Just spent a small pile on cash on The Doors: Perception, which includes each album on a DVD-A with DD5.1 and DTS5.1 mixes.

I was very unpleasantly surprised to find that none of the discs play on my Oppo 980. The symptoms are the same for all: put the disc in, and the player recognizes it as DVD-A and then... nothing. No title menu, no nothing. It's also not possible to navigate. Some of the remote buttons work but the display is odd and non-reactive. These discs hose up the player but good!

I'm surprised about this because the music has been out for a couple of years and I'm experiencing the problem even with the very latest Oppo firmware.

I sent Oppo an email. But I thought I'd ask the experts here 2 questions:

1) Anyone else? Or has anyone been able to play these discs successfully on their Oppo 980?

2) [EDIT: I now realize that the Sammy is playing the DVD-Video from the disc.] Somewhat surprisingly, my Samsung BD-P1400 *does* play these discs. My receiver lights up as DTS or DD as I expect... but the sound seems not quite right. My question is: if I am seeing the indicators on the receiver and hearing sound, am I getting what I am supposed to be getting? Could the Sammy be doing something to the sound?

All components referenced above are connected to a Denon 3808 via HDMI (and only HDMI).

Never had a problem with anything I could throw at the Oppo. Very disappointing!

Thanks in advance for any insights.

Some more info: I changed the setup option on the Oppo to select DVD-Video on hybrid DVD-A/DVD-V discs, and I see that the DVD-Video portion of these discs plays fine. (What I described earlier about the discs playing on my Blu-ray player was actually the DVD-V portion playing -- I was initially confused.)

Back to the problem with DVD-A:

When I insert the disc, the player reads it, recognizes it as a DVD-A, and then... nothing. The player's display shows "Title" but all I see is the startup screen on the TV. Pressing play, etc on the remote has no effect, or brings up the circle-with-a-slash-through-it icon.

What I do notice is that if I use the "goto" button on the remote and tell the player to go to a given title,
* I do hear the player seeking the disc
* The display on the player changes to show track number 1 and 0:00 elapsed time
* The receiver lights up with "DTS 96" (I forget the exact display but basically it knows it's getting a hi-rez DVD-A signal)
* But then--- nothing. Playback does not start and within a second or two the receiver's input lights go blank again

I am connected via HDMI (and only HDMI) to a Denon 3808.

Are these discs (The Doors: Perception) known to be functional on a 980?

Anyone have any insights about this player with DVD-A, or these discs in particular?

Is this the only DVD-Audio disc you own? If no, do other discs have this issue?

If yes, then I highly recommend sending one of the discs to OPPO Digital for inspection, to ensure that your error is not isolated to compatibility issues related to that boxset.

These are the only DVD-A discs I own.

The unit is already on its way back to Oppo, with one of the discs from the box set enclosed.

So far, good customer service from them in replying to emails and setting up an RMA quickly. Hopefully they can turn it around quickly as well.

1) Anyone else? Or has anyone been able to play these discs successfully on their Oppo 980?Yes. And on a 983, too.

Back to the problem with DVD-A:

When I insert the disc, the player reads it, recognizes it as a DVD-A, and then... nothing. The player's display shows "Title" but all I see is the startup screen on the TV. Pressing play, etc on the remote has no effect, or brings up the circle-with-a-slash-through-it icon.

What I do notice is that if I use the "goto" button on the remote and tell the player to go to a given title,
* I do hear the player seeking the disc
* The display on the player changes to show track number 1 and 0:00 elapsed time
* The receiver lights up with "DTS 96" (I forget the exact display but basically it knows it's getting a hi-rez DVD-A signal)
* But then--- nothing. Playback does not start and within a second or two the receiver's input lights go blank again

Anyone have any insights about this player with DVD-A, or these discs in particular?

It sounds like the 980 may not be reading the DVD-Audio section properly, as when it comes up with "DTS 96" that would be the audio from the DVD-Video section. The DVD-Audio should either be MLP or PCM depending on the encoding used as these are both lossless audio formats unlike the Dolby and DTS audio on the DVD-Video section.

Yes. And on a 983, too.

Good to hear that they do work as I plan on getting this box set to be played back on a 983!

Had to ask: Are you 100% certain that the discs are legitimate? DVD-A discs can have some pretty robust copy protection, which could be triggered when attempting to play a copy over HDMI.

Thanks all for the replies.

It's good to know that others have been able to play these specific discs. I'm sure it's an issue with my Oppo being defective, or the laser being out of adjustment, or some other issue preventing it from reading the DVD-A layer properly.

The display I was talking about on my receiver wasn't "DTS" -- I now recall that it said something like "fs PCM Multi 96" but it was definitely something that looked different from anything I'd ever seen it display before (with HD DVD, Blu-ray, DVD, CD, HDCD, DTS CD, SACD).

Good point about the possibility that the discs are not legit; however I have no reason to believe there's any issue here. Ordered them from Amazon.com, packaging seems right, etc. etc. (I lived in SE Asia for a while and have pretty extensive experience spotting and dealing with counterfeit stuff.)

In any case, the player and one of the discs is on its way back to Oppo. I'm sure they'll make it all work and get the player back to me shortly.

Thanks again all!

The display I was talking about on my receiver wasn't "DTS" -- I now recall that it said something like "fs PCM Multi 96" but it was definitely something that looked different from anything I'd ever seen it display before (with HD DVD, Blu-ray, DVD, CD, HDCD, DTS CD, SACD).


Depending on your AVR, that's what you should see on a DVD-A. The player decodes it to MPCM.

Did you have the player set to accept DVD-Audio...there's settings for both DVD-A and SACD. Is the multi-channel only for DD and DTS, and not the standard?

Did you have the player set to accept DVD-Audio...there's settings for both DVD-A and SACD. Is the multi-channel only for DD and DTS, and not the standard?

Yes, I did have it set up properly.

Even if I hadn't, the odd-ball behavior the machine exhibited when these discs were inserted (unresponsive to input, jumping to tracks and then not actually beginning playback, etc), point at an issue with the player deeper than setup.

Thanks again for all the replies. The player is sitting in a UPS center in Seattle right now en route to Oppo :).

The player is on its way back to me. Here's what Oppo had to say about what happened:

We confirmed that your DVD player had lost its DVD-Audio decoding key. We replaced the decoder board as well as the loader frame as we found it to be performing louder than designed.

Would anyone care to speculate about what this means? The words aren't quite adding up for me. How does the player lose a key -- because there's a defective PROM on the board or something and a bit gets flipped?

Anyway, looks like good customer service. They fixed something else that I hadn't even noticed to be a problem!

Can't wait for these guys to come out with their Blu-ray player.

The hardware has to decode the DVD-Audio key in order to playback the media (think HDCP and HDMI). If this key is not decoded, then the DVD-Audio disc does not load. In many cases you can just update the software on the player to repair the broken key exchange. If the software can't be uploaded properly, then the entire hardware is replaced (in this case, the entire decoder board).

Replacing the decoder means pretty well replacing the whole circuit board for the 980h?

Pretty much, since you will not be able to just remove the MTK chipset.

...Anyway, looks like good customer service. They fixed something else that I hadn't even noticed to be a problem!....
Yes, they are the best company I've ever dealt with in terms of trying for the highest quality level of customer service. Glad your problem was solved! When you get it back, don't forget to reset all your menu choices to the way you had them before.

The hardware has to decode the DVD-Audio key in order to playback the media (think HDCP and HDMI). If this key is not decoded, then the DVD-Audio disc does not load. In many cases you can just update the software on the player to repair the broken key exchange. If the software can't be uploaded properly, then the entire hardware is replaced (in this case, the entire decoder board).

Yes, I understand this... what I am wondering is how the key exchange gets into a broken state. Chips going bad? Seems odd that that would affect the player in such a narrow way. The other functions were working perfectly.

Any insights?

A defective software installation. If the hardware is not interacting with the hardware, you will not be able to get the functions of DVD-Audio.

Sometimes you can re-instate the key through a firmware upgrade (hard or soft), while other times you just need to remove the decoder as it is not taking the key.