Hippo Tech Solutions

Overview:

In our recent $260 vs $4500 Blu-ray article we compared an LG BD390 to the uber expensive Denon DVD A1U and came to realize that differentiation in high end players were down to build quality, deinterlacing and analog audio.  Well along comes Oppo and throws us a player in the big fat middle.  If you’ve never heard of this small Mt View based company don’t be surprised.  Oppo represents a growing trend of internet-only brands with a cult-like fan base. The $499 BDP83 has a designer de-interlacing chip , plays high resolution SACD/DVD-A, and is not only faster than the wine and cheese players, but more user friendly as well.  What gives?  I received the Oppo in early August put it through its paces to find out.

Design and Build

The Oppo has a purposeful industrial design.  Weighing  just over 11lbs the unit makes a nice “thump” when put down thanks to a set of quality rubber feet. The brushed aluminum front panel is handsome if not pretty.  The panel includes the usual power and eject buttons in addition to a small button cluster for play, fast forward and rewind that most users will likely ignore. There’s also a USB plug behind a flip-out plastic cover.  More on that later.   Swing the unit around and you’ll notice a full set of 7.1 Analog outputs along with a separate dedicated stereo set, usual optical and coax digital, 1 HDMI port and component video for older HDTV’s.   Control freaks can order their BDP83 with an RS232 port although this particular unit was not equipped.  Finally a set of IR plugs and 10/100 Ethernet port fills out the back end.  There’s no built in WIFI but Oppo will happily sell you an wireless bridge for your home network. All of the RCA connections are gold plated and while it won’t help performance, they look sweet against the black base panel. The drive is a Chinese-made ASA Tech unit and while it’s certainly speedy in disc recognition and load times, its not the quietest mechanism I’ve come across.  Opening and closing the tray is not a smooth and silent operation but I wouldn’t call it annoying.   In the end I’d say the build quality is on-par with the $500 asking price, certainly a cut above your typical big box LG or Samsung, but falls short of higher end Denon and Pioneers which ask for quite a bit more dough.

Features

Rather than blast out a list of features I’d rather point out the highlights that make the Oppo unique, especially in its price class.

Anchor Bay VRS Processing- Anchor Bay Technologies is taking the home theater market by storm starting in products like the DVDO Edge scaler, and now featured in higher end AVR’s.  This chip is designed to handle de-interlacing duties from standard DVD’s and interlaced HD content found in many documentary and concert Blu-rays.  A good scaler won’t turn a DVD into BD, but it should present a clean image, free of jaggies or artifacts.  The scaler should also be adaptive in recognizing unusual film or video cadences from poorly authored media.  The Anchor Bay is a proven design and excels in all of these areas.

SACD/DVDA Playback - Typically limited to high end players, the Oppo will playback that expensive multi-channel music collection you have in the back of your closet.  All 5 of them. SACD and DVD-A never really caught on, so new titles are pretty much restricted to classical and Jazz genres. You won’t find the Black Eyed Peas on SACD.

USB Media playback – Plug in an external USB drive and the Oppo will gladly play your movies, music and pictures on your home theater setup.  The Oppo will not recognize NTFS formatted drives which means playback of files larger than 2GB are not possible.

Spears and Munsil Blu-ray Calibration Disc and HDMI Cable –  OK these aren’t exactly features but the fact they’re included are proof Oppo simply gets it.

Setup and Geeking Out

I connected the Oppo BDP83 to an Onkyo TX-SR876 receiver via HDMI en route to a fully calibrated Pioneer Non-Elite 5020FD display.  The Onkyo powers a set of Monitor Audio RS6 towers, matching RSLCR center and RS1 surrounds along with a HSU STF-2 subwoofer.  I also fed the Oppo’s analog stereo outputs to an Onkyo A-9555 digital amplifier to evaluate the analog section.  Speaking of the analog section it’s important to note Oppo chose to spec the 7.1 and stereo outputs differently.  The stereo outputs feature a higher quality Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC while the 7.1 outputs use the CS4382A.  You can look at this two ways. Either Oppo threw us a bone and upgraded the 2 channel DACs, OR they downgraded the 7.1 outputs. Are you a glass half empty or full guy?

Plugging in the power cord and firing up the unit brings up a clean straight forward configuration wizard.  Normally I wouldn’t write about such things but its important to recognize how user friendly this Oppo really is. After a few clicks about my hardware I was up and running in no time.  Denon are you listening? The user friendly theme carries over to the remote as well.  Not only is it backlit but the buttons are huge and nicely spaced.  If there’s 1 criticism I’d say the build quality of the remote is not up to par of the unit, but considering most people in this price class have a universal remote anyway we think its a non issue.

For video I set the Deep Color option to 36bit even though there’s no content that takes advantage of the wide color gamut.  Resolution set to Auto means the BDP83 upscales all content to the highest resolution supported by the display, in this case 1080p.   For those with external scalers better than the Oppo (I hate you guys) there’s a source direct option which passes along native resolution of  whatever’s on disc.  This is a nice feature but for most of us, Auto is the best option as it leverages the wonderful ABT.

I set HDMI audio to Bitstream because I’m just that kinda guy.  If you utilize BD features such as Bonus View (PIP), or have an older HDMI equipped AVR that won’t decode the latest lossless codecs,  its important to set audio output to PCM. Similarly for SACD playback you have a choice of streaming native DSD or having the player convert to PCM. Theoretically it should make no difference either way but I left it on DSD since my Onkyo is able to accept it’s native format. One point worth  mentioning is that virtually all of the settings be changed on the fly which is a nice conveniance.

Most people start off blu-ray reviews with movies. The first thing I popped in was the AVS calibration disc.  I then totally geeked out and used my trusty X-rite i1-Pro meter to take a few grayscale and color measurements to see if the Oppo does anything unusual.  My current system is calibrated with a Pioneer BDP-51FD player as a reference and I’m happy to report the grayscale and color measurements were consistent.  However one thing I noticed is the peak white level was slightly higher in the Oppo.  The Pioneer measures 36.8 ft/L on a 100IRE test pattern while the Oppo reported 38ft/L.  It’s impossible to know which is correct, but just thought it would be worth mentioning.

Holding down the setup button brings up a host of picture controls.  I typically recommend leaving these alone and making all adjustments in the display but for experimental sake I toggled a few.  The Brightness, or more accurately the black level control was perfect at 0 according to the AVS and DVE pluge patterns.  The controls in the Oppo are incremental (+/- 16), so if you find yourself between 2 settings in the display, the Oppo could help you get it just right. The other control I played with was sharpness.  In fact there are two different controls Oppo, or more accurately ABT employ named Detail Enhancement and Edge Enhancement. Oppo says both are similar but Detail enhancement works better on pristine sources while Edge Enhancement is better on rough transfers. To my eyes, the Detail enhancement just seemed like a finer tuned version of Edge Enhancement.  The Oppo has a feature called Demo Mode which draws a line down the middle of the screen allowing you to see in real-time, before and after effects of these sliders.   I brought up a few sharpness patterns and played around with both sliders but ended up leaving both at 0.  One must be careful about using these controls. I can see people trying to eliminate artistically intentional film grain then wondering why the next movie is a washed out mess.  Therefore I recommend adjusting the sharpness control in the display first using a test pattern, then utilizing the Oppo controls only if the content you’re watching is poorly authored. One picture control curiously missing is gamma.  I say this because gamma is part of the ABT2010 spec and I could have sworn the DVDO Edge Scaler featured it.  To most people the omission is not a big deal, but the videophile trying to dial in that last bit of perfection from their non-gamma adjustable display might be disappointed.

Picture Controls

Performance

OK movie time. This player is fast.  How fast?  Power off eject times in the 3 seconds range which is quite impressive. Pop in a disc and the FBI warning might be on screen before you hit your seat. For years the PS3 was the fastest player you could buy.  How will it hold up against the Oppo? We find out!

For this test I used 3 movies:

• The Dark Knight – This BD title is less java heavy and a good test of the BD-ROM’s ability to recognize and load a title.  I measured the time from disc close to the FBI warning screen.
• Sin City – In stark contrast to Dark Knight, this disc is notoriously hard on players.  Lots of time is spent watching an animation before the main menu comes up.  As a full test of load and CPU processing I measured the time from disc close to the menu screen.
• Quantum of Solace – This is another title I use because it has the updated BD+ encryption from Fox. I  measured from disc close to FBI screen.

Here are the results:

As you can see the BDP-83 smokes the PS3 when it comes to disc recognition and load times, but the PS3′s wonderful cell processor makes up quite a bit of ground after the Miramax logo in the Sin City test. I’d say for all but the most demanding titles, the Oppo is considerably faster than the previous speed king.  If the Oppo’s your first BD player you might be wondering what these guys are complaining about in other AVS forum threads, because the user experience is similar to DVD.

OK enough with the numbers lets see what this player LOOKS like.  I loaded an array of my favorite reference movie scenes to see how the Oppo stacks up. First up is the opening scene from the Dark Knight. Not surprisingly the picture quality in 1080p/24 is as stunning as ever, with every pixel on Heath Ledger’s mask gloriously reproduced.

Images were pristine and free of artifacts or ringing. Skipping forward to the truck scene reveled inky blacks with no black crush.  Motions and pans were smooth as Batman goes from 4 to 2 wheels ejecting from his exploding Batmobile.  The Dolby TruHD soundtrack is to die for in this scene with massive drum beats and  huge sense of spaciousness from the symphony orchestra.  The Oppo BDP-83 certainly reproduces the magic of this movie faithfully.

Next up was Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece Kill Bill Vol 1 featuring a delightful transfer with deep luscious colors. Again the Oppo brought out the best from this movie. The final scenes were stunning and the image really popped off the screen.

DVD upconversion

Before evaluating the BDP83′s scaler I ran it through a series of cadence tests.  I’m thrilled Oppo decided to include the Spears and Munsil BD which has been my go-to test disc for months.  You figure a company wouldn’t include the disc if they weren’t confident it would do well, and not surprisingly it aced all of the torture tests in both SD and HD.  I typically only run 2:2 and 2:3 cadence tests (HD and SD) because thats what people are most likely to come across.  The fact it passes even the most obscure torture tests is most impressive especially at this price point.

But Cadence tests are only half of the story.  How does the Oppo look in subjective viewing? I popped in 2 titles to find out.  Star Wars Episode V is a no brainer because it looks wonderful, and well its Star Wars! On my 50″ Pioneer the picture was amazing, sharp and pristine.  I switched between source direct and Auto to compare the ABT to the Reon HQV in the Onkyo AVR, and the ABT was noticeably more detailed with the default settings.  Both images were clean but I’d give the edge to the ABT.  Next up was the Matrix on DVD.  Even though this movie has muted colors the Oppo once again did a wonderful job of upconverting this scifi classic.  It’s worth mentioning Oppo has a feature that will extract 24p from standard DVD’s.  While it works reasonably well, most titles I played had 1 or 2 instances of tearing or split second drop outs.  Unless you’re a 24Hz freak I recommend leaving this feature off.

In the end I felt the BDP 83′s upconversion is best in class, both in terms of adaptive deinterlacing and subjective quality. No matter what kind of disc is inserted, the user can rest assured the Oppo will take care of it.  No setting film/video modes, no changing deinterlacing algorithms.  Set it and forget it.

Audio Playback

For this test I used an oldie but goodie.  Art Blackey and the Jazz Messengers: Keystone 3 is one of my favorite Jazz SACD’s because it’s upbeat rhythm is the next best thing to coffee.  Recorded in the late 70′s right here in San Francisco, this album features wonderful solo outbreaks from the Marsalis Brothers and Donald Brown on Piano.  The multi-channel mix is tastefully done, and when I mean tasteful I mean there isn’t a sax player blaring into my left rear.  Instead the surrounds are used to add a sense of depth and spaciousness as you’d expect in a real life Jazz club.  The opening track “In Walks Bud” is filled with crisp clean drum symbols and a wonderful drum solo by the man himself. The Oppo played this disc wonderfully and to my surprise even displayed artist, title and track information.  Bravo!  Switching between PCM and DSD yielded a difference of about 8db when set to the latter, but this is most likely an irregularity in the Onkyo 876 and not the player.  Once level matched I was unable to yield a noticeable difference in quality between the two and in the end left it on PCM.

Multichannel audio is nice, but I’m more of a two channel guy because CD’s are more accessible and they still sound great.  As previously mentioned in my setup, I have the BDP83′s analog stereo outputs connected to an intergrated amplifier.  I turned off the Onkyo 876 and fired up the A9555 and flipped both to “pure audio” mode.  This shuts off all video processing that could interfere with the audio, even though it really doesn’t I started off the evaluation with the vocal heavy Melody Gardot’s “My One and Only Thrill”.  The Oppo sounded great as I could easily hear the artist breathing in and out before each verse.  The bass in “Who Will Comfort Me” was clean and not overextended.  No complaints here but my audiophile friend once told me, “anything sounds good if you listen to it long enough”, so I decided to put it head to head against my every day CD player, a Pioneer BDP51FD.  Yeah yeah its a blu-ray player but the Wolfson 8740′s DAC’s sound great.  After playing the Gardot disc in the Pioneer I immediately noticed more bass extension.  More importantly the Pioneer seemed to throw out a bigger soundstage, as if I took 1.5 steps closer to the speakers. This certainly required more investigation.  I made an exact copy of the Gardot disc, then level matched both players using test tones from an AIX Records Sampler BD.  I popped the CD into both players, hit play and switched back and forth using the input selector on the A9555 to compare.  Suddenly the bass advantage I thought the Pioneer had was gone.  This is the problem with audio evaluations because its so easy to get it wrong, particularly because our audio memory is so short.  Where I wasn’t wrong however was in the soundstage.  The Oppo had a noticeably smaller soundstage putting vocals and instruments close to center.  The Pioneer was warmer, put off a wider soundstage, and gave a more intimate interpretation of this disc which in the end I preferred.  However the difference I initially thought was huge, turned out to be incremental and I think virtually everyone will be satisfied with the BDP83′s analog outputs. It’s worth noting Oppo recently released a “Special Edition” player using higher spec’d 32 bit Sabre DAC’s , and while we didn’t get a chance to review that unit, I’m sure its a considerable step for those wanting a bit more from the analogs.

USB Playback

The BDP83 plays common audio and video formats such as mp3, avi, mpg and wma just to name a few through either of its USB ports.  Plug in a drive and a simple menu appears as shown below.  This feature works reasonably well with a few limitations.  First the Oppo doesn’t like NTFS formatted drives.  Second it won’t recognize the folder structure from your *couch* backed up DVD’s.  Single video files smaller than 2GB work OK but I experienced lip sync issues on more than one occasion.  Hardcore guys might find the Oppo lacking as a media player, but for the casual person like myself this feature worked fine.

Firmware Updates

Firmware updates are delivered in 3 levels of easy.  The first is automatic when connected to your home network.  The Oppo will prompt if an update is available on the companies web server, and a click of a button starts the download and installation process.  Another method is through the USB port.  Simply download the update files, throw it on a USB stick (with specific folder name) and insert.  The Oppo immediately recognizes the update and away it went.  I recorded a video of a firmware update in real time at under 2 mins.

Finally the last and least recommended method is to burn an ISO CD.  Because the quality of CD-R’s and recorders vary, I strongly recommend using other methods if possible.   It’s important to note Oppo doesn’t restrict you to a specific FW version meaning you can jump to whatever revision you want.  In fact the company often releases what they call “experimental firmware”, which is designed to fix specific playback problem or test upcoming features. Because these updates are not official, you won’t be prompted via automatic update.  I can’t stress enough how supportive the company has been to since the official release in June, or even during the early adopter program for that matter.  Playback problems are often remedied with beta updates in a matter of weeks instead of months like the big guys.

Reliability

This is a long term review because I’ve been using the BDP-83 since August, and in that time I’ve played approximately 50 movies from both Netflix and Blockbuster (yes I subscribe to both) and can only remember 2 times where a movie stuttered.  A simple wiping of the disc with a micro fiber towel fixed the first issue but not the second.  Still I’d rate the error correction and reliability overall as excellent and nearly on par with the PS3.  There’s nothing more frustrating than having a player lock up in the middle of a movie with your family, and I’m happy to report the Oppo has never crashed or required a hard reset. Very impressive considering I’m a firmware junkie who jumps on experimental updates the day they come out.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The blu-ray market is moving at an extremely quick pace.  $500 was chump change in this segment just 2 short years ago.  However brand name players can be had for as little as $120 these days.  For those in the know, the Oppo’s BDP83 is an AV enthusiasts dream come true.  The combination of Anchor Bay processing, high resolution audio support, and class leading load times are reason enough to buy one.  Throw in best-in-class customer service and firmware support and you have a compelling product in a segment thats quickly becoming commoditized.

Products mentioned in this review:

OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player
The Dark Knight Blu-Ray
Kill Bill – Volume One Blu-Ray
Art Blackey Keystone 3 SACD