A quick report on my impressions of the BDP-83...

I installed and set up the 83 in my system Thursday and watched Iron Man BD first thing. BD versions of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Apocalypto are in the wings. I've also reconfigured my 990 to use the analog audio for CD playback.

Video: I view my Pioneer Kuro 5080 (768p display) at about 10' so I have had some reservations about whether I'd be able to see the effect of BD material. After viewing Iron Man I switched to Open Range DVD. I now have no doubt all that extra data on a BD disc makes a difference on my display and at my seating distance. Interestingly my Pioneer can handle 1080p/60 and 1080p/24. I've set the Oppo to 1080p output and Auto for turning on 1080p/24. I don't know if Iron Man outputs at 24fps or not but it looked very good. I'll try 720p output at some point to see if it is an improvement but it is hard to imagine it would be.

Audio: I really enjoyed the HD audio track via 5.1 downmix to my 990. Dialog was terrific and the special effects are great. I still need to do a test tone sweep using Digital Video Essentials to make sure my 990s levels are OK with the 83. At this moment I'm enjoying a CD played back via the 83's analog stereo output. It is also very nice but a little further testing between the 990's upsample mode and straight analog will determine which one I use on a regular basis. I don't know if it was Iron Man but I had to turn up the volume more than with other inputs. CDs via analog need much less volume control to achieve the same sound levels in the room.

There are still a bunch of features I need to try including SACD, DVD-A, plus I want to watch some DVDs that show off the Anchor Bay VRS processing. I'm going to keep my Oppo 980H and will be able to do some comparisons though not strict A-B testing since I don't have two copies of any of my movies. Any suggestions of which movies I should choose?

One last thing; I've read BD load times have been a big issue with many players. I don't feel the 83's BD load time is all that much different than than my Oppo 980H.