Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Blue Ray or PS3?

The PS3 does have an optical out. It can send video over HDMI while the audio (lossy core only, but that's a limit of optical) is bitstreamed to the receiver. I had this setup before I got my new receiver. It worked fine. Actually the new 3.0 firmware, can have both the optical and HDMI active at the same time, before you were limited to one or the other.

I vote for PS3. For technical reasons (mostly involving audio mixing, and 100% of the Blu-ray feature-set), I feel it is still the best player out there. better than even the Oppo; unless you plan to watch a lot of DVDs, and desire the best possible upscaling. Even then, there's no reason Sony couldn't improve their upscaling because it is done entirely in software, and has been improved in the past.

never heard of oppo by the way? New to the industry?

Oppo is not new to the industry. They make world class products in my opinion. Known for good customer service as well. This is the Blu-ray player I am talking about in question.

http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/

(They're just internet-direct, so most non-audiophiles don't know about them since they're not in the Best Buy sale flyers)!

Ok Cool! Thanks

I do play games and I still bought the BD player. Using the PS3 for a standalone BD player to me is a bit cheesy (flamesuit on), you have to deal with a system that won't accept infrared remotes (unless they've fixed that) and the original PS3 would not bitstream the new audio codecs but I hear that is fixed with the PS3 slim.

I recommend the Panasonic BD-65

It is true that the PS3 can't use an infrared remote without some kind of IR to Bluetooth transceiver, but I prefer the RF remote that I don't have to point directly at the component.

As for bitstreaming audio, this is what I was talking about as a technical limitation of Oppo's player. You don't bitstream video. The video is decoded from the disc and combined with pop-up menus or pic-in-pic special features or what ever is offered by the Blu-ray spec, then it is sent as decoded pixels over the HDMI link. No one thinks twice about that, it is just how it is done.

Bitstreamed audio was a hack that came about during Laserdisc times, when an additional audio format was shoehorned onto the disc without it being part of the original specification, much like DTS on audio CDs. It continued to exist on DVDs as there was still no way to deliver multi-channel audio in a digital format. The S/PDIF interface only supports two PCM channels.

Now in the age of Blu-ray and HDMI, we have a method of transferring at least 8 PCM channels across one wire. There's no reason to move the raw data from the disc. Additionally, Blu-ray discs have the ability to mix audio from multiple sources before sending it out of the player. Very much the same thing as the pop-up menu over the live video. But if the audio is being streamed off the disc there's no way to do any live manipulation of that data. It has to first be decoded into PCM. This is the proper way for a play to handle BDs, decode the compressed track, and output multi-channel PCM.

The Oppo player doesn't have a powerful enough DSP chip to decode the lossless (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) track and then be able to do the realtime mixing. So it instead uses the lossy "core" tracks when any mixing is requested. Oppo's tech support says to disable all secondardy audio mixing so you're guaranteed to get the lossless track. That's a work around which prevents the full support for the Blu-ray spec. Plus a disc can force audio mixing through BD-Java, then the player's preference is ignored and you get the lossy track.

Many people don't like the secondary audio mixing, or BD-Live for that matter. I don't disagree with those opinions, but at the same time I want a player which can provide every part of the BD standard. Right now the PS3 is the only player I know which can do everything. Though I believe other's with lossless + 2nd audio are in the pipeline (or may have been recently released). Oppo's player just doesn't have the hardware to do it, so it won't be showing up in a firmware fix.

If I understand you correctly, my Panasonic is the same way, it won't bistream the audio "properly" if you leave secondary audio on.

Personally, I don't care. I also don't care if it's PSm or bitstreamed, my HD DVD player will only PCM lossles, but having the receiver display say the name is pretty cool, which I think a lot of people want. Of course this should not be an issue with the PS3 slim.

Oh, and RF is great, like my 360 controller. I wish everything was like that, with my Denon you have to be a sharpshooter.

From what I understand about the PS3 Slim, is that it can go from bitstreaming to secondary audio mixed into decoded PCM without a full HDMI handshake, which results in a less than one second blip in the audio, and no disturbance to the video.

Another issue with bitstreaming is many receivers have limitations when it comes to the lossless codecs. While they do have support for them, they can't apply their full room correction, falling back to distance and level only. This is becoming less common as manufacturers are using faster DSP chips. Another issue which shows up, is receiver limited Dolby Prologic IIx to PCM and Dolby sound tracks, where if you want 7.1 from a DTS you must use Neo:6. So by decoding DTS into PCM first the receiver never knows and can't tell you what to do.

I was listening to Bjork's Post album from the "Surrounded" box set last night. I usually use my Pioneer DVD player for music (it's easier to control with the TV off than the PS3). This player wants to bitstream by default, so playing the 5.1 DTS track of this disc had my receiver go into Neo:6. That made many of the songs with Bjork's voice centered in the surround channels end up heavily mixed on the back speakers. Those are the weakest speakers in my system. Neo:6 Music is available from a 2 channel source, but with 5.1 all I can get is a dematrixing of the surrounds. I found my receiver doesn't limit me to Neo though, it only defaults there. So I had my display showing "DTS+Prologic IIx Music", that was neat, and got me the mix which I perfered, with heavier use of the surrounds, with less emphasis on the backs. But with PCM decoding, I would have gotten the same Prologic IIx Music which I had set with the previous two-channel CD I had played.

Chris, have you had a chance to look over what they have done to the Oppo 83SE, any thoughts, besides waaayyy too much money for this upgraded spec?