Official OPPO BDP-93 Owner's Thread - Page 643

I'm not siding with the studios in any way, but I'm surprised how many people don't realize that ISO support was an unsupported and unlisted feature of the 93. And, furthermore, how Oppo is at the mercy of the studios like every other blu-ray manufacturer.

ISO support was never promised, and noone should really be surprised at how the studio reacted to ISO support, given how DRM has become a huge issue.

Looking at your sample file, a copy converted to MKV with mkvmerge does play on the OPPO. The good news is that the utility is free and the process fast because it's not re-encoding, just copying the A/V data into a new container. The bad news is that you have to do the conversion.

The .mp4 version almost works; the player recognizes the container and is able to play the audio but for some reason does not like the video. According to this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3gp

...these files should actually have a .3gp extension, but "Some cell phones use the .mp4 extension for 3GP video." I didn't test it but I'm sure the OPPO wouldn't see .3gp files anyway.

Whoever implemented this type of standards compliance needs a whack with the clue-stick, strong letter to follow:



I've reported this to OPPO before and it's in the FAQ, but if it's important to you it does no harm to request it yourself: 3GP video in .mp4 containers.

-Bill

So if Netflix went belly up, would OPPO then allow firmware rollback?

Regards

Lawyers would have to look at the contracts. Someone still owns "belly up" companies and their contracts are still good, although may be written in such a way that both parties are required to perform. So there might be an out.

-Bill

I doubt that we would lose netflix. I believe that we are losing blockbuster on demand.

Jacob

It was a very wise and sage man who came forth with the following warning to us back on 6/27/11 when the ISO feature first came out on the Oppo:

@stefan0290, et al:
(I've read the FAQ's) I have a few BluRay's BDMV folders/files in various AVCHD folders on an external eSATA drive and they play fine on the OPPO, but, stefan, I'm not exactly sure what you did for 'regular DVD's'? Can someone go into a little more detail please?

Regards

I doubt we will lose Netflix either, it was a hypothetical question. Got a good answer above from Bill.

Rgards

No way. I don't think Netflix is the reason why we can't roll back firmware with the OPPO. I have a WD Live+, has Netflix and I can downgrade it to any previous firmware with instructions from the WD webpage. Actually, there is no difference if you manually install the firmware, any version will work fine. Everything seems to be different in the Oppo realm, perhaps the Oppo Netflix is a special case ?

I'm thinking of buying an Oppo BDP-93, and wondering whether those of you with experience with it could comment on how well it handles damaged discs.

We watch a fair number of DVDs that we get through the local public library system. They have often been handled badly and have unreadable spots. This usually freaks out my current Sony Blu-ray player. It usually hangs, but sometimes displays an error or even ejects the disc spontaneously.

What I want is a player that's smarter about damage. I don't expect it to cure the damage, of course. But it seems there out to be logic that says something like, "I've found a spot I can't read; let's try 5 seconds later" until it gets beyond the damage. Or maybe offer the user the possibility of manually advancing past the defect.

When my current player gets to such a spot, even the advance buttons become unusable. It can take a long time to try to manually navigate to a spot on the disc that's beyond the damage--always with the risk of stepping in the damage again and having to start over.

So does Oppo handle this sort of situation better? Thanks for any feedback!

Yes it actually does quite well with bad spots on SD-DVD and Blu-ray discs. As a Beta Tester, my practice is to play rental discs WITHOUT cleaning them first just to see what the Oppo does with them.

For the most part, it is quite good about reading through minor damage. If the read errors are uncorrectable it has several different levels of recovery. Normally you'll get brief skips -- repeatable if you play back through that section. If the read error is more severe the player will automatically hunt forward looking for a place where it can resume playback. Depending on the nature of the disc damage, this can take a while as the player may attempt to restart at one location only to discover it really has to skip further along. If you bring up the on-screen display, or watch the front panel, you'll see the time code advancing in jumps as the player continues to look for a place to resume play.

Very rarely, the disc damage is such that the player can't interpret the format of the disc any longer, in which case it will Stop playback.

I've had the Oppo 93 play discs quite handily which my PS3 can't handle. The 93 also appears to do a better job than the 83 -- which was no slouch in its own right.

Note that the recovery options available for music discs are less sophisticated.
--Bob

Netflix the only reason we cannot roll back FW? If yes, Netflix can go.

- I did not buy direct, but I also got the email. I did prob register unit with OPPO.

- Yes - I agree. I don't see how regular DVD's would work either, without converting to MKV container or?. Stefan didn't go into much detail, which is why I asked for clarification.

Pardon my ignorance, Stefan, but what do you mean by "mount". How is it done?

Said the innocent young virgin to her new husband .

You "mount" the ISO image file to a virtual drive (i.e. using Clone Drive, Power ISO, etc). When you now click on the virtual drive where the ISO is mounted, you will see the BD folders.

Yeah ISO wouldnt matter too much if the BD folder structure worked more reliably, but as discussed many times, folder structure playback can have lots of hiccups, audio errors and skips, etc. ISO playback has been flawless.

I should know this with all the discussion there has been over the months, but: is it ONLY .iso file playback that is disabled by the new firmware update for the 93 / 95?

If .mkv's still play, how is that doing the Hollywood moguls any practical good? I'm a very senior citizen, but have many young friends / relatives who are into all of this stuff - if they somehow download a movie, it is a .mkv, not a .iso, and so could potentially be played on the 95, right?

I guess my curiosity boils down to this question - if downloaded movies are more commonly a .mkv file, why has .iso been picked on and eliminated?

Probably because the studios think that the only format that they can still save from piracy are their overpriced 3D Bluray discs.

Lmao

Why don't you email Oppo support and ask them?:-)
Just curious, but how do you know this for a fact?

At Beavis and butthead

Any sort of copying is forbidden. (Apart from some studio-managed efforts that haven't materialized). I do not doubt they will get around to MKV copies. One of the big file sharing sites was just shutdown and the owner is in jail awaiting trial.

Cinavia is the next technical scheme that will frustrate any sort of copying.

ISO is higher profile because it is possible to make an exact copy of the original: a Golden Master. MKV versions have usually been re-encoded, compressed and sifted in various ways.

-Bill

One of the great ironies of this whole affair. I would venture to agree that most illegal downloads are MKV files, not ISO's.

If this is all about studio paranoia over pirated 3D movies, I'm sure those who pirate this material will come up with other alternatives.

+1

It's of the crappiest quality/implementation anyways.

So with your firmware upgrade- did you resolve the issue? Can you still play .iso's?

I would tend to agree. AVI seems to be pretty popular too.


I think it's all about Oppo and/or their chip makers being picked on by the studios. The studios simply have more/better lawyers because they are MUCH bigger corporations. All it probably took was a call from a secretary or a napkin with some chicken scratch on it and Oppo threw their hands in the air (gave in/up).

Mediatek, not OPPO.

OPPO wasn't even consulted about ISO removal.

Have we been over this enough yet? Does everyone want 50 or 100 more rounds of ISO anger/denial/bargaining/depression/acceptance?

-Bill