Official OPPO BDP-83 Owner's Thread [technical talk only] - Page 266

That is correct... and weird.
I wonder what some mixes would sound like... like PF: DSotM- SACD... psychodelic man .

Interesting. You've never had any problems with the 980 playing HDCDs?

I've had trouble with a few; the symptoms are the same as reported with the 83. I have a Denon 4308CI connected to my 980 via HDMI. Although I don't play the affected discs often, I have managed to avoid the problem so long as a problem disc is the first disc played after turning on the player. Not sure why, but that seems to work for me.

I assumed that the problem with the 83 was identical to the problem with the 980 (and have, as a result of this thinking, never even bothered to play my known affected discs in my 83). But, since it seems like everything's always worked well your problem discs on your 980, the root causes of the problems may be different.

Not a 980 owner so I have to ask, does the 980 decode HDCD before sending it out over the digital interfaces? If not this is a major difference between the two players as the 83 does decode internally. If the 980 does decode how do you turn it on and off? Is it done with the bitstream/PCM setting?

Playing "Love" on my upgraded player isn't perfect either. Although I get gapless play, I'll get an occasional bit of digital distortion.

It says Mediatek8520 in the firmware...

Thanks Gonk, I forgot that it would downmix the multi-channel stuff. Someone has to report back about this experiment!

Yes Tommy, I read the post from Stimby, just like you did.

Actually. reading the posts in the thread in order I didn't see his post until I had checked for myself with XVI32.

All CDs are problematic once it gets it into its head that they should play at the faster speed. Cycling power clears it.

I have one rather strange specimen - a combo Video CD and HDCD - that causes the problem every single time.

I wrote to Oppo and they told me ...

We have not had the opportunity to address this issue through firmware at this point. The recently released firmware does not address this issue.

So there you go.

And here is Oppo's response:


So based on what they're saying the HDCD light should never be lit on a processor that has internal HDCD decoding (when using the BDP-83). That's fine with me so long as they are able to fix the bug that some of us are running into. The wording ("at this time") does suggest that this could change.

That's allright, I've often replied repeated information myself.
Neuro can attest to this as he's usually the one replying back to the poster before me.

The funny thing is I've done this myself many times in the past with binary computer files (.exe/.dll) to investigate ASCII information. What's strange is that it didn't occur to me to do it this time.

Well, since I don't have the 83 yet, I hadn't bothered downloading the FW. But I think I'll take a look at it for myself now...

Do you have more than one disc that can initiate this problem -- i.e., put the player in a state where it will no longer play CDs properly until you power cycle? If so, have you discovered any common factor as to the discs that can initiate this problem?

And I presume most of your CDs play just fine so long as the problem has not been initiated by your strange specimen disc (or a similar, trigger disc), correct?
--Bob

Does the digital distortion appear to coincide with track changes? If so, is it happening at the end of a track or at the beginning of the next track? I.e., if you Track Back to restart the current track do you still hear the distortion. If not then perhaps it is at the end of the previous track. To check that, reverse back past the track change point and Play through the change point to see if you NOW hear the distortion.

Do you have any Audio Sync Delay set up?

Does your receiver support automatically switching between digital audio input and analog audio input based on whether there is any signal at the moment on the digital audio input? If so, try turning that off in case the problem is due to a brief interruption of the digital stream at the track change causing the receiver to try to do that.
--Bob

Correct. It's always triggered by a CD-based disc that has something on it other than redbook audio ... IE a CD (not DVD) with video files on it. I don't recall MP3s causing it, but I should probably double-check that.

Got it. So if you stick with straight, audio-only CD (or HDCD?) discs you've not been able to make the problem happen (presuming it hasn't ALREADY been triggered by some other, combo disc).

Now, when you put in one of your combo discs, does the problem trigger when all you do is play the normal redbook audio from it? Or do you have to bring up the video content before it triggers? If the latter, are you using Source Direct as your video output resolution or are you using Auto or one of the explicit resolution settings?

Also what are you using for HDMI Color Space and HDMI Deep Color settings? Finally, do you have HDMI CEC turned on? I'm looking to see if there is something about your video or device control setup that might be related to the point of failure here.
--Bob

Are some of those so-called "enhanced CDs" that usually also have copy protection schemes on them?

Originally Posted by Oppo:
"At this time we are presuming that the player is always decoding HDCD regardless of the Digital Out or HDMI preferences in the Setup Menu of the BDP-83. This is the likely cause of errors associated to proper HDCD signal acquisition on receivers which support internal HDCD decoding."

Notice they said presuming. I think their presumption is wrong. The problem is that the only time HDCD is decoded is over the analog outputs. The other times the HDCD signal is not being decoded and not being output bit for bit. This is why the signal goes in and out. If the signal was decoded, there would be no in and out.

Microsoft bought the HDCD rights to use as a watermark. If the embedded information is changed at all the HDCD code is gone. Now I may not have used the correct words, but my point is that you cannot mess with the HDCD signal at all and keep it intact. If something like decoding was done then the HDCD light would go totally off. Decoding is a radical change to the signal. However, if there is a small glitch that is causing the HDCD to be ever so slightly changed at times, then the light will go on and off. By light, I mean the light on the receiving device. The light on the player just tells if the CD is encoded, that is all.

The 980H has the same problem and does not even decode HDCD properly over the analog outs. It drops the levels on HDCD's with peak extend which it should not do. Something that windows media player also does. I also do not THINK that any software HDCD encoding actually does what a hardware decoder does, meaning the software does not shift the filters on the fly.

I will see if I can set aside some time this evening to try this experiment. This in no way would be a satisfying "fix" to the problem at hand but interesting none the less.



Confirmed: This was not addressed with the latest FW. Oppo is working on isolating the cause of this error.

That appears to be correct. (BTW - I just tried a disc with nothing but MP3s on it. That caused it as well - the subsequent redbook CDs played fast.)


There's no way to play redbook first. The Oppo goes straight to the video.


Resolution has been set at 1080i, native for my CRT HDTV. However, I just now tried it in source direct and got the same results.


RGB Video Level, Deep Color off. (The set's input is DVI.) Just now tried YCbCr 4:2:2 - same result.


Has been on. But I just now got the same result with it off.

Pure audio mode doesn't help either. And for one last test I unhooked HDMI completely and just used analog audio out. Same result.

At least it's consistent ...

Nope, it's right. Confirmed by capturing the stream via coax out to an external audio interface. Not only is it 24 bit, but the peak extend (when used) is obvious both audibly and on the visual waveform. I'm not sure why you'd not expect the level to drop to accommodate the higher peaks. They have to go somewhere.

My own clueless opinion is that despite the conversion, there is sufficient HDCD signal residue getting to the receiver to sort-of trip the decoder. Whose fault that is, I will leave to the experts, but I would think the receiver would have sense enough to not try to decode HDCD on a 24-bit stream.

I'm not suggesting that an analog signal would trigger an HDCD decoder. I was speculating on just the opposite situation; that perhaps the reason people who play HDCDs with an OPPO BD-83 with analogs outs AND are not seeing HDCD in their AVR display is that the analog signal doesn't trip the HDCD display in the AVR.

If that is the case, then the OPPO is doing nothing wrong as it decodes HDCD and outputs through analog. That doesn't explain issues with digital outputs although my HDCDs play (perhaps in less than HDCD) but the HDCD display in my Rotel RSP-1066 does not display. Perhaps this is because the Rotel doesn't try to decode HDCD data that has already been decoded.

No problem with the disc I tried. HDMI or Coax.

Here is a list of the ones I have tried with both the 980 and 83.

Ecric Clapton- Reptile
XLO test disc tracks 13-18 are HDCD
Beck- Muntations
Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band- Trouble is
Trisha Yearwood- Real live woman
Mellencamp-cuttin' heads
Chris Isaak- Baja Sessions
Pomp & Pipes
Reference Recording HDCD sampler volume 2

I still havent went thur all of my CD's (HDCD).


With bitstream the HDCD light comes on the AVP and with LPCM it doesnt. Someone correct me if I wrong the 980 decodes HDCD with LPCM, and biststream passes it to the AVP for decoding.

Brad

Until last week my HT used a phantom center. Through several players and AVRs I was never able to get it working very well. The center was always too quiet. I had to really crank the volume to hear dialog.

In my experience, it was best to leave the player configured to send all channels with as little adjustment as possible, letting the AVR handle splitting the center signal to the sides and any base management that was needed.

The AVRs were all Yamahas. So maybe they don't know how to gracefully handle a phantom center. For example, running through the automatic speaker setup, when it doesn't find the center channel, doesn't split the test tone to the RL speakers to check for correct volume levels.

So if it can, let your AVR do the speaker switching. It seems to work better. But seriously consider a center channel. It will make a huge difference.

I updated the firmware last night via CD. It went very smoothly. Almost all setup options I wanted except for monitor resolution were set as the defaults. I noticed the menu tips on the bottom of the screen were useful in reminding me of what each option controlled.

I would change the menu tip on exit to remind the user to cycle the power.

I played one SACD last night. It went flawlessly. I'll try a movie tonight. My vote remains "Yes."

Hey Neuro, I saw that you posted that there is a now a voting deadline for the 2nd EAP on the front page. I know that these last pages run off fast and the message can be lost, but I know alot of people don't check the first page often (I know I don't as I only go there to get the link to check on the vote). Vote people! The deadline is April 26th.

Well, hopefully they can get the player out at the end of April. It certainly is NOT coming out mid-April. ("Wolf" )

I read in another forum that Oppo is requesting that all EAPers cast their final vote by Sunday, April 26th. Is this true? And if so, is the 350 vote mandate ''cut in stone?''

Sorry, GotHDTV, you beat me to it!

Well this should be relatively easy for them to chase down. Corruption that survives ejecting the disc, but is resolved by a power cycle, limits the number of possibilities.

Thanks for checking out the video setting variations. Stuff that DOESN'T change the behavior also helps isolate the location of the bug.

I presume you have emailed Oppo with some disc titles (including the ISBN and Bar Code numbers), right? Or are they already telling you they've reproduced the problem in the lab?
--Bob

I emailed them about the issue. The disc that I first caught it on (the Video-CD/HDCD) is a Hong Kongese single from several years ago, so I doubt their local Best Buy has it. But as a result of the testing you just talked me through, I feel confident that any playable CD-ROM disc that's not straight redbook is going to cause the issue. They have not mentioned reproducing it in the lab, but it shouldn't be too hard.