Official 2012 Sony BDP-S790 Thread - Page 28

Of course it does.

My solution is simple (minded?). I list, for myself, the pros and cons of a purchase and investigate until I've made a purchase. At that point, I no longer evaluate, I just enjoy. If I find that the enjoyment is decreasing then I might start a new inquiry. I try to avoid the "Oh my supreme being, someone has it better than me!" syndrome.

That might be a bad example. The OPPO 95 ($1,000) is identical to the OPPO 93 ($500) from a "looks better" point of view because for video, they are identical.

It's the analog audio where the trouble starts. That's where the extra $500 is being spent for the OPPO 95, and to "enjoy" the difference a treated room, high resolution analog friendly electronics, outstanding speakers, and musical ears are needed. Now that's a feast of subjective pot holes.

EDIT: Of course if you step it down to the OPPO 93 ($500) paired with name brands from $100 to $250 then there is ample room for endless debate based on subjective observations. Anyone who has, over the past two years, gone into the OPPO 93 owner's thread and ask what they should buy to watch almost exclusively Blu-ray disks would have been told that the OPPO 93 wouldn't look different than the name brand players.

Lets not compare apples to oranges here, or act like since the Oppo and Sony and Panasonic are bit-identical that they're the same player. For example, the Oppo offers:

- Source Direct (for use with a scaler)
- All color spaces, including RAW versions of 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, and PC Video
- Stretch modes for anamorphic lenses
- Subtitle shifts for anamorphic setups
- Better support typically for obscure cadences, bad edits, etc...

For a normal 1080p Blu-ray on a 16:9 1080p display, you'd see the same from both and not use those features. However if you need those features, it's worth it.

Analog audio is completely and totally different. Unlike HDMI, where you have error correction and packets of data, you have an analog waveform that is going to come out different than it started from every single capacitor, transistor, relay, and cable that it goes over. They might be small changes, they might be large changes, but they're all changes as it's completely different. Don't compare that to HDMI, as they're not related, at all.

Just got the 790 today and everything was great until I popped in a 3D blu ray which at that time the Screen gets this heavy greenish tint? anyone else have or had this problem?

The other reason people would buy the Oppo is because of its service, which is second to none. When a problem disc comes to light, they usually have a firmware update out in less than 3 days. Can other manufacturer's claim the same?

As for the Sony, I am reviewing it for the magazine but I'm not a liberty to say what I think of it until the review hits newsstands and mailboxes later this summer.

I'm about to pull the trigger on this, but have a few questions:

1) Does this support 480i output of DVD (raw)?

2) If no to the above, can you at least specify a separate resolution for DVD versus BD playback (480p for DVD, 1080p for BD)?

3) Any impression on Super Bit Mapping? One of my biggest pet peeves with BD is we still get banding in certain scenes. Does the SBM work as advertised? Any side effects?

4) Any impressions on the 2D -> 3D conversion?

for 1 & 2, you can specify any output you want but AFAIK, if you specify 480i, it will 1st deinterlace to 480p and then interlace to 480i. You can specify native output. For 480i it be 480p and for blu-rays it will be either 1080i or p depending on the source.

Not for a moment Chris.

What I wrote concerned only the subjective perspective of someone asking if they would see a difference between the OPPO and any name brand Blu-ray player when playing a Blu-ray disk. I enjoy most of those features that you list and would probably enjoy the ones I don't use if I should happen to need them.

Absolutely!

For those considering this over the S780, I'd say the only advantage it has is the second HDMI out and the 2k4k?4k2k? scaling, if you have the equipment.

For video, both players seem to have the same options and to me they look identical on my TV.

The remote of the S780 is better too.

... and x90 series has a much better Netflix app and a Netflix button on the remote. The improved Netflix is the main reason I upgraded from the x80/x70 series players and finally retired my PS3 from streaming/disc duty. It also adds a basic web browser.

DLNA update. Posted this in the S390/S590 forum, but equally applies to the S790. Infact did all my tests on the S790.

and the SEN portal and the Opera Store.

I remember looking for a TV 20 or so years ago - when sales people were telling me to avoid Sony TVs because Sony did not stock much in the way of parts in the area. When I brought that up to the sales person trying to sell me a Sony TV, he said it was because only TVs that break frequently need lots of parts in stock.
I bought the Sony. I still have that TV. It has never failed, although it has moved from being our primary set, to a bedroom set and now a set in a back bedroom in our mountain cabin. I still have no idea if Sony ever stocked parts for that TV anywhere - since I've never needed one.
I also can't say how fast Sony would have a firmware update out for one of their blu-ray players in response to a problem BD disc, since I have never run across a "problem disc" in any of my Sony players (S350, S550, S1000ES). And I buy, own & play a lot of BD titles.
It is good that Oppo is so frequent and prompt with fixes to their firmware. But it would be even better if it weren't necessary.

Needing a firmware upgrade isn't always because a hardware vendor did something wrong, but also because software titles have updated encryption standards and other copy-protection related changes that are the usual reasons for breaking a firmware revision. There are quite a few players out there now, and a lot of computer Blu-ray drives, that haven't had a firmware update in ages and have certain titles that won't play. If a title is fixed the week it comes out, most people won't notice it ever, but if your player never gets updated then it might not play. This just seems to be the way with copy protection now.

Yes . . there have been conversations on this in here. It has been suggested that maybe folks like me do not suffer BD+ related firmware issues because Sony is also a studio releasing titles and maybe the player division stays ahead of the curve on these things. If so - Great. Of course Sony also jumped ahead of the curve with forced cinavia firmware corruption - not a good consumer thing at all as it simply limits the capabilities of our players. So customers must do their homework, shop wisely & apply updates only after ensuring it is in our best interests to do so, depending on how we use our equipment.
I honestly believe the more complicated the studios and manufacturers make the blu-ray player & playing environment, the more they limit growth and acceptance. Most consumers do not want the hassles - they just want good quality home theater experiences in a convenient, reliable and hassle free environment. It's only folks like us that enjoy delving deeply into the technology and debating the pros and cons. It's a hobby for us. Most folks just want to push a button & watch the telly. So, in our home, I set up the equipment and program the Harmony remote. My wife just "points and shoots".

Rich,

I'm fortunate enough to get some titles weeks before street date and have let manufacturers know that an upcoming disc doesn't play in their particular player. Inevitably, there will be a firmware update pushed out before the disc hits the street and regular consumers are none the wiser of any playback problems because its fixed before they ever can buy the disc.

and Super Bit Mapping

Similarly I've gotten a lot of things early for review, and some (the Toy Story 3D Blu-ray discs come to mind) have caused issues on players in for review, but I let the companies know, and it's probably fixed before the title hits the street. You just never realize that it's broken.

You and I have discussed this before, and I understand and respect what you are saying. However, it still remains that my Sony players continue to run on the most recent firmware updates for these models from Sony which date back to between February and May of 2011 - with absolutely no playback glitches since (or before, for that matter) - and I have many hundreds of BDs. But maybe the kinds of copy prevention paranoia driven changes to discs requiring firmware updates do not apply to my selected titles. I don't do 3D, and any occasional streaming is handled by my TV (also a Sony). If a particularly problematic title comes to mind that made the Oppo gag recently, I'd be happy to test it on my S1000ES just for fun, if I have it.

The PS3, according to what I've read here at AVS, is used by the companies doing transfers as their benchmark player. If poor Java works on the PS3, it doesn't seem unusual to me that it would also work on the Sony players that you own. The PS3 market penetration is one explanation suggested for why it's used as a major test bed for new Blu-ray releases.

EDIT: At a MSRP of $699 when it came out, it seems possible that it shares enough of the PS3's characteristics to benefit from the PS3's role as test bed player. It sounds like a keeper for the long run.

I think the 780 had SBM.

If you are referring to my S1000ES with your msrp quote above - it most assuredly IS a keeper - especially at $89 on closeout at BestBuy at the time . . :-) and the firmware appears to be based upon the same basic foundation/design for my 3 player models, as the gui and display is almost identical, differing only in regards to the hardware feature differences.

Yes. And since I stopped updating the firmware on our OPPO 93 last September, I'm anticipating the day when there are new Blu-ray releases that won't play on the OPPO. So far, I haven't encountered one. That may be because I always copy them as "movie only" to hard disk for viewing. It's the only way I can keep my wife from watching all the adds and promo material.

We also have BD-Live turned off along with network access.

Doing this solves the majority of disc playback issues.

Does anyone know how the Sony BDP-S790 compares to the Oppo-93 in terms of blu-ray video playback picture and blu-ray sound quality? I currently own the Sony BDP-S780 and am thinking of picking up a S790.

There is probably little difference in any of the three players if you plan on using HDMI bitstream. The players shouldn't be doing anything to the audio/video data stream when Blu-ray sources are being played. I have to use HDMI LPCM for my AVR, but I don't know it the OPPO 93 is better at converting bitstream to LPCM than the two Sony players. My guess it that it would be hard to detect a difference.

If it did, it's not listed on the Sony site.

As far as I know this is the first non-ES player to have it? Either way, it's one of the reasons I ordered the 790 versus competitors.



[EDIT]
Yep ... looks like the 780 did have it. Oh well, glad I missed it actually. The 790 has superior streaming and speed. Looks like the differences wouldn't be worth upgrading from a 780 for, but are worth it coming from a PS3.

It does.

Networking & BD-Live is always left activated in our home theater - and I play my original BD's directly in the player - no servers being used.