Official OPPO BDP-93 Owner's Thread - Page 817

Barring a firmware update fixing this, I'd be looking at cleaning the laser lens, sounds like its dirty.

Any particular recommendation for cleaner? Any to avoid?

there is a maxwell for the ps3 that I use. works fine on the oppo 93.

Jacob

If you really want the laser cleaned, a manual cleaning with a q-tip is the only way to do it. If it continues to balk at BD discs, but not DVDs, then it's either dirty or failing.
If you're not comfortable with opening a friend's player and popping the hood on the optical drive, send it off to Oppo and they will have it back to you in a few days.

I contacted Customer Support about this last November.
Their reply: "This is a known bug which we will be addressing through a future firmware release."

Thanks for the info, hopefully a new firmware update is in the works.

You would be very lucky to be able to fit 150 Bluray even on a 4TB HDD (even if it was supported) without removing all superfluous material and extras and probably even further compression. I think you will need at least 6TB for 1:1 copies. Then there is the issue of duplicating the drives in case of failure: it takes a long time to rip even 50 movies (of the order of 48 hours) and that effort is wasted and has to be redone if a drive fails.

Seriously, don't bother: it's much easier to walk to the bookcase and select a title to watch than going the HDD storage method for a marginal improvement in convenience. Only consider it for titles that are problematically authored or inconveniently region locked.

Disc Unknown can happen on a disc, but if you eject and try again it may work. If it happens to a number of discs, then it is likely the laser is dirty: smoke, incense, dust, oily cooking, etc can all deposit on the lens over time preventing proper operation.

As for firmware, be aware that the Oppo supported some features with earlier firmware (eg ISO playback from HDD) that were removed with more recent firmware. More recent firmware did improve other features. If your friend ever wants ISO playback capability, then be careful which firmware you load as it is not possible to downgrade firmware once installed.

Hi guys, I'm another satisfied 93 owner. Is anyone using any kind of HD discs for audio, besides the sacd and dvd audio? Or HD downloads? I'm tired of getting disappointed with regular store bought discs, and your so limited with the sacd format.

Thanks,
John.

I'm not sure which HD audio discs you're referring to. There is more music being released on Blu-ray (with DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD codecs) all the time. Or are you asking about HDAD, HDCD, 24/96 DTS and those types of quasi HD discs?

Hi I didn't realize they were making an audio only blu ray? Yes I was wondering about the quality of the HDCD discs. I just purchased a couple MFSL gold discs they're being shipped and I'm hoping they are as good as I've heard, Thanks.
Edited by comfynumb - 2/5/13 at 8:04pm

Yes, there are some great audio-only Blu-rays being released by Steven Wilson, Tom Petty, and others, as well as recordings that are being re-released on Blu-ray, especially for surround music.

HDCD discs can be hit-or-miss. I've heard some stellar music, but the extra bits on HDCD discs don't necessarily guarantee higher fidelity, and may not sound much different than redbook CDs.
Edited by scolumbo - 2/5/13 at 9:05pm

Did someone remove the posts related to "pirated" material?

I was trying to find a way to discuss how the Oppo deals with ripped material in a generic way (such as backups) and how that material influences playback.

I wrote off all mp3, acc, and pretty much all those formats as convienence only and not worthy of any real quality. I mean they don't sound bad but compared to a good SACD or DVD audio disc they fail. What is the BDMV and what are you using for your storage? Thanks for the post.
Edited by comfynumb - 2/6/13 at 3:55am

I haven't tried the HDCD discs, and I can imagine just like SACD or DVD audio they are hit or miss. I'm a rocker, and although I enjoy classic rock I'm looking for some newer titles and it looks like the DVD audio is very limited. Is there any digital media formats that I can store on my computer or a server that compares to a good recording? Thanks.
Edited by comfynumb - 2/6/13 at 4:16am

BDMV is the folder structure used on Blu-ray. The BDP-93 will play copies of those discs on local hard drive storage, if they've been decrypted first.

-Bill

Hi Bill, so the 93 basically decodes these files from your PC or server? Where do the files come from, your own blu rays or a download site? You'll have to excuse me, I guess I'm stuck in the Stone Age lol.

You're getting into a touchy subject because it borders on piracy, discussions of which are not allowed at AVSForum,

Blu-ray discs are cryptographically encoded with a DRM (Digital Right Management scheme). You can play the original disc, but a copy of the disc on hard drive must first be decrypted by some software utility. The player does NOT do that.

See the FAQ for lists of file formats and utilities: What are the alternatives to .iso files?

People are mostly interested in playing backups of their own discs. Download sites offering Blu-rays are almost certainly pirate sites and we don't help with those.

The ethics and legality of this gets endlessly debated and I would rather not get into it here once again.

-Bill

I understand. I'm more of a disc guy, I like to own a copy of my favorite artists. But having the possibility of an endless collection all in one place is appealing, I just don't want to sacrifice sound. Are the blu-ray audio discs being brushed aside like SACD? I can't seem to find many online.


Ok I read up a little online and it looks like the flac files that some of the download sites are using are of good quality. I know the 93 will play these, but what's the best way to play them, right off your laptop? And can you burn them to disc? Lots of questions sorry about that, but if I go with downloads I want the quality of a good disc, if possible.
Edited by comfynumb - 2/6/13 at 5:45am

Most likely the moderators came in and did some cleanup, as discussing pirated content is against forum rules.

Although all my music is stored on HDDs, I still like to own the discs, so I don't use the legal download sites like HDtracks and Linn Records that have HD and lossless music downloads. I know many people are very satisfied with their releases. However, availability is still rather limited. I'm sure this is the future, but I would rather own the physical media, probably from my days of collecting LPs, then 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, SACDs, DVD-As, and now Blu-rays. I figured out I own 7 different physical copies of Close To The Edge, and I'm about to buy my 8th when the new Audio Fidelity SACD version is released, lol. All of my digital collection is identical in sound quality to the original disc source, and the convenience of accessing all my music with a few button presses of the remote is enormous. I can also do things like create playlists that just aren't possible playing from physical media.

Without getting too far off-topic to this thread, playing digital media on your 93 can be accomplished a couple of different ways. One is to store these files on an a HDD attached to your Oppo. This is the simplest to set up and use. After copying files to a HDD, you simply connect it to your Oppo and the files should be recognized, assuming they are in a compatible format (FLAC, for instance).

You can also use a media server, of which there are many types to choose from. There is a thread dedicated to this here. This will be a little more involved to set up but it gives you some advantages over playing files stored on attached HDDs, such as storing files on a NAS, streaming to devices in other rooms, creating and playing from playlists, and better indexing and file retrieval.

For small collections, the attached HDD method is probably the easiest way to start out, and then you can add media server capability as your digital collection grows. If you're already using media manager software on a pc, such as MediaMonkey, dBpowerAmp, Foobar, etc., adding media server capability is relatively easy.
Edited by scolumbo - 2/6/13 at 9:01am

Taking FLAC files as an example:

You have options. It's up to you how you do it. Quality of the result should be the same with all these means:

• Burn a collection of files to optical discs and load those in the player. (simple but static contents per disc)
• Copy them to a USB device like a thumb drive or USB hard drive and attach that to the player (larger collections and can be maintained on a computer)
• Keep them on a computer and access them from the player over DLNA (see the FAQ for DLNA details)

-Bill

Ok Bill, so the FLAC files won't burn on a regular cd-r disc? What about WAV files will they burn on a regular cd-r disc? I'm on hdtracks.com and I can download in a few different ways. Thanks.

You can burn flac to a CD as a "data" disc, and access the files. Or you could fit more by burning them to a data DVD. Or you could burn them to a cd, as a CD, and they will play just like any compact disc. Or as Bill suggests, thrown them on a flash drive or hard drive, or use DLNA.

Ok, this is just foreign to me, I'm familiar with mp3 and different formats just not these. Can I fit a whole album on a cd either in WAV or FLAC just burning them as a regular cd?

Yes. I use Burrrn. You can load it with most audio formats, then burn a regular CD from it. Download it here.

The beauty of the Oppo is that you can also just play raw files. Meaning you don't have to burn/author an audio CD (but you can if you want).

Good info thanks, if I don't burn a disc, how do I get them to play on the 93, a flash drive or stream them through my network? I talked to hdtracks support and the bad part is on some of their downloads there's a code from the artists record label that won't allow you to burn them on a disc. Of course they don't tell you which ones.
Edited by comfynumb - 2/6/13 at 10:15am

Yes, either or both.

If you're going to get into this, run some experiments and you'll figure out how you want to go pretty quickly. Start small and cheap, test a few converted albums or downloaded tracks on various storage, with or without the network.

If you've done mp3 this is pretty much the same. As a collection grows, organization and indexing become more important. Figure out how you want to approach that and then scale up.

-Bill

Sounds good. If I do the conversion from say AAC to FLAC or WAV, I'm still going to be limited as far as quality goes right? I mean I can't change the quality correct? What I'm getting at is some places online are saying they have HD tracks available that are better than any CD and are pretty much like the masters. I haven't tried them yet but I'm about to. Their support is saying I should burn onto DVD, either DVD-A, DVD-V or a blu ray, I'm wondering why I can't use a regular DVD-R.