Legit Reviews

All,

I'm involved with Oppo Digitals early adopter program on thier new BluRay player and while reading the new specs found something interesting. Apparently it will play MKV files off disc or USB interface (Jump Drive, USB HD)! For those of us who've been using MKV for a while now this is a godsend!

Details Here





Whats interesting is this player has an ethernet jack for BluRay 2.0 content. I can easily see them setting up a way for you to stream media from other devices on your network given Oppo's history of feature rich players.

Would be nice if it had a built in hard drive so you could use it as a DVR!!

Mike

Oppo will probably charge so much for this that it would be as cheap to just sit a computer by your tv and use that ;)

Hopefully this won't be to much because I want one.

Oppo's marketed street price for the unit is currenty stated to be $500.

I know, for a normal BluRay player thats pretty high.

I currently own two of thier standard def upconverting DVD players and have to say they're amazing. I use one as a SACD/DVD-A player in my living room to play disc's while I'm cooking and another in my bedroom w/ the plasama. The make some DVD's look almost as good as a BluRay. Plus this unit can convert all the new HD audio codecs to PCM internally. This means that if you're using an older reciever based on HDMI 1.1 or 1.2 it can convert the audio internally and send it out to your reciever as PCM via HDMI so you can still enjoy the newer audio formats without having to get a new reciever.

One of the most interesting things on this player TO ME as a home theater junkie is it's claims (which now have 3rd party verification) that it can load BluRays as fast if not faster than the much lauded PS3! I don't know if you've ever used an early gen BluRay player but waiting 4+ minutes to change menus is painful.

Skippman wrote:Oppo's marketed street price for the unit is currenty stated to be $500.

Yikes! I think I'll just stick with the PS3...

hnzw_rui wrote:

Skippman wrote:Oppo's marketed street price for the unit is currenty stated to be $500.

Yikes! I think I'll just stick with the PS3...

I second that

Although the PS3 will not play MKV files without a bunch of crap done to them, but what are MKV files used for anyway? just HD?

Mike

Oppo is a great brand though! My one buddy has an upconverting player from them and it is flawless!

KnightRid wrote:

hnzw_rui wrote:

Skippman wrote:Oppo's marketed street price for the unit is currenty stated to be $500.

Yikes! I think I'll just stick with the PS3...

I second that

Although the PS3 will not play MKV files without a bunch of crap done to them, but what are MKV files used for anyway? just HD?

Mike

Oppo is a great brand though! My one buddy has an upconverting player from them and it is flawless!

MKV is used pretty commonly for DVD rips to allow multilanguage support and subtitling. That way you can turn select your language of choice and turn on or off subtitles.

I'll post a review when I get mine.

Matroska (MKV) is an open container format that can support multiple streams/stream types. It seems to be the format of choice for H.264 encoded video (MKV supports variable frame rate unlike AVI), particularly those with multi-channel audio. It's also the preferred format for anime fansubs with multiple language streams and soft subtitles.

I bought a Popcorn Hour A110 intended for playback of anime fansubs, recorded TV shows and DVD and Blu-ray rips from my unRAID file server. Video playback is excellent if it supports it but I can still find one or two series that are not supported. It's now sitting in my parents' room and I've since replaced it with an HTPC.

I don't know how MKV will be implemented on the Oppo, but since it's a hardware player, it seems inevitable that there will be formats (and even variations within formats) that are not supported. Drop me a line when you get yours and I'll send you some files that are giving my Popcorn Hour problems for testing.

hmm.. For 500 You could build a HTPC!

mr_noname111 wrote:hmm.. For 500 You could build a HTPC!

Not one with a Blu-ray drive ($80), operating system ($100), remote ($20, Media Center IR receiver + remote) and a svelte-looking case. Among the four, the case is likely gonna be the most expensive.

Still for the extra $100~$200 bucks that it will cost, I'd rather go with an HTPC. Much more versatile.

Got my letter from Oppo yesterday, player should be here next week!

I let you guys know what I think.

hnzw_rui wrote:

mr_noname111 wrote:hmm.. For 500 You could build a HTPC!

Not one with a Blu-ray drive ($80), operating system ($100), remote ($20, Media Center IR receiver + remote) and a svelte-looking case. Among the four, the case is likely gonna be the most expensive.

Still for the extra $100~$200 bucks that it will cost, I'd rather go with an HTPC. Much more versatile.

take off 100 for the operating system and use linux

martini161 wrote:

hnzw_rui wrote:

mr_noname111 wrote:hmm.. For 500 You could build a HTPC!

Not one with a Blu-ray drive ($80), operating system ($100), remote ($20, Media Center IR receiver + remote) and a svelte-looking case. Among the four, the case is likely gonna be the most expensive.

Still for the extra $100~$200 bucks that it will cost, I'd rather go with an HTPC. Much more versatile.

take off 100 for the operating system and use linux

What if you hate Linux?

martini161 wrote:take off 100 for the operating system and use linux

And what, pray tell, are you going to do with that nifty Blu-ray drive?

Well, I've been using the Oppo for about a week now and can only say this:

I'm astounded.


The thing is the fastest BluRay player I've ever seen. It easily smokes my PS3. Blue Man Group loaded in 10 seconds, Transformers 15 seconds. Absolutely smoking fast. Menus are responsive, video quality is excellent, and audio decoding is right on. I've been extremely happy with it.

I tried out my Jeff Waynes "Musical War of the Worlds" SACD (my audio refrence disc) and have to say it's as good as any Denon/Merantz/etc I've ever heard. This is likely due to the fact the player supports SACD via DSD.

I tried MKV playback and was rewarded with mixed success. My Tenchi GXP MKV's played back just fine allowing me to cycle audio tracks and subtitles without problem or lag. However when I loaded up my Desert Punk MKV's I didn't get any audio at all. I've not had a chance to break open the MKV's to see what's in them but I suspect that Tenchi is using a MPEG based audio stream while DP is using a AAC based one. I don't believe the player curently supports AAC but I imagine this will be fixed in a future firmware upgrade as AAC requires no more processing power to decode than MP3/4.

Are there any tests in particular anyone would like for me to run on it?

hnzw_rui wrote:

martini161 wrote:take off 100 for the operating system and use linux

And what, pray tell, are you going to do with that nifty Blu-ray drive?

you can exercise your inalienable right to play blu ray movies using various FOSS programs that can be found on the web ive done it, i would know

Skippman wrote:Are there any tests in particular anyone would like for me to run on it?

I've got some videos that are giving my PCH problems. I'll try to find them, upload them somewhere and post the link here.

Since the OPPO requires the use of FAT32, how do you workaround to play MKV files bigger than 4 gigs?
This is a bummer. Knocks out most of my movies.

That's definitely a sweet player.
I bought the DV-981HD DVD player from Oppo for my parents place a few years back and that performs amazingly well, so I imagine this player is 10x as awesome.
That Anchor Bay chip is supposedly better than the Faroudja that's in the DV-981HD and that is already extremely good at upscaling DVD's and generally making the picture look amazing.

I wouldn't mind getting one of these, but despite it's advantages I'm still more tempted to just get a PS3 and stream all my media from my computer using PS3 Media Server.
It does (very close to) everything, including displaying ASS subtitles correctly.

MKV support is one of the things I've always wanted from standalone players, but without ASS support it still isn't quite enough for my (probably ridiculously) high standards.

Are you sure it doesn't support that codec?

They just released a firmware patch that updates it and allows it to talk to virtually any media server via a pretty simple interface. I still prefer my X-Box for that function but it's nice that they included it. This is still, hands down, the best BluRay player on the market. FAST FAST FAST, can use IR based remotes (take THAT PS3), can work with a media server, supports MKV, and has one of the best hardware scalers in the world. Well worth my purchase price.

I have two other Oppo players that I use. One as a SACD/DVD-A player on my 2 channel stereo setup in my living room connected to a Yamaha HTR-5150 driving a pair of Mirage Omni-Sat's and a 10" Mirage Subwoofer.

The other is connected to my bedroom theater which I use as an up-converting DVD player for my 50" Panasonic plasma. It's connected to my Yamaha RX-V1600 AVR which drives a 5 speaker KEF in ceiling setup.