This page is a detailed walk-through of pairing up the BDP-83 with a Model 990 - it may help you troubleshoot your setup.

I got the sound and video to work at the same time through 7.1 Direct. Am I correct in assuming that when on 7.1 Direct the BDP-83 is doing all the processing? How would I go about setting up the BDP-83 to use the 990s processing? Do I have to configure a separate input from the BDP-83 to the 990? Once configured as a video input I would then select the audio as "Analog" for that input?

Watched LOTR TT and the picture was fabulous. The sound was awesome and I got a lot more headroom. Listened to some Clapton and the sound blew me away and its not even SACD. Using 7.1 Direct for the OPPO everything was cleaner and the presence was vastly improved over the optical. I am really surprised it was this much better.

Yes and no. Yes, the BDP-83 is decoding the audio. No, the BDP-83 does not have to everything. As I noted in my setup guide, the Model 990 will provide bass management unless you have set all speakers to "large" on the 990.
It depends on what you are interested in. If you want to use the 990's surround processing, you'll need to use a digital audio input. That can be assigned to a video input and the 990 will do the processing, but you will be dealing with core Dolby Digital or DTS bitstreams (or stereo LPCM) instead of the lossless audio tracks offered by Blu-ray. I wouldn't recommend this approach for anything aside from CD's and DVD's.

The multichannel analog input is tied to 7.1 Direct, and it cannot be paired with any matrix surround processing. It is the preferred approach for Blu-ray, especially with the BDP-83.

Gonk,

I have read your setup guide. I am using my 83 with a 970. Analog section is amazing, esp with vinyl. I love the HPF/LPF switch (also, the 2-ch out of the 83 is excellent, DVD-A never sounded so good) Yet I have NO idea if my LFE is calibrated properly for 7.1. I have referenced all speakers in the 83 at -7db with the sub at +3 db. This should account for the -10db of the LFE encoded channel and still avoid clipping.(all speakers are set to large) Yet, when I use the test tones in the AIX bluray I am about 10-12db too low in the sub channel while coax out is level across. Listening to films and switching back and forth between coax and 7.1 (using a DD or DTS signal) They sound about the same, but is the bass coming from the L/R or from the LFE? I have no way of knowing.

Is there a test tone disk specifically geared for the LFE channel?

Gonk,
If I understand you correctly, 7.1 Direct is the only way to input the BDPs analog output into the 990 and it essentially bypasses the 990s processing altogether. If I want an alternate setup such that the BDP is using the 990s processing I can use an optical out of the BDP and into the 990 and assign it to the correct DVI channel. This would use the BDP for video processing and the 990 for audio. Is this correct? At the moment I don't own any Blu-rays but I can upscale the DVDs with the BDP thru the HDMI => DVI connection and get sound either through 7.1 direct or optical depending on what processing I want. Originally I was thinking I could assign the analog output of the BDP to the analog input on the 990 and and then use the 990s processing. I tried that, but I get no throughput to the amp when setup that way.

The 7.1 analog input makes it effectively impossible to apply matrix processing modes like Pro Logic IIx because there's no way for the 990 to know which channels are currently "live" and which are not. What if it assumed 5.1 and expanded that to 7.1 with PLIIx? If you had a 7.1 TrueHD track, you'd be discarding those channels and replacing that information with a hacked-up version of the side surrounds. Thus, all that the 990 can do is basic "channel processing" (for lack of a better term): bass management, channel trim, and channel delay.

To get the 990 to apply matrix processing such as Pro Logic IIx, you are correct that you need a digital input (either optical or coaxial). That's not really a compromise for DVD's, but for Blu-ray and DVD-Audio it is a compromise. For SACD, it isn't an option at all because you don't get any digital audio output from those discs because of copy protection limitations.

I have a question about the new Oppo BDP-83 SE. I understand that everyone who has a 990 or 970 has to run their Oppo through the analog audio connections in order to utilize the new HD audio formats that are available. Since the future is HDMI, what is the point of Oppo offering a Special Edition BDP-83 with better DAC's if HDMI is supposed to sound as good as analog? I called Oppo today and their answer was that some people have very high end pre amps that only have analog connections and thats what the higher end DAC's are used for. If we are paying a $400 premium for high end DAC's, I would think that hooking up analog to your receiver or pre-amp (even if it does have HDMI) would sound better. Otherwise, what's the point of paying the $400 premium ($300 for the upgrade). Does analog sound better than HDMI? It seems like now we are getting away from HDMI for audio and going backwards. Just curious because I am confused. Thanks.

Good question.
I am using 990-analog inputs from Oppo-83.
Sounds great, but then analog always has sounded great. Perhaps (though I don't know since I've not done an A:B) analog "sounds better" since it is not compressed. Dunno.

Even with HDMI, you must convert to analog somewhere. If nothing else, the BDP-83 and its Special Edition sibling can serve as a reminder that we still need to make sure our analog section (wherever it may be) is good. The analog section in the stock BDP-83 is as good as the analog section in the Model 990 and my Onkyo PR-SC885 (a surround processor that had a list price of $1800). That means it can sound better than the analog section in a $500 HDMI-equipped receiver - in which case the analog output would sound better than the HDMI output. The BDP-83SE is offering analog performance that pushes the level even higher.

Let's say that you own a Lexicon MC-12 (a $10,000+ surround processor if you bought it new) and you don't want to spend thousands on the HDMI update for it, or you have an Anthem AVM30 and don't want to sell it and get an AVM50 or AVM50v (again, a multi-thousand dollar investment). You want Blu-ray, DVD-Audio, and SACD, but you don't want to spend several thousand dollars to revamp the whole system to get it. In this case, you are exactly the person that the BDP-83SE will appeal to. At $900, it costs almost four times less than the Lexicon Blu-ray player (which is built on the BDP-83 platform) and is also a whole lot cheaper than other high end Blu-ray players from Denon and Marantz. It also offers all of those formats in a single platform, so it can do all of them through the single multichannel analog input.