OFFICIAL "HELP ME CHOOSE A PLAYER" THREAD: Can't decide? Start HERE. - Page 451

Primare! Yes...that one looks like a winner. I love Danish design and their stuff has always been great sounding.

You're willing to spend over $5500 on a re-badged oppo just to get a silver faceplate? I thought the previous poster was just joking, and I hope you are too.

I can get it for $3500, which is 3X the Oppo's price.

I am very familiar with Bo Hansen's work. I used to own a Goldtop CD player from the 80's and it was one of the most amazing looking and best sounding pieces of gear I have ever heard. Even to this day!

A Primare is not the same as an Oppo, faceplate aside. It's a whole different animal if it carries the same bloodline as most Primare gear.

It might be a different animal, but it won't play Blu Rays any better than a $50 Coby. The price we pay for vanity.

You are right of course.

Coby is just a better made piece of gear than Primare. For that matter it will outperform Krell, MBL, Levinson and Ayre on any given day.

All this gear for thousands of dollars is just snake oil. A perfectly good Radio Shack Hi-Fi stereo will stand up to any of them in a double blind test.

Guys like Nelson Pass and Vladimir Lamm know better than anyone that there's a sucker born every minute. Imagine all the money that their poor stupid parent must have spent buying them those useless PhD degrees.

Thank the lord for righteous consumer advocates like yourself that help us feeble turds from making poor choices with our hard earned A/V money

Hi,
I'm very new when it comes to BDP. All the blueray experience I have is with my ps3.

I'm currently looking for a BDP that
1) upsamples audio (at least 24/192 and maybe up to 384),
2) plays all kinds of disc (BD, SACD, DVD-A, DVD, CD, etc),
3) works well with Apple TV streaming and
4) MacAir's USB2.0 (plan to use with iTunes/Amarra player) and
5) of course most importantly, delivers SUPERB AUDIO QUALITY. I'm 70/30 music.

Having onboard DAC and preamp isn't necessary but if it can improve the sound quality, I'm all for it. No discrimination.

My system currently consists of Anthem MRX-500, ps3, cable box, an Apple TV and a Macbook Air (not connected to AVR yet, but trying to).

Budget is $1000. Flexible.

I have looked at OPPO 93/95 and some of Cambridge Audio Azur players but would like to seek suggestion from experienced people. Thanks in advance!

Output via HDMI for both Audio/Video would be great.

Can you expand a bit on 3 and 4? I though Apple TV was a client, not a server. How can another device stream from it? And does 4 mean you want the player to read a mac formatted USB drive? Why not just use DLNA?

What do you gain by upsampling audio?

Also what do you mean by the last comment about HDMI output? Do you mean you want at least 2 HDMI outputs? I don't know of any players limited to just audio or just video on their primary HDMI output. Do you have a 3D tv?

3) I currently use Apple TV that home-shares with an iMac in a different room to "stream" (not sure if it is a correct word) the music on iMac. Occasionally I use Netflix as well. Apple TV is connected to my AVR via HDMI. So I'd like to connect Apple TV to the BDP player for its upsampling and error correction to improve sound quality (in a sense BDP will act as a upsampling digital-to-digital converter)

4) Macbook Air that I have doesn't have an optical out from headphone jack, unlike Macbook Pro. So when I play iTunes/Amarra on Macbook Air, I'd like to be able to connect via USB to BDP to improve sound quality. Not even sure if this makes sense or possible. I have no idea what DNLA does.

One HDMI output to AVR is enough. Sorry about the confusion.

Yes, I have a 3D TV. Samsung UN55C800.

I think you'll have to forget about 3 and 4 then. BD players have no inputs, and ATV is not a server of any kind. So whatever you watch or listen to on your ATV, you'll continue doing. Your player works independently and will have to use a DLNA server on your Mac for music/video/pics. I've heard that Eye Connect is a good one, if you want to read up on it.

I don't know much about Mac disc formats, but I think all BD players are limited to FAT, FAT32 and NTFS, not Mac. So you'll want to stream those from your DLNA server as well.

It sounds to me like you need to continue streaming to your ATV and just find a good disc player.

DVD-A support limits you to Oppo, Denon, Marantz and possibly a few other $500+ players. But SACD is supported by a lot of lower end players.

I think you're right. I got confused with do-it-all BDP with CD player. In this case, let's forget about blueray playback (I can still use my ps3). Do you have any suggestion for a really good "disc player"?

In this case, it seems I'm posting on the wrong thread. I will post this in CD player forum. Thanks.

You can write (and read) to NTFS volumes on a Mac, but you'll need an extra bit of software. There are free ones out there, or ones you can purchase such as Tuxera. Mac's can write and read to FAT32 volumes out the box, but note there is a 4GB file limit on FAT32.

Best use of Socratic irony I've ever seen-you beat the guy like a drum!

LOL, hardly, the point of my post merely eluded him.

Subtitle of choice, if available, would be a big plus for me. The disk I mentioned has 10 subtitles. Going through the whole list sequentially every time you want to turn subtitles off is ridiculous.

On OPPO subtitles (and audio tracks) are shown in a popup widget, so you can at least arrow up and down for your selection.

The player Setup menu has a Subtitle Language setting, but I have done little testing of how well it works. I suspect Blu-ray discs with java don't allow that sort of default by the player.

-Bill

Hard for me to believe a player couldn't handle that internally with the proper firmware/hardware/GUI.

As I said, I haven't tested it extensively, but java interferes with all sorts of player functions that work well without it. The player is a computer running a program on the disc. That's just life with Blu-ray.

-Bill

The Primare is an Oppo 93 that has been enhanced with different DACs than are native to the Oppo 93, new power supplies to both the unit and the Oppo board. It also has balanced XLR stereo outputs for two channel listening.

The Oppo 93 costs $499, while the Primare costs 3500 pounds if I'm not mistaken, so more, depending on the pound / dollar rates. The $1000 Oppo 95 does give you improved DACs and balanced XLR stereo outputs, but not the improved power supplies.

All of the above, including the Primare use the same video processing path, with some twiddling being done by the Primare on the SACD processing path to make it better. If you're using non-analog sound (HDMI, optical), then you are also basically using the same processing path.

The differences in video processing may exist, but are probably not great to nonexistent. The audio differences may be greater to some degree from the 93, especially if you're using the DACs, but I would think the difference would be much smaller if comparing with the 95.

To me if there are any differences they are slight, but more power to you for selecting a beautiful piece of equipment. I don't think you get much improvement for a lot more money, but if you have the supporting hardware to accentuate the small differences, enjoy. We all pay extra for higher quality at some point, so if you have faith in this company, go for it.

The OPPO BDP-95 does have an upgraded power supply compared to the -93. I don't know how it compares to the Primare.

-Bill

i have a pany 110 and also a pany dvd and have had nothing but trouble programming my harmony one to work them both separately. i have tried everything incl changing the codes , getting help from multiple sites etc. so i'm looking at changing to Sony and moving the pany elsewhere. it otherwise works great.

I had 3 pannys in my rack for years using all 3 addresses. They all worked fine on many different remotes, including harmony. I'll try to help you get it working if I can.

Out of the box, panny is set to address 1. So pick one player and remote to leave at 1 and forget about it. Now change your second player and its remote to address 2. This is done in the player setup menu as well as on the remote itself. The exact procedure is in the manual. Confirm that it works properly with its original remote and that it doesn't interfere with the first player.

Now on the harmony side, add a new device for that second player. When it asks if you have the original remote, answer yes and use the second original remote (the one set to address 2) to confirm a few commands. At that point the harmony should work both players independently. If not, then, you'll need to learn all the commands from the second remote. Go into learning on that device and learn every existing command from the second remote.

Could use some input from others here. I am giving my PS3 to my son and need a BD player to replace it.
Don't really care about 3D and have an Xbox 360, AppleTV2, onkyo PR-SC5507, and Vizio xvt552 so streaming is well covered.
Looking at the Panny DMP-BDT220 but wondering if, for the price or less, I can get good-as or better PQ & AQ? If not I'll take the 3D and streaming, Amazon VOD through onkyo is better than just at the TV.

Thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks, Dave

The most popular players at that price range are the Panny 220 and the Sony 590. IMO, they both are great value with top quality PQ.

Hi thanks for the effort. i have tried what you suggested several times in the past as well as other diff things. I was on at least 2 other forums and took suggestions from there. At this point I need a player at the cottage and will solve my problem by paying another $ 150 and buy a Sony and move the Panasonic 110 to the cottage. That looks like giving up and it is, i just don't have the patience to fight with it anymore.

No problem. I understand. You'll really like that sony.

That's just nuts. It's a wonder that the manufacturers haven't gotten together and figured out how to make the systems convenient for users. They are really stacking the deck against themselves. The only convenient way to watch a movie these days is with a rip.

*shrug*
The BD format is explicitly designed to be as general as possible. It isn't designed just to display a movie -- that's almost an afterthought. While some BDs are are even less interactive than the average DVD, some are extremely sophisticated. Complicated programs have bugs.

I suspect that we'll be seeing even more sophisticated BD presentations over the next few years while the studios try to use them to compete against networked movie streaming.

Between panny 220 and sony 590, which one, or if there are better 2012 models for under $400? I just need basic setup. Also any recommendations on a decent soundbar to go along with this? I just got a new samsung 46ES6500 tv and just looking for a basic minimalistic config. Thanks.