Oppo BDP-103 review
Well, Lex, you asked for it. My after Christmas present to myself was a new Blu-Ray player in the form of a BDP-103, which I have enjoyed for around 6 weeks.
In a nutshell, I love this player. Video quality is excellent using a 60" Panasonic GT50. I only have one 3-D movie so far, Promethius. Stunning. I haven't set the cable box to output the show's resolution to see how the Oppo scales it, mainly because I rarely watch standard definition channels.
Audio is great. I've listened to it with a number of connections. The rest of my system consists of a Yamaha DSP-A1, Hafler DH-500 for subwoofer duty and modified DIY Pass A75. Besides the Oppo, there is a cable box and a Toshiba HD-A20 HDDVD player. Speakers are Zaph designed Seas Excel MTs up front and lesser home built surrounds.
To start, I connected Toslink and SPDIF to the Yamaha as a receiver. Nice, but not noticeably different than the Sony BDP it replaced. Since the DSP-A1 has direct analog inputs, I tried feeding them the Oppo's analog output. Ahh, that's what the SACD fuss is about. Using the DSP-A1 as a volume control and feeding the mains signal (no center) to the Pass amp was even better. The last and best sounding arrangement I tried was feeding the analog output of the Oppo directly to my amplifiers and using its built in volume control. That opened up a new level of detail that just the DSP-A1's volume control masked.
Oppo doesn't seem to think most people will use the volume control feature (only affects the analog outputs) and hides the buttons in the middle of a row of similar buttons. No problem, reprogramming my Harmony remote to take care of that was a simple task. Other than that the remote is well thought out and even with my fat fingers and lousy eyes I was able to master it in short order.
I'm not a big netflix or Vudu fan, but those features work well if I want to go that way. There are a host of other net based services for pictures and movies.
The network player functions work pretty well. Getting to music shared on a network is a bit clunky (I have to spend a bit more time setting up a macro in my Harmony) and I haven't figured out how to get it to read playlists yet. I just use shuffle play most of the time so I made copies of my music files in a single folder, no playlist required. I will probably just copy my music to an external hard drive and plug that into one of the rear USB ports and not need to worry about it. It's also the easiest way to play my high definition music files. I haven't found a PC player that will output high def even if the sound card supports it under Win7. And now I don't need to. Could be the placebo effect, but they sound noticeably better played back at full resolution than stuffed through the Windows 44.1/16 bit volume control. I also burned my high def music to a CD and it played well. The Oppo will play most audio formats, but WMA lossless is not one of them. MediaMonkey did a batch conversion to FLAC for me.
With two HDMI outputs, I can run the second to my computer monitor and get background music rolling without needing to fire up the big screen. Once rolling, the "pure audio" function shuts down the video section to reduce interference. I don't hear a difference.
For me, using the Oppo as the brains of the system (like a media PC) without a preamp is the way to go if you don't need a lot of inputs. Not only does it allow simplifying the system, it allows me to retire the DSP-A1 to my bedroom. My 61" JVC rear projection set is already there.
Just need to build a few more speakers. That's in the works anyway so I can take advantage of 7.1 channel surround. So far I have limited myself to 5.1.
I was a bit nervous when the player asked to do a software update as soon as I connected it to the net, but it went smoothly. Not like my experience with iOS updates on my iPhone.
Highly recommended. I'd love to hear the BDP-105, but didn't have the nerve to spring for it.
In a nutshell, I love this player. Video quality is excellent using a 60" Panasonic GT50. I only have one 3-D movie so far, Promethius. Stunning. I haven't set the cable box to output the show's resolution to see how the Oppo scales it, mainly because I rarely watch standard definition channels.
Audio is great. I've listened to it with a number of connections. The rest of my system consists of a Yamaha DSP-A1, Hafler DH-500 for subwoofer duty and modified DIY Pass A75. Besides the Oppo, there is a cable box and a Toshiba HD-A20 HDDVD player. Speakers are Zaph designed Seas Excel MTs up front and lesser home built surrounds.
To start, I connected Toslink and SPDIF to the Yamaha as a receiver. Nice, but not noticeably different than the Sony BDP it replaced. Since the DSP-A1 has direct analog inputs, I tried feeding them the Oppo's analog output. Ahh, that's what the SACD fuss is about. Using the DSP-A1 as a volume control and feeding the mains signal (no center) to the Pass amp was even better. The last and best sounding arrangement I tried was feeding the analog output of the Oppo directly to my amplifiers and using its built in volume control. That opened up a new level of detail that just the DSP-A1's volume control masked.
Oppo doesn't seem to think most people will use the volume control feature (only affects the analog outputs) and hides the buttons in the middle of a row of similar buttons. No problem, reprogramming my Harmony remote to take care of that was a simple task. Other than that the remote is well thought out and even with my fat fingers and lousy eyes I was able to master it in short order.
I'm not a big netflix or Vudu fan, but those features work well if I want to go that way. There are a host of other net based services for pictures and movies.
The network player functions work pretty well. Getting to music shared on a network is a bit clunky (I have to spend a bit more time setting up a macro in my Harmony) and I haven't figured out how to get it to read playlists yet. I just use shuffle play most of the time so I made copies of my music files in a single folder, no playlist required. I will probably just copy my music to an external hard drive and plug that into one of the rear USB ports and not need to worry about it. It's also the easiest way to play my high definition music files. I haven't found a PC player that will output high def even if the sound card supports it under Win7. And now I don't need to. Could be the placebo effect, but they sound noticeably better played back at full resolution than stuffed through the Windows 44.1/16 bit volume control. I also burned my high def music to a CD and it played well. The Oppo will play most audio formats, but WMA lossless is not one of them. MediaMonkey did a batch conversion to FLAC for me.
With two HDMI outputs, I can run the second to my computer monitor and get background music rolling without needing to fire up the big screen. Once rolling, the "pure audio" function shuts down the video section to reduce interference. I don't hear a difference.
For me, using the Oppo as the brains of the system (like a media PC) without a preamp is the way to go if you don't need a lot of inputs. Not only does it allow simplifying the system, it allows me to retire the DSP-A1 to my bedroom. My 61" JVC rear projection set is already there.
Just need to build a few more speakers. That's in the works anyway so I can take advantage of 7.1 channel surround. So far I have limited myself to 5.1.I was a bit nervous when the player asked to do a software update as soon as I connected it to the net, but it went smoothly. Not like my experience with iOS updates on my iPhone.
Highly recommended. I'd love to hear the BDP-105, but didn't have the nerve to spring for it.
Comment