Official OPPO BDP-103 Owner's Thread - Page 181

Roku Streaming Stick.

-Bill

There is an Amazon Instant Streaming app for the optional ROKU Streaming Stick which plugs into the front HDMI port and connects separately to Wifi in your house. See the OPPO Digital web site, as they offer it at a discount if you are interested.
--Bob

You are THE MAN. After I read your post I went to the back of my AV rack for the eighteen hundredth time in the last few days (thank God for wheels) and did exactly as you stated and IT WORKED. I would love to be able to say that the difference in PQ is dramatic but alas I cannot - at least for SD. Perhaps I am expecting miracles (near HD quality on SD channels) which simply is impossible to perform by the Oppo or any other device. I can say though that the HD channels seemed to benefit and appear to be more crisp. By the way, I called Oppo yesterday (before I read your post) and was informed that they are aware of the HDMI 1 issue and are working on a solution. As many have said before: great customer service.

Thanks for your help!

Bob: I agree that the up sampling problem can occur anyplace in the chain from player thru to and including the TV itself. The primary reason (in my case) that causes me to believe it's the Oppo causing the problem is that my chain is identical after the data leaves the player. Player HDMI out > Lumagen Radiance (identical settings for input and output as well as same cables and input on Radiance) HDMI out > Elite 70X5 (always in THX mode). This setup passes the S&M Chroma Multiburst high frequency horizontal test for all the color spaces and bit rates if HDMI 1 is used from the 103. The Oppo 83 that the 103 replaced passed as well with the same setup. When I switch to HDMI 2 to improve sharpness etc. I definitely see an improvement BUT HDMI 2 output (all color spaces and bit rates) fails the S&M test. 422 comes closest to passing but actual real world tests using the S&M Montage (VERY familiar with this) has a very visible reduction in color luminance. Muted, dull or dim have been used to describe it relative to HDMI 1 output. In short, the only difference between passing and failing is whether the player output is HDMI 1 or HDMI 2. The QDEO chip causes softness IMO but fixes the color problem.

Buy a Kindle Fire HD

Fully agree Bob.

I have a JVC X75 and it appears to give better results in RGB mode just like my Kuro did.

They all look good to me ( Colour spaces) when calibrated, though have not done one then change color space to see what happens. Anyway I digress. I went with RGB on X75 as I get clipping using YCbCr and not with RGB video levels using the S&M disc clipping screen.

I think the Chroma burst was also better using RGB as I think one of the panes/windows was not as good using YCbCr.
So agree, use what is best for your device and appears the JVC likes RGB better. I had an HD750 previously and had it on RGB. Decided to try YCbCr to minimise conversions as most specialty processing chips ( ABT,Reon, and QDEO I believe) convert to 4:2:2 then see what processing needs to be done and then convert back to negotiated colorspace. Keeping at 4:2:2 minimizes risk of bad conversions caused by bugs. Anyway, my JVC is much happier with RGB.

I read claims that the Pioneer Kuro looks best on RGB.
Confused- but isn't that a setting going out to a PC type screen?

And also, My Kuro accepts 4:4:4 I would think that to be the best signal to send it.
Is it more common to send 4:2:2 regardless?

Thanks guys.
Learning as I go.

To see what the player can really do with SD-DVD requires two things:

1) Your display has to be well calibrated. The difference between "right" and "nearly right" will be *MORE* noticeable when playing SD-DVDs. Issues with display calibration will mask what the player is doing.

2) You have to pick quality SD-DVDs to play in the first place. There is no margin for error given the resolution and the type of compression used, so sloppiness in the production of the transfer to disc *WILL* be visible as lower quality. And once the damage is done in the authoring, there's nothing any technology can do to undo that. The information has already been lost.

Making a good SD-DVD transfer is almost an art form. There are decisions that have to be made and plenty of opportunities to screw it up. The amazing thing is just how good SD-DVD can look when everything is done right.
--Bob

No, although computer screens usually do take RGB, its utility is not limited to computer graphics (or computer games). But RGB comes in two flavors -- OPPO calls them RGB Video Level and RGB PC Level -- and there really is benefit to setting things up to use RGB Video Level if you are going to use RGB video format.

The data on disc is YCbCr. To be precise it is what's called YCbCr 4:2:0. RGB format includes three values for every pixel -- a Red, a Green, and a Blue brightness. YCbCr also uses three values -- a gray scale brightness called Luma (Y) and two "color difference" components (Cb and Cr) which tell how much Blue and Red, respectively, to add or subtract from that gray. If you pull all the Blue and Red from a gray pixel, what's left is a Green pixel. The two formats are essentially interchangeable ways to represent the same image.

So why use the more confusing YCbCr format? Because the eye is less sensitive to fine detail in color than in black and white. The encoding scheme for broadcast video (including cable and satellite) and for video on disc (including SD-DVD and Blu-ray) USES that fact in a cunning scheme to reduce the data rate -- less space on disc, and, equally important, less bit rate to read the data OFF the disc.

YCbCr 4:2:0, you see, means that color information occurs in the image stream only HALF as often horizontally AND vertically as gray scale information! This is a type of in-frame compression that is applied before things like MPEG or VC1 encoding get their hands on the video and try to do additional compression based on the fact that successive frames of video are more similar than different -- so you only need to record the changes.

And that's why YCbCr is used. If you want to record color less frequently than gray scale then you need a format which SEPARATES OUT the color information from the gray scale information!

Of course before the pixels can light up on your display every pixel needs to have its own color value assigned.

That means the YCbCr 4:2:0 on the disc has to be interpolated for color -- assigning the missing color values according to the included color values of adjacent pixels. Think of it as a type of upscaling, just like going from SD to HD resolution -- except in this case it is just happening for color.

There are two pieces to this. The recreation of the missing vertical color values raises YCbCr 4:2:0 to YCbCr 4:2:2. The recreation of the missing color information horizontally across each line of video raises YCbCr 4:2:2 to YCbCr 4:4:4. Both pieces have to happen before the pixels can light up. The player ALWAYS does the first piece (because it can't assume the device downstream can buffer multiple lines of video). But the second piece could be done EITHER in the player or in some subsequent device, like your display. Theoretically the result is identical either way.

But the physical display elements typically need R, G, and B values to drive them. And so another step is converting YCbCr 4:4:4 to RGB. (RGB always has all three components for every pixel, so it is equivalent to YCbCr 4:4:4 in data content.)

If everything is working correctly, it should make NO DIFFERENCE whether the player is set to output YCbCr 4:2:2, YCbCr 4:4:4, or RGB Video Level. They should be interchangeable.

The fact that the Kuro displays seem to work better when fed RGB Video Level thus suggests there is a bug in their internal video processing affecting YCbCr input.
--Bob

Seriously, there's something going on here you haven't spotted. Last I checked, there's no such problem with 4:2:2 output on HDMI 2.
--Bob

I'm certainly not in that camp. I have a Roku and an Apple TV that I use for streaming, and never even used my previous Blu-ray player for that because it just wasn't as good at it. But I thought that, given what the Oppo does for DVDs, perhaps streaming through its own dedicated Netflix app could help the streaming too. Was surprised that it didn't seem so.

Your point that the Netflix app takes over the machine certainly seems true. I wish l could still access the player controls like resolution and have the screensaver work when pausing Netflix!

Wow, thanks for that tip on Source Direct! That makes a world of difference. Suddenly the Netflix quality was comparable to what I get from the Apple TV. (I have the HDMI 1 sharpness at +1.) Curiously, I had tried Netflix through HDMI 2, and didn't see the same improvement, but I think I may have had HDMI 2 sharpness at 0.

I'm surprised that the Qdeo processing degrades the streaming so much more than it does for DVDs and Blu-rays (I love what it does with discs). At least it appears that way to me. Admittedly, some of the streams where I've really noticed the issue were sub-par streams to begin with - so perhaps that's the difference. Or perhaps the player can't control the Qdeo in the same way running the Netflix app as it can playing discs?

Anyway, the fact that bypassing the Qdeo helps Netflix so much seems to belie the idea that the Netflix app is simply inferior to those in other devices. This seems to put the blame back on the Qdeo settings.

I haven't watched a whole movie on Vudu on the Oppo, but have previewed several, and didn't notice the same degree of degradation there. Again, it may be that higher quality video doesn't get negatively affected to the same degree.

Bottom line - I'm still extremely happy with the Oppo, as I will primarily use it for discs, and it really excels at that. And I'm encouraged that Oppo is so good at improving their firmware. It gives me hope that things will only get better.

I know the BDP 83 does not show up only as an unknown device. I am about 250 dollars shy of getting the 103. Every thing on my network shows up except the 83. I suspect that the 83 can not display any ID. This is why it shows up as a unknown device. My onkyo was not on that screen so I clicked on the add device button and it was in the window that popped up I just clicked on it to install and windows went out and got the driver it needed for it. Now it is in my device list.
I just recently, after two years of ownership, figured out how to get the OPPO 83 to stream things from my computer as I could never find it to give it permission. I seen the unknown device in the list and decided to allow and see what happens. Now it works.

Yay! You are the first person I think I've legitimately helped I actually have both outputs connected to tv - I prefer hdmi 1 sharpness +1 but when the handshaking drives me crazy i switch to hdmi2. I use the QDEO for bluray and sometimes use the hdmi2 for my cable.

Here is one data point for what it's worth. We have an 8G 6010 Kuro that's recently been recalibrated by Jeff Meier (UMR at AVS) with our BDP-93 set to output YCbCr 4:4:4. He found no reason to change that setting.

The Sharpness setting has no effect when you use Source Direct. All those picture settings, which are controlled by QDEO, are bypassed.

I'm also at a loss as to why HDMI 2 is noticeably inferior to HDMI 1 Source Direct.

My experience is the same. This is why I suspect the QDEO's processing is adaptive, responding with more aggressive noise reduction on what it perceives to be noisier sources.

Truth be told, lots of Netflix content could benefit from some slight noise reduction, so I wish I could have some control over it, but given the choice between the current level of noise reduction and an unprocessed Netflix stream, I'll take the unprocessed stream every time.

I think it depends on the model year. I have a Kuro 500M, which is one of the last produced, and its handling of YCbCr is broken. Based on the S&M chroma test patterns, there are good reasons to choose either RGB or YCbCr 4:2:2; both involve compromises. I ended up with YCbCr 4:2:2. 4:4:4 is the most broken on the 500M, though.

+1. Picture is popping goodness at sharpness +1! Watching Episode IV was simply stunning!

New topic...

I was watching a blu ray (Dark Knight Rises). About 2/3 through the main speakers started turning off. The center and rears seemed to have no problem. I paused the blu ray player for 5-10 seconds and then hit play again. The main speakers would come back for a short amount of time (30 second to 2 minutes) and then cut off again. Pause, play, sound, no sound...rinse and repeat.

My setup:

Oppo 103 --> Marantz SR5007 --> Krell KAV-250p (home theater bypass) --> Bryston 9B-SST --> PSB Synchrony One towers

Any ideas? My system is new to me (less than a week old all put together) so any help would be appreciated. I will cross-post this to a few other places.

 

This is all i see ...

 

 

 

 

 

Yet ... in my Netgear router connection map shows the following attached devices:

Edited by dmusoke - 2/9/13 at 10:21pm

Did some more playing with the sharpness control, and here's the one thing I really hope Oppo does, whatever they conclude is or isn't going on; make the gradations
on the sharpness control more evenly applied.

Right now on my Kuro 9G there's a huge jump between 0 and +1, a significant jump between +1 and +2 and only minor further changes the rest of the way the way to the highest level.

If that was smoothed out, those of us who feel 0 is just a touch soft next to (for example) my trusty BDP-83 could make a subtle adjustment, and not be stuck with
a choice between a bit softer than ideal or an image that edges over into looking processed at times.

That's why I indicated our model Kuro. It seemed likely to me that there were some differences, but I have no way of knowing. I've never had 100% recall for anything but dinner time.

I just had my HDD die in my PC...lost so much and only had a portion backed up. Sad story BUT..I have upgraded my PC and started from scratch again. Now I'm having massive head aches with streaming. I've never had a problem before so not sure what I've changed but WMP is being a doodle brain.
I've installed the CCC community codec pack and re-done my library etc and enabled sharing. So far all is well, except all files show up on the Oppo EXCEPT MKV via dlna. The files show up in the WMP library and play fine on the PC.
I've been googling my head off the last 2 days. Removing WMP, trying Shark007 codecs, re-adding library all to no prevail. Any ideas?

Actually I am not sure if you are correct. I don't have the Oppo's specs in front of me just now, but I think that it should be able to act as a UPNP/DLNA digital media renderer (DMR) in which case it should be visible to Windows. OTOH if the Oppo only has digital media player (DMP) capability then it would not be obliged to be visible by Windows.

The very best idea is to stop trying to use WMP as a DNLA server. Anything else will work better. Also be aware that with file sharing you can access all files directly from the player via SMB, no DNLA required.

Glad to see that 422 on HDMI 2 works for you. Some others have reported that at least one color space passes from HDMI 2. I have done every test I can think of and the only one that passes so far from HDMI 2 is if I force the Mediatek to send out 1080i from a 24p source. With this the greens in the pattern disappear but blue is more prominent than from 422 HDMI 1 and viewing of reference material still shows marked reduction in color luminance. Also, the 1080p output from the Radiance is even softer than from HDMI 1 with no added sharpening by the Radiance. Perhaps my 103 is defective but I would think that Oppo would have let me know by now if they couldn't reproduce the problem. I notified them on 1/20 by email. I will contact the Lumagen folks to see if they have access to a 103 which they can test. Thanks

+1 I went back to using my slow Pioneer 05FD and Sony S1000ES until Oppo figures out what's going on w/ HDMI 1.

Thanks for the great explanation of the different color space settings.

Just to make sure I understand right, is RGB Video 0-255 and RGB PC 16-235 where the later clips values outside that range? Also there shouldn't be any reason for using PC level if one's TV is properly calibrated (that is if one is using RGB instead of YCbCr?

That's backwards. RGB Video Level encodes Black as 16 and Reference White as 235. The values below 16 are the "blacker than black" values, and the values from 236 to 255 are the "peak white" values. The OPPO preserves the entire range from 0-255 with that encoding -- no clipping.

RGB PC Level encodes Black as 0 and Reference White as 255. There's no place to put "blacker than black" or "peak white" values so they are clipped to Black and Reference White.

Video for home theater uses RGB Video Level, which has the same data range as YCbCr (i.e., including "blacker than black" and "peak white" ranges). The data on the discs is YCbCr.

The reason for the two ranges outside of the Black to Reference White range is to provide headroom and footroom for video processing. This avoids artifacts that might occur by putting a hard cutoff at either end. This includes video processing both before the data is put on the disc and during playback.

RGB PC Level is used for computer graphics sent directly to a computer monitor. It doesn't need the extra ranges because the pixel values are being created on the fly by the graphics card instead of being produced through a video chain from film production through to disc transfer through to decoding, processing, and display. RGB PC Level is also used for video games for the same reason. The value of course is that it includes more "steps" between Black and Reference White. But again, video for home theater is encoded using the RGB Video Level = YCbCr format ranges so that's the one you want to use for reproduction, since otherwise the "fewer" steps of the home theater format must get converted to the "more" steps of RGB PC Level -- which produces rounding errors and banding (false contours) -- and any pixels with values in the "blacker than black" or "peak white" ranges get clipped.
--Bob
Edited by Bob Pariseau - 2/10/13 at 8:28am

... Plus, all current commercial Blu-ray, DVD and broadcast TV sources are encoded using 4:2:0 Chroma sub-sampling

An update to an issue that was discussed many pages ago. I was using the Oppo 103 as a preamp - connected directly to the TV via HDMI and via analog cables to an Outlaw amp, with digital cable box running into the Oppo. I could hear constant hissing and loud pops when I changed channels, etc. Oppo suggested it was the amp and that I purchase some attenuators, which is not a great solution. I unplugged everything and started plugging them back in one at a time to try and isolate the issue. I plugged the Oppo into an outlet far away. I plugged the Oppo into my second system, running it though a good Denon receiver. No problem when plugged into the Denon. Problem persisted with everything else. So I broke down and purchased an Emotiva processor/receiver (UMC -200). All pops and hisses are gone. This is clearly an issue with the Oppo. And I do not think it is an HDMI handshake issue, because the hisses only occur when the Oppo is run through the amp via analog cables. It does not exist when I was using the tv's speakers, leaving the amp turned off. I know there are people like me who really wanted a pared down system because all I use this one for is movies and television and the 103 looked like a great solution as a player that can also be a preamp. Not there yet.