Official OPPO BDP-83 Owner's Thread [technical talk only] - Page 169

I noticed this on several discs last night - audio consistently ahead of video, and only on SD-DVD. It's not just a little bit either. I think average viewers would notice it. I haven't seen any such problems on SD video from other sources (including Blu-Ray) - their sync is right on the nose.

I haven't had time to trouble-shoot it yet, but if it turns out to be the player's fault, which it so far appears to be, I'm afraid I'm leaning toward "no" until there's a firmware fix.

It arrived Wednesday evening and I precipitously installed the BDP-83 straight out of the box into my stereo (no monitor) living room system, inserted a burn-in disc and let it be.

Using identical Wireworld Polaris ICs to those otherwise in the system from the player's stereo audio outs I auditioned an assortment of jazz and rock SACDs on Thursday and was disappointed: soundstage wasn't very deep and female voices seemed thin...it was more musical than an OPPO 981HD but not about to replace a dedicated Sony ES player in an audiophile wannabe two-channel rig. And the gain was inadequate...I was two ticks up on the integrated amplifier's volume control. So, I was gonna' put it into the HT setup, replacing the 981, and get ready for superb video and occasional experiments with multi-channel SACD.

I finally woke up this morning to some of the great tips on this otherwise overwhelming thread...plugged the BDP-83 into a monitor, changed the audio SACD default settings to two-channel DSD, no down-mix and no secondary audio, and reinstalled it in the stereo system, pushing the "pure" button on the remote.

Huge difference! It now sounds resolving enough to precipitate a shoot-out against the Sony this weekend, and even if the OPPO comes in second, it already is clear that as a stereo SACD source this piece punches way above its weight and will embarrass nobody.

I use a MX850, and previously had a 980H in my setup. When I swapped in the -83, all my commands still worked so I haven't spent the time to find specific -83 codes in the URC database. If URC hasn't updated their database yet, 980H or 983H codes should work for you.

When you see this, try doing a Pause followed by a Play and see if the problem clears up. Please report the disc, and time code on the disc where you see the problem and whether Pause/Play clears it.

If you are using HDMI audio, there is an HDMI Audio Sync Delay setting you can use to delay audio to match video. If you play with that and find a setting that seems to cure the problem, please report that as well.
--Bob

I have a 60A2020 & I believe your newer model has incorperated the HDMI CEC protocols. What is happening, is that your OPPO is "talking" to the TV & thus the TV comes on (should be on the correct input) & ready to play your video. You will have to disable that feature in either device.

Always set SACD for 2-ch priority if you're using the stereo outs with DSD. You will not get a downmix on 5.1 SACD if it's set for DSD, only the L-R channels. (The DAC cannot mix DSD) Setting it to PCM will eliminate this problem and the downmix is very good. YMMV.

As I understand it, the lip sync problem comes from the fact that video processing, with deinterlacing, upconverting, cadence correction, etcetera, is taking longer and longer to process, while audio can be processed in about the same time as DVD's originally took. So the lip-sync error is always due to the sound being ahead of video.

I have read that some DVDs have been authored with built in audio delays to try to compensate for this. But maybe they over correct. And in any case, that would make it impossible to have one delay setting that worked for all video sources.

My initial impressions...

Packaging is nicer than it needs to be, very nice accessory box, printing on inside of outer box, reusable shopping bag with Oppo logo, etc.

Looks/presentation of the device itself is very nice, not "High-End" but very nice.

The transport drawer is noisy, it sounds/feels cheap. They could have spent a little less on boxing-up the device, and put that money into the transport drawer. I'm not sure if this would have any effect on the over all performance or long term durability, but every time I load/unload a disc, I notice it. For reference, the transport drawer on my Sony xa20es-cdp opens/closes very smoothly with no noise, maybe it's spoiled me. Loading a disc into the Oppo is like loading one into my PC.

The chassis feels solid and it's nicely damped. There is no ringing or funny echo when the top is tapped with a knuckle or a media case is placed on top of the unit.

The picture is amazing! I've watched 4 DVD movies (Cars, Wanted, WALL-E, The Fifth Element), and the image is far far superior to my previous DVD player. I'm not really surprised by this fact, as that player was nothing special. I am however truly amazed with the image; it's deep, with great contrast and color, and it's pretty much free of noise and jaggies. It brings my HT experience to another level.

So far I've experienced only one glitch, I have both TOS-Link and Co-Axial digital feeds hooked between it and my Outlaw 950. When I put in "The Fifth Element" Super-Bit DVD, the TOS-Link didn't provide a signal. I had just finished watching "WALL-E" and had been using TOS-Link, and when I put in "The Fifth Element", I had no sound. Switching to Co-Ax restored the sound.

I'll be checking out other features/disc formats soon.

Oppo customer service is, so far, just fantastic. My BDP-53 is hidden when my screen is down, so I need the IR-ES1. I checked the Oppo web-site, and found no information on the item. A quick email to Oppo and I had my answers. One more quick email, and an IR-ES1 is on it's way to my home at no expense to me!

Over all I am one happy customer.

I agree, but in the same breath have to say that the DV-980H didn't suffer these problems while upconverting this particular disc. I know they are very different beasts, but my reason for buying the BDP-83 is for the stellar SD-DVD quality in addition to BluRay. If the audio sync problems on the 83 make watching SD-DVD painful (which it definitely was), then half the reason I bought it is moot.

I know we're still early in the firmware life-cycle so I'm not condeming the player outright. I'm also certain that this disc was probably not authored with any of these issues in mind (heck, it's even 4:3). However, if this problem pops up on a large number of SD-DVDs, then I consider it a show-stopper. I'll ask Oppo about it and see if they have any ideas. I've only watched 3 SD-DVDs so far, and two of them (both studio releases) were fine. I'm almost sure it's a disc issue.

FWIW - BluRay continues to look and sound amazing, and the PQ on SD is noticeably cleaner and clearer than the DV-980H.

There seem to be some glitches associated with Superbit dvds for the latest firmware. OPPO is aware of it and working on the problem.

Any idea what the mechanism behind glitches with Superbit and not (?as much) with other DVDs?


Just curious.

Mike

I believe there is more than one difference between the 983 and the BDP-83, though one of those, the switch of audio for SACD, was fixed in the latest firmware for the 83. The main reason to keep your 983 would be if you have any region 2,3,4, etc. DVDs. If you don't have any of these, you may not need the 983. I'd like to get an 83 myself at some point, but I'm definitely not getting rid of my 983. It serves a purpose for me that the BDP-83 can't.

For my first movie, I saw some audio-before-video lip-sync skew. But, since I use the HDMI output, I had the BDP-83 add delay and had no visible sync issue with the next disk. Can you do that, or are you using the analog audio outputs?

SuperBit DVDs use more bits in the encoding of the movie. Maybe an assumption was made in the buffering of the decode process that overflows with SuperBits but not with DVDs encoded with more compression.

That is just a reasonable hypothesis based on my embedded engineering experience.

Understood - all I was saying is that until it's fixed for most people, I wouldn't be comfortable voting yes.

This is beyond my understanding. Every dvd is mastered differently, and with a lot of the Superbit dvds, something in the coding is giving the -83 problems. If I remember correctly, the problem starts with the menu, but the feature presentation will play fine once started. I may be speaking incorrectly here, so don't quote me, as I have not been able to test the problem yet. Another beta tester may be able to chime in with more specific and acurate answers.

Analog, unfortunately (though the delay was also present through bitstream coax). I know there is a feature request to add delay to analog audio, so we'll see where Oppo goes with that. I'm hoping I can't find another disc that has this problem.

Not to get off topic, but, the IR-ES1 is now available? I emailed them back in Sept. and got this reply:

Unfortunately we have not yet manufactured this product. Originally we had hoped to release the IR-ES1 with the HM-31 and DV-983H launches, but we have had manufacturing issues with this product.

Received an answer back from Oppo.

"The IR-ES1 has still not been manufactured."

I guess they must have some that were never released.

SuperBit DVDs have video encoded at about twice the normal bitrate, and contain DTS audio as a matter of course too.

I have a bunch of SuperBit DVDs as I made a habit of grabbing the SB edition if one was ever available, even if it meant stalking eBay.

If the occasional HDMI handshake glitch was to prevent a product from being sold to the public, no HDMI products would ever be sold. Lord knows there are products out there that can't seem to accomplish a correct handshake under any circumstances.

Well I will just take it out of my main system and use it in a bedroom. The upconvert on the 83 is superior better in my opinion.

So far, I have been totally unimpressed by any BD Player. I'm not talking about BD PQ but about the actual slow and buggy hardware available to date.

It looks like that's about to change when Oppo officially releases the 83, which appears to be a real winner!

In regard to SD DVD playback and upconversion, has anyone in posession of an 83 done any extensive A/B tests against the Toshiba HD XA2? If so, please share your findings and subjective opinion but cite specific examples of why you prefer an aspect of one player versus the other?


Has anyone actually used a timer to see how long it takes the 83 to:

1. Boot Up
2. For the disk drawer to open after powering up
3. To load a BD
4. To load a BD Java disk

First thing I tried. Nope. The problem was consistent and repeatable, and happened on all the SD-DVDs I tried once I noticed it (which wasn't many).


Understood. As I said ... I've done no serious troubleshooting and diagnosis yet. I don't even know if it's all discs or just some. Since I've been mostly watching animation so far, I didn't notice anything particularly amiss until last night when I hit some interview extras.

Oppo will be getting a dazzlingly (some might even say irritatingly) detailed email sometime this weekend, and the extent of the DVD video lag will be included.

I want to emphasize that this sync issue is the ONLY problem I've found that I consider a show-stopper. Otherwise, I'm crazy about this thing. (Disclaimer: I have no particular interest in, or software for, DVD-A.)

Any chance that you have the inside track on getting 1080p over component video and the new CODEC's over Toslink or 75ohm coax? I'll acknowledge that with eight RCA cables it could be done on the audio side, but the video is another can of tuna. If no video solution is in the pipeline, why kill HDMI? Until we get something else, we'll have to live with this anti-piracy BS. Frankly, I believe the only way to kill HDMI as the standard will be to kill the disc. If you kill the disc, what form of transmission line will the powers that be come up with next? As long as people are willing to support the (DVD Man's) bootleg business for $5.00 per title, the movie houses are going to stick us with hard to work with interfaces. 95% of consumers buy the cheapest TV in the store. They could care less about the stuff we care about. 9 out of 10 consumers listen to the audio from broadcast and movie disc through the speakers on their TV's. We are up to DTS-HD Master and PLIIz! How can we persuade anybody to listen to the other 10%? Do you remember how long after the introduction of 1080p it took to get THAT into our homes? Had it not been for DVI and HDMI, we'd still have 1080i as the max and need video upscaling. We are all handcuffed with this nonsense with no end in sight.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wmcclain
Die, HDMI CEC, Die!

-Bill



He said "Die, HDMI CEC, Die!" -- not HDCP.

Consumer Electronics Control (CEC)
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

Mike

See the FAQ: How fast are the load times?

-Bill

See the FAQ: Does the component output support 1080p?




Is that even possible?

-Bill

I think that there's at least one beta tester (maybe more) running an XA2. I'll let them speak to this comparison.



I haven't timed the player in a while, so my numbers are with older firmware. Fortunately, there's a detailed entry in the FAQ on this very subject.

Well I had my first hiccup it would not play Donald Fagen The Nightfly DVD-A.