Official OPPO DV-983H w/ ABT VRS FAQ/Dump - Page 4

My order was placed 2/29/08 @ 4:50MST, and shipped out today (with a tracking # from Fedex).

I checked my mail server log, and it shows nothing. Even if blocked by an RBL or nuked by spamassassin, or somehow failed, it would show in the server log. But there's nothing there.


Just sent them an email! If I haven't heard back tomorrow sometime before COB I'll give them a call. Thanks! I just wanted to know if the lack of confirmation is normal.

(I asked for local pickup, so don't expect to receive anything from FedEx...)

I kept trying to tweak the picture to see how good I could get it, but I too kept coming back to "0" default.
The exeption was indeed the same as for you Neuro. I keep going back and fourth between 0 and -1 on the sharpness. In some cases the 0 does seem too sharp, but then the -1 seems too soft to me. It's like the increments are too large.

I also prefer the "-1" setting. I hate edge ehancement with a passion.

Gary

I sure wish they supported FLAC files via the USB port. That would have made it the perfect machine for me.

R

The question I have is does the 983 produce as sharp an image as the 980 with sharpness set to 0? If not, what is the equivalent setting on the 983 to produce the same degree of sharpness? Does that setting produce less artifacting than the 980 -- or say something like the HD-XA2?

High points:

• Excellent case design:
• The 983 has a solid look and feel to it.
• I really like the design and finish of the front panel and display.
• The new loading tray is much more substantial, and should put an end to the occasional comments about OPPO's earlier tray design being "flimsy" (even though it was incredibly tough and flexible).
• Excellent layout of the rear connectors, and choice of power connector.
• I prefer that the USB connector is on the back, despite the slight inconvenience of having to use an extension cable. It looks more professional than the rubber plug on the front of the 980, and using an extension means that the player's USB port is saved from the wear and tear of constant media insertion.
• As an electronics engineer, I paid close attention to the design of the internals - power supply, PCB layout, and so on. The player is exemplary in this regard.
• Fantastic de-interlacing and scaling, including excellent PAL support and conversion to NTSC.
• Aces all the tricky test sequences on ABT's VRS test disk, which readily show up the shortcomings of other players.
• A couple of my test DVD's have some particularly nasty clips that trip up Faroudja and other players, including a few that cause jumping or "twitching" of the image, especially noticeable on the edges of white motionless text. The 983 handles most of them flawlessly.
• None of the Faroudja processor's issues, like macroblock-enhance, image retention, or color tinges.
• Grayscale and color ramp gradation is incredible, and a huge improvement over the performance of the Faroudja chip. There is almost NO evidence of banding/false-contouring. The tricky, constantly moving, graduated blues in "Finding Nemo", look beautifully smooth.
• The zooms are superb. At last, there is no loss of resolution when pillar-boxing 4:3 content, and non-anamorphic widescreen content looks as good as it gets, when zoomed to fill the screen.
• Passes all the standard video tests perfectly, including black/white levels, blacker-than-black, whiter-than-white, color decoding, Y/C delay, CUE, pixel cropping, image distortion, etc.
• The new "Border Level" control for gray pillar-boxing will be a welcome addition for plasma owners.
• It has the functional enhancements of the 980 (like multi-disk resume-play memory).
• The USB port works well with FAT16/32 hard drives and flash drives. I tested Divx movies, VOB movies, JPG images, MP3 and WMA music files.
• Divx playback from DVD works very well too. (I had a few problems with unusual aspect ratios, but these could usually be fixed by fiddling with both the zoom and the 16:9 wide/auto setting).
• The audio performance is superb, although I do not have a dedicated, high-end listening environment to fully appreciate the player's capabilities with hi-res content.

I am seriously impressed with the A/V performance of this player. I have compared it with many other players, including OPPO's 980 and 981. The image is incredibly detailed, yet natural and film-like. My only concern is the edge enhancement introduced by the ABT scaler (the de-interlacer does not introduce any significant EE, because the 480p output looks clean). The scaler in my Sony LCD TV creates a sharp picture from the 480p output without adding any EE, but it simply cannot match ABT's smooth scaling. OPPO and ABT worked hard to provide two extra sharpness settings (-1 and -2) that help significantly with the EE, but cannot eliminate it completely (evidently, ABT's VP30 has the same issue). Nevertheless, in real-world viewing, the EE is not distracting, and it seems that most people prefer the "sharp" look that players like the 980 and the 983 provide.

All in all, this is one heck of a player, and I would highly recommend it. My DVD's have never looked so good!

Also see the reviews linked in the first post of this thread, especially the respected DVD Benchmark Test at SECRETS of Home Theater and HiFi.

Gary

Ah, but that depends on the test-pattern you're looking at! There's actually a significant difference on horizontal lines.

Gary

Regarding using a usb external hard drive to play music files, how do you navigate & play them? Do you have to have a tv display turned on or do you use the front panel of the 983? The reason I ask is that I've read (the words of) all-knowing, infallible audio gurus who state that music read from a hard drive is superior to any disc drive.

I play music from a USB drive without turning on the display (the front display panel numbers the files). If you need to see the titles though, the display must be on.

HOWEVER, bear in mind that the OPPO's USB port only supports compressed audio files. The all-knowing, infallible audio gurus are referring to wav files or losslessly compressed music read from a hard drive. There is no way that compressed audio from a hard drive can match uncompressed audio from a CD drive.

Gary

My order of 3/3 8:24 PST was confirmed with an estimated ship date of March 10 by FEDEX 2 day air. Apparently it didn't make it out the door as I have received no info from OPPO, no tracking number, etc. I sent them an email inquiry at 6:06 PM PDT. No response as of this hour.

Apparently, it was a busy day yesterday at Mountain View, CA.

Dana

Yah I figured that and will leave the shipment alone... just initially disappointed as it means (most likely) that I'll miss Thur deliverfy and get it in person at local dist. on Friday. Realizing a day delay was frustrating but I'd rather that than have it go "missing" without recourse.

Luckily mine's on it's way. Shipped from Sunnyvale (where ever that is) to Oakland to be stuffed on a plane. Had it shipped to where I work so the mail room goons can supply signature. Should have it tommorrow unless they deliver after working hours. Can't wait.

As Neuromancer stated in the other thread
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=2141
"It can, but you will not get any of the IFO/BUP benefits, so you will get no menus, alternative audio or subtitle streams, and each VOB file will have a long pause in between as the player buffers up the next content."

Could any insider tell me if there's any chance to see it fixed in a next firmware revision?

Thanks.

983 vs. Toshiba HD-XA2.

Were there any side by side testing on this?

Would you think there is a noticable difference in PQ?

I do not believe that IFO support can be added in a firmware fix as the feature is not available in the hardware of the Mediatek chipset that is used to play VOBs.

FYI for who wants to optimise their online rentals using the 983:

I rent from the Canadian version of Netflix and get them sent to work, rip movies to my SATA laptop HDs at work, bring them home, transfer them to my movie server PC and watch them from there at a later date after which I delete the movie to make space for something new.

I strip only the movie with one audio stream, usually the first for most titles, using DVD Decrypter.

The menu system is also included but stripped down to save space using MenuShrink.

I dont even bother ripping the extras although I keep the IFO/BUP and *_0.vob files in case they are needed by the menu.

My current playing method involves an old Pentium 200 with a Realmagic MPEG decoder card that spits out a 480i RGB signal over 35ft of Canare component cable to an HD1000U 720p DLP to a 86" screen. The audio goes out via SPDIF coax to my Onkyo and Paradigms.

The PC takes the stream over the network from the movie server where it is shared so that the mapped drive seems like a DVD to the player since the folder and menu structure is intact.

Back in October, I was researching the DVDO VP20 with ABT102 add-on card as an option added to my current setup so it could take the 480i component and process it out its HDMI port to the DLP when I learned about Oppo making the 983 with its USB port and the ABT chipset built in.

When the 983 shows up, I will be using a Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB USB2.0 drive formatted as FAT32 to transfer the files from my movie server to the 983 and play them from there through HDMi to the receiver.

Anything whose aspect ratio causes problems that I cant resolve using the projector settings, I can always play using the old method through component.

As far as the delay between files, one of the beta reviewers mentioned that the pause was only a couple of seconds between files.

Since you are allowed FAT32 as a filesystem on the USB drive, it can handle single files upto 4GB so the way I will get around the pauses is to set DVD Decrypter in IFO mode to split the ripped output files at 4GB instead of the default 1GB.

Also, with the split at 4GB, you wont get more than two files [one pause] on any SD-DVD rip as long as you strip out all the streams except one audio and one video which is what I always do anyway.

My pre-order is already in with a Canadian retailer right here in Toronto although I have been told that they wont ship until the end of this month when the US firesale-launch has ended and they actually get stock in.

P.S. I read the original 983 thread EVERY day at work in a separate tab in Opera for months and I would like to thank everyone who contributed. It felt like one big happy family waiting for a long-lost family member to come back.

Sounds like a good plan, assuming the MTK chip doesn't choke on the huge VOB.

Gary

I'm currently using 303, but I can't remember if I rechecked EE. I'll check tonight too.

Gary

Playing media files usually entails streaming it from the source and not buffering the whole thing so I dont think it will be an issue.

Also, it would be impossible if buffering the whole thing was the way the 983 did it for a regular VOB file on a DVD is still 1GB and I doubt the 983 has 1GB of RAM onboard.

The 4GB file being too big is also one of my worries but I will test it when I get the player.

When I heard of the 983, I changed the ripper settings right away so all the rips I currently havent watched all have 4GB files.

The Realmagic card plays the same 4GB files just fine and the pause is usually only a couple of seconds between them and we are talking about a 9-year old technology so I would be really surprised if something coming out this year would actually have the issue.

On the first page of this thread, shouldnt the firmware release date be March 10, 2008???

OPPO Digital has promptly responded to my email but the answer is a bit curious - and disappointing. As I noted above, my order was dated Monday 3/3 8:24 AM PST and confirmed with an estimated ship date of March 10 by FEDEX 2 day air.

Here's OPPO's latest response


Oh well...

Dana

Well, I just tested two movie-ROTK and Nemo both PQ is stunning. Granted my 970 created a very Nice PQ but it was not OPPo's top dog. With no calibration, the PQ is very beautiful & smooth- colors are more subdued more accurate. But the DVD sound tract is much clearer, the center speaker really came to life. I hope I did not have the center setting wrong.
Music ?? If will be a few days before I can reconfigure the system.
The machine body is really is very good looking////////
I’m happy.
db


GOT IT - it just arrived- talke to you later
TIME : PST- 11:50 am
OPPO HQ is about 34 miles from my home>40mim.
Here is it’s route: it traveled more miles yesterday & today than I did.

Date/Time Activity Location Details
Mar 11, 2008 9:26 AM On FedEx vehicle for delivery SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA
6:24 AM At local FedEx facility SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA
3:50 AM Departed FedEx location SACRAMENTO, CA
2:30 AM Arrived at FedEx location SACRAMENTO, CA
Mar 10, 2008 10:15 PM Left origin SAN JOSE, CA
8:53 PM Arrived at FedEx location SAN JOSE, CA
5:07 PM Picked up SAN JOSE, CA
12:34 PM Package data transmitted to FedEx Mountain View, CA