Official OPPO BDP-95 Owner's Thread - Page 118

A new, French review of the BDP-95EU (with reference to the audio and video results from the BDP-93EU as well):

http://www.hdfever.fr/2011/05/01/test-oppo-bdp-95eu/

They award it their "Gold Medal".
--Bob

How good of a pure CD player is the BDP-95? I currently have a Wadia 830 that I bought so I could run in straight into my amps, but our new house doesn't allow me to have a separate 2-ch and a separate HT. It seems to be a waste of space to have a dedicated CD player and a dedicated BR (currently using the BDP-83 with 7-ch analog output).

I made a preorder with bluraychip.dk, got a shipping date by mail, but also never received it. I wrote them an email and they send me another kit, which arrived a week later. I haven´t installed it yet, since a have a problem with my oppo and I don´t want to jeopardise my warranty. When I ordered my kit there was only one version available, which required soldering. I send them another mail if I could upgrade to the pro kit, which does not require soldering.
The answer was, that the pro kit was sent to all preorder customers.
The price then was 110 usd, now it is 149 usd. I would let them know, that you have never received your order.

From a use case perspective, that's not sufficient reason. If there is a shiny disc loaded, go to the track. If not, don't.

Since Saturday, I am the happy owner of a BDP-95EU! Am I the 1st from Hungary? I do hope so! And I am truly so happy about it that I must share with you some of my first impressions...

With its European price at around 1050 euro, I think this is the most expensive component I've ever owned. But with the Oppo you get real value for your money.

To start at the beginning: I never expected that unpacking the Oppo could be such a delight. Everything about this product, even the packaging, shows care and attention to details and it establishes a very positive picture about the manufacturer.

The accessories came in a shiny, "luxurious" paper box, a very good quality HDMI cable is included, as well as an USB extending cable. I find this extending cable very useful, it makes very easy and comfortable to plug in and swap USB harddrives, Wifi dongle etc. The Wifi dongle is very cool-looking too and has this "luxurious" feel to it. Connectors on the back panel of the Oppo were all covered with plastic caps, even the power chord was tied with some special plastic band (I don't have a good English word for that, sorry). The owner's manual is well written, easy to understand and explains everything you need to know about your new toy.

Then I plugged it in and everything worked as it should. Connecting to my home network was successful at the first try, then the new firmware was quickly found and updated.

I don't want to go into details about the sound quality. I am not a good writer, especially in English and I don't have the words to appropriately describe all the beauty that comes out of my loudspeakers. Let me just say that I am completely satisfied with the sound quality. It has a very relaxed, warm, lively, natural sound. It doesn't have any digital harshness, neither any fatiguing effect. I just can't stop listening to music, I'd be playing discs all day long if I could.... Some say that it will only get better after some burn-in. I don't know if it is true, but it is really hard to imagine how it can get any better...

I really like the "Pure Audio" button on the remote, because it is a very simple way to turn off the picture when listening to music and thus saving your plasma from burn-in. The same button can be used to turn the video back on if I want to see the player's menu or disc-info.

Also this is my first player that properly displays CD Text, showing not only the title of the track or the artist, but also the title of the disc. And my first player that displays SACD Text!!! I always wondered what could be written in the SACD Text, now I know: basically it is the same as CD Text. And these Texts with the Oppo logo look very cool on my TV screen, too bad I have to turn the screen off ("Pure Audio") to avoid burn-in.

I also like the OSD, it is displayed by pressing a button on the remote, then it can be easily controlled to display the elapsed or the remaining time from the disc or from the track.

I have some DVD-Audio discs and a few "back-ups" too, therefore I am glad that the Oppo can play copy-protected (with digital-watermarking) DVD-Audio discs too.

I tested DTS-CD and HDCD playback too, everything works flawlessly.

The auto-resume function works not only with DVD/BD, but also with AudioCD and SACD. Again, this is something that I like very much, if I have to interrupt listening to music, then I can stop playback and switch off everything and continue easily from the same place anytime later. Especially useful with long tracks (20+ minutes), where fast-forwarding to the appropriate time would not be so easy.

The photo viewer is also fine, at last I can display my original-resolution (5-8-10 megapixel) photos too, not only those crappy downsized versions... It is a nice option that I can listen to music from CD/SACD or USB drive and watch photos at the same time! The photoviewer can also rotate the photos if needed and display exif information! Photo playback from CD/DVD also works.

So far there is only 1 thing that I don't like too much. When I plug an external HDD by USB, it takes a very long time (3-4 minutes) until the Oppo reads the contents of the drive and I can start to watch my movies/photos/music. So you have to be patient if you want to use external drives. Maybe e-SATA drives are faster to read? But then again, they are much more difficult to connect to the Oppo (no hot plug-in) compared to USB drives.

I have 2 questions to the experts:
- When I play flac files from HDD, the display shows placeholders for album art and for artist/track title, but they are all blank, even though the artwork can be found in the same folder. Where should I put the art and this info to be displayed during playback?
- I use the dedicated stereo outputs when I play-back stereo material (AudioCD or stereo SACD) and the multi-channel outputs for multi-channel discs only. With the latest firmware, the dedicated stereo output can be configured in 2 different ways. What is the correct setting to enjoy the advanced quality of the stereo output?

I also have a firmware request to Oppo:
here in central Europe we have a few specific characters like ő, ű, Ő, and Ű. When a subtitle (.srt files, either separately or muxed into mkv) contains such characters, they are not correctly displayed with the current firmware. I hope you can add support for these characters in the near future.

That's all for now from an extremely satisfied consumer!

"I am not a good writer, especially in English "

Well you're one damn good English writer, imho.

I have one simple question to ask:
I'm in the market for a hi-end 3d BDP myself.
Since I already have a dedicated two channel rig.
This new 3d player is to be used mostly in 3d BR video playback.
Would the 93 suffice over its bigger sibling 95?

The latest Beta firmware is only out for the US version of the player. Do they normally release the Beta's in the EU variant as well?

Does anyone have any recommendations for a USB external hard drive to use with the 95? After reading the FAQ for the 93/95, it looks like the USB port is rated to provide a maiximum of 5 V.

"The USB ports are rated to provide a maximum of 5 V, 1000 mA power to the USB drive. It is sufficient for USB thumb drives and flash memory card readers, but may not be sufficient for USB hard disks. It is recommended that you use a USB hard disk with an external power supply."

Given that the majority of USB drives out on the market don't come with an external power supply and rely on the USB port for power, can you recommend any USB extrnal hard drives that will work with the 95 that don't require an external power supply. If you don't know of any, then how about a good USB external hard drive with an external power supply?

Thanks in advance.

My HP Pocket Media Drive (HP 500GB Pocket Media External Hard Drive HP part: BK241AA#AC3 UPC: 8 84962 82596 9)
works extremely well with the Oppo 95: fast, quiet, small form factor and runs without external power.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...AC3&catLevel=3

dszabi:

You have a much better command of the english language than i or any of my fellow north american, english or australian friends on this forum or any other for that matter Congrats!

Oppo released here a new beta FW monday that will fix your speed issues with external drives. Not sure if this version is meant for the EU or not.
And yes, i agree that Oppo needs to support the extra characters you talked about, especially since this is a universal player.

Please ask Oppo about these things...

Actually, bus-powered external HDDs are in the minority. Be that as it may, the player has 2 USB ports with can provide a combined maximum of 1000mA total. USB bus-powered drives are supposed to not draw more than 500mA, but actual usage can vary a lot. It's certainly safe to try a bus-powered drive, but if you run into problems you might need to add a powered hub in between. The drive will draw the most current while being indexed by the player prior to being accessed for playback.

I find that a portable (bus-powered) drive is the most convenient because I can easily take it to the PC for accessing it's contents.

Thanks Bob .. since you have a french last name, is it safe to say you are able to translate the gist of what they are saying?

Try using a HD with less space capacity. I have found that if i use a hard drive '500mb' as apposed to a 2TB or even 1TB B makes it a lot quicker.

I have been told by Oppo EU that there will be an official release soon. I also asked about mp3 playback, they said their still waiting for the MP3 support license and it is not likely to be ready for this release.

Thanks for the kind words!

Do you ask this question from me? Please note that I am not able to play 3D content, neither do I have a BDP-93 (I have the 95), but if you want my opinion you won't be disappointed with the Oppo!

So many nice fellows here, you are too kind!

Yes, but smaller HDD is relatively more expensive (price difference between 500 GB and 2 TB is about 30%, while the difference in storage capacity is 400% !) and can store much less of my HD videos and audios.

I forgot to write in my original post, but I have a theory why the Oppo is so slow from external HDD. I believe when a HDD is connected, it reads the full contents of the whole drive. And why does it read it? Because there is a menu option to show "All Music" or "All Movies" on the disc, as opposed to browsing for the files in the directory structure. It would be great in a future firmware if this menu option could be switched off by the user if one doesn't need it or doesn't like it, thus making HDD recognition much faster.

I bet that the time is proportional not to the total drive capacity, but to the capacity used. And even more important probably is the number of files on the drive (each file, even if tiny, takes an entry in a file allocation system).

I bet a 2TB, 7200rpm drive containing 40 HD media files would load almost instantly. I bet a 500GB drive containing fifty thousand, 10MB files would take hours.

I'm using a 2TB 7200RPM HDD through eSata with over 2000 music files. The new beta FW is much faster than the previous released FW.

I wish this was the case, unfortunately it is not with mine. I have 2 x 1TB, 1 x 2TB, 1 x 500MB. I have tested with one film on each drive and the results with mine speak for themselves. Even with no storage used the results are similar.

I stand corrected (and mystified), sorry!

There have been several approaches tried in the life of the 93/95 models. At some point the entire drive does need to be indexed. I suspect that the reason that NTFS drives are slow to index has more to do with the NTFS file system than it does with the contents, size of the drive may also be a factor.

If you wait till the user opens the drive to index it, there's a long delay and people tend to get antsy and think the player is hung. (read: more support calls). So it was decided that it's best to index the drive when the Home screen is opened, it may the the lesser of all evils.

Bottom line will always be that if you want to avoid delays in the Home screen, disconnect HDDs when not in use.

My test confirms yours. 500 is super, 1TB is acceptable. 2TB forget it. Size of the content has no bearing, it is the total capacity.

How well does the 95 render the 3d movies in BR format?
None of the reviews I've read thus far mention crap about 3d playback impression.

Note that I posted the same question asking in the 93 owners thread.

As I learned from this site, an enclosure system is a great solution. The enclosure system I have allows me to use an SATA bare drive, which allows more flexibility in selecting the type of drive you want and at a lower cost. I personally got a High Performance Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB drive.

The enclosure system allows me to use either USB 2.0 or eSATA external connections. I personally use eSATA for transferring files between my PC and the drive, and I use the USB 2.0 connection when connecting to the Oppo 95.
The particular enclosure system I use is a Rosewill RX-358 V2 Black. It has a quiet fan which can be turned off if needed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042

The 93 and 95 players are identical for video and HDMI.

Thank you! Can anybody confirm that this file is ok and will not harm or alter the Oppo in any way? Will it affect Region 1 playback?

The video solutions on the 93 and 95 are identical. I answered your question in the 93 sticky thread.
--Bob

It's always a gamble when you apply a 3rd party change, but so far we've had no reports here of problems, and it appears to do what it is supposed to do for SD-DVD region-free playback (without screwing up Region 1).

One of the 3rd party hardware mods that adds Blu-ray region free is incompatible with what this disc does, so you have to remove the effects of this SD-DVD region-free disc first if you want to use that hardware mod. You do that by re-installing the player's firmware WHILE THE REAR USB PORT IS UNUSED. You can't even have the Wifi antenna plugged into that rear port.
--Bob