don't envision a 4K display in my study - couldn't accommodate anything bigger than a 42" display in there, as it's only 13ft by 8ft!
I'm just off to play the DVD of 'La Traviata' (using the coax digital output) which I bought at SWMBO's request, because it has one of her countrymen (Joseph Calleja) as Alfredo. I offered to take her to one of the final performances of La Boheme in London with him singing, but she said no, much to my surprise.
Only other thing of note (not video related) is that my PRS Pauls Guitar intonation seems to have gone off, and I can't see how to adjust it (no little screws which to twiddle that I can see), so I suppose I'll have to get my local dealer to fix it for me (sigh).
So if I got a 103, I'd put it on my Naim rack, and run a long HDMI cable over to TV?
Put the analog output into Naim XS?
Sounds about right. If you do it that way (I'm assuming you don't have an AV amp as well?), then don't forget to go into the audio setup of the 103 and set the output to 2 channel stereo.
No AV Amp...want to stay in the 2 speaker realm and watch a couple of movies.