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My response


OPPO BDP-83 Blu-Ray Disc Player Update


Dear Warrant ,

Thank you for signing up to receive information about our upcoming OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player. We appreciate your interest, and would like to update you on the current development status of this exciting new product.

One of the major design goals for the BDP-83 is to deliver first-class video quality for both Blu-ray and DVD. We based and expanded upon our top-of-the-line DV-983H up-converting DVD player and fully utilize the unparalleled performance of the VRS by Anchor Bay video processing solution. You can expect all the high-end video features including Source Direct for DVD and Blu-ray, high definition HDMI scaling, Edge and Detail Enhancement options, and 1080p24Hz output for both Blu-ray and DVD.

We did not stop at just video performance. We further refined the audio stage, including the addition of discrete stereo outputs and increasing the power and efficiency of the power supply. For SACD playback, the BDP-83 supports direct DSD over HDMI and DSD-to-analog without any PCM conversion, a very unique feature.

With the BDP-83, we intend to release a full-featured universal Blu-ray Disc player that supports BD Profile 2.0 (BD-Live), DVD, SACD, DVD-Audio, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio. As of this writing, the BDP-83 supports BD Profile 1.1 (BONUSVIEW), DVD-Video, SACD, and bitstreaming of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Progress is being made on a daily basis as our engineers work diligently around the clock to further enable DVD-Audio, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio onboard decoding, and BD Profile 2.0.

The BDP-83 is currently undergoing an extensive and thorough Beta Test Program. We greatly appreciate all the feedback from our beta testers, as without their hard work and extraordinary attention to detail, the BDP-83 would not be the high quality product that our customers have come to expect from us.

As many of our customers eagerly anticipate the release of the BDP83, we are contemplating a "BDP-83 Early Adoption Program" in late December or early January. This program will make available a limited number of units so you can purchase and experience the current implementation of the BDP-83's feature set, with the ability to download firmware as new features become available. The estimated price for the BDP-83 is around $499 to $599.

OPPO Digital is a consumer-oriented company that listens carefully to customer opinions and values their feedback. If it were not for our customers' feedback and support, OPPO would not be where we are today. At OPPO we strive to provide our customers with quality products reinforced by exceptional customer service.

Please email to BDP-83 @oppodigital. com if you have any questions and comments, or simply reply to this email.

I split the email address in an effort to avoid bots

Looks like there isn't much to do these days in upgrade city but sit around and WAIT.

Sounds like a sweet BDP warrant. You seem fairly jazzed about it. With all the features Oppo is putting into it I would be too. There is one issue at hand however and huh... well. I am not sure gonk would be able to handle coming in second place very well at all. So... huh yeah. Just a thought.

As long as you leave one for me to get, too, we'll be cool. And, yes, I'm looking forward to seeing this player hit the streets...

"With the BDP-83, we intend to release a full-featured universal Blu-ray Disc player that supports BD Profile 2.0 (BD-Live), DVD, SACD, DVD-Audio, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio." Isn't something missing from this list? What about ordinary CDs?

And in addition to ordinary CDs, how about digital picture files (JPEG or TIFF) in high definition? I'll buy another disc player only if it plays EVERY DIGITAL MEDIUM NOW AVAILABLE, and I hope anyone reading this speaks up if they feel the same way.

In the interests of mercy I'll forgive it not playing LPs.

"NDA?"

NDA has been a bit relaxed in light of the official announcement (anything covered in the letter is public knowledge and thus fair game for discussion), but yes - "NDA." You may still get a production unit before I do, though.
Ordinary CD's are supported, including CD text. I've even got a funny story about that, but I'll have to check to see if it's OK to tell.
It'll do high-res JPG's just fine, and even offers some nice controls for slide shows. It'll also do MP3, WMA, and an assortment of other audio and video file formats. It doesn't do everything, but it does a whole heck of a lot and they may yet be able to expand the list (WAV and FLAC are still missing but haven't been 100% ruled out).

OK Guys,

I couldn't resist. I have one. I've been Beta testing it for about a month. Every week it gets better and better with new software updates.

I have been testing it to see how it interacts with the 990 and of course it is great. Last week we watched "An Unfinished Life" and my wife swore it was a Blu-Ray. I told her it was only a regular DVD and she couldn't believe her eyes.


We have a lot of admiration for OPPO. They are committed to quality, great pricing, and superb customer service. When it is out of Beta and released, you will love BDP-83.

Peter

I've had mine since late September, and I'll second Peter's comments. I'm not going to get into too much detail about the player until the Early Adopter program gets off the ground and things really start hopping, but I'll offer two observations for the moment.

First, I have not missed my 983H - something that I didn't think would be possible a few months ago. As Peter points out, standard DVD's will love this player.

Second, I'll save my funny story for later, but the punch line is that the analog section that 990 owners will be so interested in is very nice.

It is great to hear the upconversion of SD DVDs is so good. I'm also very interested in how the OPPO will sound with my 990. As I understand it the BDP-83 will not include decoding of the new audio formats when initially released. Absent the ability to decode within the player and output via 7.1 analog connections to my 990 the Early Adoption player offers limited value to me. I'll wait until the full feature set is available. This question may be beyond the beta testers but is the price range of $499 to $599 for the initial offering or the range for the unit with a full feature set?

Oh, do tell! Are you referring to the stereo analog section or the 7.1 analog?

AvFan,

Any early purchaser of the BDP-83 will be able to upgrade the player free of charge when the software for the new audio formats is released. Since the number of movies released in these formats is quite limited for now, this is no big deal.

The biggest problem you might face with the "early adoption" program is actually getting a player. The number of units available for this program is quite small. In my opinion there will be a stampede of OPPO fans to get their hands on one.

Peter

7.1 analog - although I've been meaning to experiment a bit with the stereo output as well...
I think that this is reasonable. Granted, early adopters will still be able to get to multichannel PCM tracks (which were very prevalent on Blu-ray releases initially before been superceded by TrueHD and DTS-HD MA in the last six months or so), decoded or bitstreamed DD/DTS core tracks, and SACD while they wait for decoding to arrive, but if you wait for the official release you'll have a clearer picture of what you're getting thanks to the feedback the early adopters will provide. (Beta testers will also be able to speak somewhat more freely during the early adopter program, although details about the in-development firmware will still be off limits.)

In either case, I am going to be curious to see how the supply keeps up with demand. The early adopter group will be limited in size and likely sell out very quickly. Demand for the official launch will probably be on par with or greater than what was seen with the 983H, but I think it will come as less of a surprise (many expected the 983H to be a very "niche" product). It may sell out, but probably not as quickly or repeatedly as the 983H did.
It's not really locked in at this point, as I understand it. I think that's the final price, and the early adopters may pay the same price but have an expanded return / refund window. Personally, I think the $599 price is where the player belongs - the $499 point would be cool, but there's just too much under the hood of this thing. That also takes into account that the 983H was considered a value at $399 without Blu-ray and comparisons to the players from Pioneer, Denon, Yamaha, and Marantz (all of which cost more, sometimes lots more).

Peter and Gonk:

Thanks for your insights. The forums have been buzzing over this player for some time and based upon your experiences during the beta test phase the hype is justified. Now folks will be actually vibrating with anticipation! It may well be the holy grail of disc players. One additional note: I've seen a number of posts from folks who are anxious to combine the BDP-83 with the 997. Based upon some of the initial info on the 997 it appears there are overlapping features. I'm curious how they will work together and allow the customer to take advantage of each unit's best features. Maybe that's another thread.

There are a couple local friends who own 990's, and for them I have quietly recommended they look to the BDP-83 as their eventual solution for Blu-ray. It's a nearly ideal fit. The BDP-83 will work very well with the 997, as well, although for the 997 I'd lean toward using the HDMI connection exclusively (less clutter, more flexibility). In that case, the multichannel analog output is unnecessary, but having the onboard decoding (once it's enabled) will allow you to use bonus features that employ secondary audio without compromising the primary audio. The 997 ends up not doing any decoding (it just gets multichannel PCM, which then gets piped to the DSP for all sorts of machinations such as Pro Logic IIx for 5.1 sources and Trinnov) and the BDP-83 ends up not using its multichannel analog output, but it would still work nicely. As for video scaling for DVD's, my preference would be OPPO's ABT implementation over anyone's Reon implementation. I've had a chance to spend a bit of time with Reon and even more with the ABT, and I agree with a number of others (folks more knowledgeable than me about video processing and performance) that the ABT is a bit better - not night and day, but better. So, for that, the 997's Reon would not be used for DVD - but it would still be available for other more needy sources (cable boxes with pitiful scalers and deinterlacers, VCR's, maybe a Wii, ...).

It's somewhat off topic, but I have mentioned elsewhere that I assume (dangerous, I know) that OPPO will at some point take the BDP-83 platform and scale it down to a less expensive little brother (similar to the original 971H and the 970HD that followed it). That scaled down player might eventually be an even more ideal feature-fit with the Model 997, but I wouldn't expect such a player to come into being for at least a year.

Gonk, it sounds like it is going to be a great player. I a feeling you were testing it! Looking forward to your complete review once the waters clear.

Unfortunately, it will be priced a little high for me, so I will look at another well regarded unit just released for a few hundred less. I'm sure it will be a notch below the Oppo, but my budget is not big enough for everything in my near future.

Now the waiting for that review!

I'm excited like many others on this forum for the upcoming BDP-83. I don't own a BDP yet, and my SD DVD player is nothing great (about 8 years old, no upscaling, SACD, DVD-A, HDCD, etc), so this will definately transform my HT experience.

Thanks for sharing your insight Gonk. I am one of those that plan on upgrading to the 997 and OPPO BDP in the near future (I hope). My best bet would be run run a HDMI cable from the BDP to the 997 and then from the 997 to the TV? - would the HDMI cable to the 997 for video then pass through to the TV untouched?

That is probably what I'm going to do, but I'll wait until sometime in the spring. Hopefully by then the full featured player will be available and been put through its paces by lots of customers.

Combining the 990 and BDP-83 leaves a video processing hole as you've noted the 997 would fill. I keep wondering about a stand alone video processor such as the DVDO Edge. Do you know if the Edge can enhance SD-DVD like the BDP-83? If so I could feed an Edge with 480i DVD from my OPPO 980H. For the new audio formats on Blu Ray I would still need a player with on-board decoding and 7.1 analog outputs that would connect to the 990 but let the Edge handle BD video. Using an Edge would fill the video processing hole for all sources. So many options....

There would be a hole for sources other than discs (since the BDP-83 would cover any discs except HD-DVD). The Edge uses the same chip as later 983H's and the BDP-83 (the ABT2010, which is functionally almost identical to the combination of ABT102 and ABT1018 that the original 983H's use - just integrated into one chip and with a couple new tricks mixed in). Based on what I've seen OPPO do with the 102/1018 and 2010, I would expect the Edge to be able to do a very respectable job of video processing.

Has anyone here had a chance to mess with upconversion of SDTV from a cable/satellite/FiOS box to see if it makes it watchable?

That's one thing that kind of burns me about today's TV situation. SDTV looks like complete crap on my 50" regardless of whether I have my DVR upscale it or my TV.

Just wondering if a Reon solution does much better.

My guess is probably not as it looks to me like most SDTV isn't even "broadcast" in DVD quality.

You're never going to mistake it for HD or even a good DVD transfer, obviously, and my experiments with Reon have actually been somewhat hampered by the fact that it's surprisingly tricky to get my HD DVR cable box to agree to output 480i from SD channels (there's a procedure, but it doesn't always work like it's supposed to for some reason and the cable box has been known to forget what it agreed to and change its behavior). It's not as bad for me as for some others, since I have a smaller display.

The biggest issue I've seen with cable TV is deinterlacing - some of the animation my daughter enjoys is a great test of deinterlacing performance, and I was startled the first time I was able to convince the cable box to feed 480i to device that actually knew how to do deinterlacing properly - it looked very close to what I got from a DVD played back in an OPPO player.

We will update your status on the Blu-ray Notification List to reflect your interest in participating in the Early Adoption Program.

And too late, gonk already has his.

Best Regards,

Customer Service


LMAO

The funniest part of that is that I could see someone at OPPO actually sticking that in an email to you after the standard early adopter reply...

That is in fact what happened, I posted a direct quote from the email thay sent me. The title of this thread is exactly what I sent them. I guessed their beta platform distribution couldn't be that large, I am absolutely certain they monitor forums, and your user name is fairly well known.

Oh, there are at least a couple of them who know that I post as "gonk" (especially after the three previous beta tests that I've been involved in) - and they do have a healthy sense of humor. Great stuff...

Hey Gonk,

Now that you have had the BDP-83 for a while is the programming for the URC any different than the 980?
If some additonal features have been added have you created a file yet?

More details will be revealed once the early adopter program arrives and the NDA is even further relaxed, but I have been controlling my BDP-83 with the MX-900 and have a config file that I'm quite happy with.