Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Oppo Blu-Ray now has subtitle shift

The price they are asking is $500. That's more than a PS3. Yes, I paid $1000 for my DV-79AVi, but I'd never do it again. Unless you're using the analog outs on the BDP-83, it's BD picture and sound quality is exactly the same as any other $150 player out there (digital is digital). Yes, it upscales DVDs better than any other player, but that's not enough, and the PS3 (along with other less expensive players) come close.

If you follow the BDP-83 thread on AVS, you'll see with every batch of new releases there's a few which don't play properly. The most recent were: European version of "Terminator Salvation", Indican's "The Wonder of It All", and "(500) Days of Summer" from Fox. All of which still require the beta firmware for their menus to work. Before that was: "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", "Lie to Me", "Dollhouse Season 1", "12 Rounds" and "The Haunting in Connecticut". This is well documented in the firmware release notes.

How do you have your player connected to your receiver, and the receiver to the TV? Analog, or S/PDIF are fine for CD playback. But if the player is HDMI to the receiver and the receiver HDMI to the TV, you're likely to miss the first second or two of audio CDs, and especially multi-channel SACDs. (I've experienced this first hand with an Oppo DVD player I installed for my boss at work, I was embarrassed that I couldn't solve the problem, and that I had sung the praises of the player. He's since gotten used to hitting Play, and then immediately hitting Track Back. Those two together solves the missing second.)

I'll never buy another Sony product except for their video game consoles. Yes, it was lucky/smart of them to do all of their BD decoding in software which can easily be updated to add new features, unlike all other players which have fixed chips. Oh, that's right, another niggle, the chip which Oppo uses for H.264 decoding has a bug so it doesn't support playback of files created with the current version of x264, the most popular encoding software on the Internet. They are now at the mercy of MediaTek to fix it.

No, Sony, Denon, Pioneer, etc. don't have players which best Oppo's offering. They are all pretty much equal over HDMI for BD playback, and Oppo's video scaler is better for DVD. But that's where I come to my stance, that it doesn't make sense to buy this current Oppo model. It has enough little problems, that it isn't worth $500 to me. When I can get another player for $150 that also has a few little problems, or an excellent PS3 for $350 (or say $375, to deal with the remote control issue).

Just remembered another issue I have. The newest beta firmware adds a service called BluTV. It works like Netflix's disc for the PS3. By using BD-Live, it connects to a server and streams video. It uses BD-Java to generate the interface, and requires secondary audio for sound. There's the problem. All the tuning reports say to turn of BD-Live, because it causes loading problems with many discs. Even Oppo has advised in disabling secondary audio, because when it is on the player doesn't have enough DSP power to decode the lossless track, and falls back to the lossy cores. But here's a feature included by Oppo, which requires both of these to be on.

I'm not anti Oppo. But I'm saying that if one can wait, and make do with an exsiting PS3, or pick up a cheaper BD 2.0 player to fill the hole for now, that's probably the better way to go. Just wait for Oppo's next offering.

“I'll never buy another Sony product. . .” I’ll stop there. Plus I was really rooting for HD-DVD to win.

Just wondering Neon, as happy as you seem to be with the PS3, why would you rule out ever owning another Sony product?

I currently have the ability to try out 2 different low end BR players, Samsung BDP-1600 and the LG 350c. The Samsung is the better of the 2. The LG (Running the latest firmware on it) appears to have some issues with loading some movie titles, the most recent one I watched on the LG was UP!, I had to turn the LG on and off a few times before it finally started reading the tracks right, it even had center channel dialogue coming out the Left surround speaker for awhile. We had chapter titles popping up on and off through out the movie. I played the movie on the Samsung and it had no problems at all. I am quite impressed with my $100 purchase of the Samsung.

I had a BD-P3600 for a while, but returned it. One problem it had was lip-synching problems with the NetFlix streaming option. But the biggest pet-peeve I had was the fact that it looked like a toy, not a $350 dollar Blu-Ray disc player. If they were to package it differently, make it more solid looking/feeling... make it out of aluminum or something else besides that cheap plastic, I would definately consider another Samsung. The picture quality was outstanding!

I've owned plenty of Sony products over the years, I've just learned my lesson.

1. Early Discman, cold solder joints on AC adapter input cracked after only a few months, repaired by me, laser diode failed 6 months out of warranty.
2. Early DVD player, laser diode failed after 2 months, replaced with the same model, laser diode filed 18 months out of warranty.
3. Handycam, connection broke for controls on fold-out screen after 2 weeks: repaired under warranty.
4. Medium-high end receiver, went into fault under warranty, repaired after 2 months at repair center, warranty expired during that time, they tried to bill me. Cold solder joints on speaker selector switch broke out of warranty, repaired by me, solder joints on surround relays cracked, repaired by coworker.
5. 36" Wega TV, tuner failed out of warranty, given to my brother who still uses it, but with a cable box.
6. Pair of surround speakers play at levels 4 dB different from each other. Probably like that from the factory, but didn't notice until I go serious about setting my system up correctly.

My Sony subwoofer still works! And the main channel speakers aren't too horrible, but they were the most expensive the local Sears sold at the time. My PS2 is a little slow at reading discs, but it was purchased in July of 2001.

I was just curious because at one time I thought of Sony as the Honda of audio.... safe, reliable, and just all around goodness. I never thought of Sony as the ultimate high end equipment, but I thought it was a very solid brand that was bullet proof that you simply couldn't go wrong with.

I have since completely changed my opinion of them. Now I think of Sony mostly as an overpriced supplier of subpar equipment. I still have my Sony DVD player that I keep falling back on while my search for a BD player continues. But as well as it's held up my search for a BD player does not include any Sony's.

So I guess I was wondering how you, like me, could dismiss a company that has held up for you for so long. And the answer is that you, like me, have found them out for what they really are. Explanation accepted.

ahhh, Firmware upgrades. Anyone remember the good old days when if you did a bios upgrade on a PC it was like tossing a coin to see if it became food for the trash can?

Actually, I once listened to a very interesting CBC documentary about the rise of Sony and how there was some major infighting over becoming too diverse and how the need to feed the mass market eventually took over. I think at one time you were probably correct. Sony used to be real innovators and were at the top of the list for many products in innovation and quality. Unfortunately, they slowly succumbed to the temptations that almost always befall superpower companies and finally design became less important than production. Brand and the goodwill (not the friendly kind of goodwill) of the name kept them at the top while R&D per product went way down.

They need to start rethinking things if they haven't already. There is very slow but growing trend where consumers are becoming more educated and are doing more research before they buy. One of the features I love about online shopping is the [Compare] feature many sights have. Choose bunch of models and it stacks them together in a grid of features. It makes it very easy see when a particular brand has less features per dollar verses another. I'm almost always hesitant to waste the space by putting a Sony product on the grid as it almost always has less features per dollar than others.

To be fair to them. Their Playstation products have been pretty top notch and they now have some well regarded MP3 players, but again a price premium is again definitely involved.

I did not think about or consider myself an "early adopter" in purchasing the BDP-83. Typically, I opt for the strategy of waiting for the second iteration to allow the kinks to be worked out. It never occurred to me......having said that, I also was in the mind set that if I keep waiting for the perfect beast or the most future proof product, I would never purchase. So....I read the reveiews, read the AVS comparison thread in its entirety(the owner's thread was insanely long) asked here (thanks Grunt) and made my purchase. So far, I am extremely pleased. As for the firmware upgrades - I am always at the edge of my envelope on technical issues - that is why I appreciate knowledgeable posters like Chris - the general consensus that I have read on numerous AVS owner threads is that the BlueRays are designed to play on a playstation due to its market saturation. Primary reason for opting for Oppo was their responsiveness on the FW upgrades........

Despite the fact that solving the severe problems in the world today is light years ahead of this discussion in importance, I still will have to repeat my comments again; NONE of the issues discussed with regard to missing info in the first couple of seconds of CD's along with SACD and DVD Audio has EVER happened with my player and I was an early adopter in which I received the unit in early May/09 well ahead of the end of June official release and I DO have the player hooked strictly via HDMI in to my receiver and then on to my monitor. With any of these discs, what may or may not be happening to their playability aren't necessarily hard and fast problems with every single one of them. With software based equipment that we see today, like computers, they can be intermittent, IF it happens at all.

From my experience, the inconsistency STILL prevalent in even current HDMI connectivity tends to be the culprit when it comes to intermittent sound AND video dropout problems much more often than the actual players themselves, primarily due to having to send BOTH audio and video through the cable at the same time. Of course S/PDIF connections won't have the problem because they are only dealing with the audio. Pioneer is still having periodic HDMI handshake issues with some of its newer AVR's and even the new Onkyo's and Integras are requiring firmware updates weeks or even days after their introduction. As far as Terminator Salvation(a movie that I own)I guess since I don't live in Europe, whatever the problems may or may not be, aren't an issue for me. Incidentally, the feature of reverting back to the lossy core in secondary audio is nothing unique to Oppo. I also have a Panasonic BD55 BD player(a very good one) and it operates in the same manner.

Practically speaking, as far as AVS is concerned, it has been mentioned on this and several other forums some of their "rants", at times, can be VERY problematic. For some, small little issues become monumental. Unlike any of the other forums that I have ever seen or read, for whatever reasons, they have just too many individuals there that seem to have "axes to grind". Before I even think of talking about the strengths and/or weaknesses of any piece of equipment, I will make sure that rather than read someone else's "whines" on an internet site, I will make sure I have spent a considerable amount of time using it in every day "real world" situations, since without that, I cannot realistically, make a proper assessment of its capabilities. That is my job and that is what my clients expect.

Considering the pretty well unanimous positive reviews from the dozen or so reviewers who have written about the BDP83, I am quite sure several of them have refrained from "kissing" Oppo's backside.