Brightness divergences between Calibration Discs and BD Players

What you're seeing is not at all unusual. For a number of reasons, discs and players can vary in their output levels. Discs can vary due to the encoding suite used to produce the discs, and players can vary because of how their programming handles the different filetypes involved among other things. Make sure both players are set to output the same, i.e., YCbCr 4:2:2, RGB low, RGB high, etc. Whatever you prefer, just make sure both players are set that way. I would personally trust the Oppo's output more than the Samsung's.
Edited by Rolls-Royce - 3/19/13 at 9:51am

7 clicks is a huge difference. I'v seen a one click difference between my PS3 and my Panasonic BDT 220 using AVS HD when the players were on different color space settings. So you're sure that everything e.g. HDMI level etc. matches up?

I understand what you are saying, and I have no guess at what could be going on. If there's ever a question about the disc, go with DVE Blu-ray, since it's similar to how other Blu-rays are sold. Personally all my electronics can use standard video levels, which result in the same setting at the TV, so the described behavior is not what I would typically expect.

Greetings

Oppo has all these video settings like 422 and 444 and rgb and auto ... they will change where the black level ends up depending on what is selected. The Samsung likely does not have these options.

regards

Samsung's website doesn't list a C7000 BDP. But there is a D7000, and its manual says HDMI color formats can be set at Auto, YCbCr 4:4:4, RGB Standard, and RGB Enhanced.

What
Which setting would you recommend when using the oppo 103?

I am pretty sure you want to use 444 or auto. I think 422 lacks some chroma data and you dont want to throw that away by telling the oppo to output 422.

4:2:2 is fine. BD is 4:2:0 on the disc, but HDMI doesn't have a 4:2:0 option, so either way you have to let the OPPO upsample. 4:2:2 has more bit depth/lower bandwidth, but it maybe that the OPPO does a better job converting 4:2:0 to 4:4:4 than your TV does, so from a technical stand point either could be better depending on your equipment.

That's why discs like spears and munsil have patterns to try and validate that you are getting the optimum chroma resolution.

I have the oppo 103eu going through the lumagen mini ending in the panasonic 65vt50eu. Would 4:4:4 be better then?

Not if you believe in what the Lumagen people say. They are emphatic the preferred color space is 4:2:2 as that is what the Radiance uses internally and will receive the best and least processing. Clearly, that is not always an option.

To be honest, I tried both on multiple occasions and cannot say I saw a difference...

I use 422 on HDMI 1 Source Direct and can't see a difference vs. 444 or RGB video. HDMI 2 output has a color up sampling problem with the Radiance. It fails all the chroma mulitburst upsampling tests on S&M when fed to the Radiance. Oppo has acknowledges that the source of the problem is Oppo not Lumagen. Oppo may fix with a firmware update.

You don't have to see a difference. 4:2:2 gives the best result, period... if there's no reason to use RGB. 4:2:2 is natively 12-bits unless you change it in the disc player settings (which you should not do), when you select 4:4:4 or RGB you'll get 8-bits or 8-bits expanded to 10 or 12 bits (with zero benefit to image quality, just a bunch of unused bits). That said, some TVs or projectors just plain look better when you send RGB due to some internal design anomaly (shouldn't make a difference, but it does for SOME TVs... maybe 5% to 10% of various models and it changes every year new models come out... I've seen a Sony XBR look better when receiving RGB one year and the next year, YCbCr and RGB look the same.

4:2:2 makes the best use of the data path in the Lumagen processors... use it ALWAYS when sending video to the Radiance processor from any source. The output of the Radiance processor... you can set it to whatever looks best on your TV... if there's no diff between 4:2:2 and RGB, send 4:2:2. If RGB looks better, send RGB.