Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Oppo BD 93/95

go bluray or go home.

I don't know that it would surprise me at all to find out that the Oppo does a little tweaking / EQ to the Pandora selection, knowing that it's dealing with compression and some likely perceptions from said compressions.

My Denon 3808 has a mode that's supposed to improve the sound of compressed sources. I don't remember if I have it engaged for those sources or if I had a preference or not.

That is my impression also.

I just completed viewing the DVD and Blu-ray versions of portions of the movie X2 X-men united. I sat about 3 feet away from the screen. There was absolutely no differences in quality of DVD or Blu-ray. Panasonic and OPPO looks exactly the same.

One minor problem I experienced with the OPPO through all of this is when I put in the X-men DVD, the system locked up with what looked like multi-colored static on the screen that didn't move. I had to turn the unit off and back on to get it working again.

Pandora offers two quality (bitrate) settings. It's possible the Panasonic defaults to the "normal" quality setting and the Oppo can access the "high" setting. I know you can chose this in the browser player and Android app. I haven't found a way to check it on my Onkyo AVR thou so I'm assuming it could be hard coded into the app it's using.

Ben, I thought a higher-quality bitrate was only available to paid members and even then, only online?

I asked someone at Pandora about the higher bit rates maybe a year a half ago, and was told that it was available online only.

I would have a paid membership to Pandora if I could stream higher quality into my Axiom system via my TiVo.

I'm going to keep the OPPO and take the Panasonic back to BB. Only because of it's ability to play SACD. If it couldn't do that, I'd keep the Panasonic instead. My next step will be to buy the same music in CD and SACD and see if I can even tell a difference.

The biggest difference is not likely to be the bit rate, but rather the remastering geared towards audiophiles (and not peon commoners) and the ability to play true multi-channel mixes.

My system is only a 3.1. It seems whenever I play a CD, and I put my ears up to the center channel, I hear sound coming from them. So, the receiver is probably combining the left and right and mixing it into the center. With an SACD, I should get a different channel output from the center with the surrounds probably thrown away.

After the TV, my next upgrade will probably be 2 QS8's. But that probably won't happen until next winter.

I've been following this thread at avsforum. Now, it looks like the ST50 is the way to go from the Panasonic line, because the GT50 isn't bringing any improvement to the table. Won't know for sure until the GT50 has been analyzed. It isn't available now, but should be by the end of this month.

I think i'm actually happy to hear some of the negative feedback about netflix.
I've contemplated going this road myself (getting a streaming setup for online content and giving up the cable/satellite costs), but so many have reported marginal quality from online streaming, i think i'll stick with the old school disc system for some time yet (for video anyway).

eech, there goes another month of HD satellite bills...

Last night, I connected to VUDU, using the OPPO player. VUDU has 3 choices for quality, SD, HD, HDX. I ran their internet speed test and it registered a 4.5, which put me on the line between HD and HDX. SD is 480, HD is 720, HDX is 1080. So, I watched some trailers for free using the 720. I couldn't tell the difference from this video to a video on blu-ray disc, it was that good. I'm assuming the 720 was upconverted to 1080 by OPPO. The Panny might have done just as good, but I didn't test it.

If you sign up with VUDU, you also will get a free $5.99 credit to watch a movie.