Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Oppo BDP-83 on the way.

Thanks Spoiler et al. I found out that if you have the Oppo set to bitstream, you have to turn off secondary audio in order to output the HD tracks on disks, otherwise it will only output DTS.

Oh yes, I watched my first Blu-ray today (The Dark Knight) and all I can say is WOW!! It's a whole new experience as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get around to tweaking around with the audio/video setup disk that came with it.

That's what I was getting at wrt. the lossy vs. lossless plus secondary audio. That's isn't a how the PS3 works.

No real loss though, as the secondary audio really is only used to make menus beep at this point. Plus the mix always seems to be too loud, so you pop up the menu in the middle of playback to look at the special features and you blow your tweeters because of the massively beeps as you navigate. Good riddance.

Well, hopefully I'll get around to playing with my new toy again next week, but until then I have another question. I've been reading about calibration and it suggested to calibrate for each input. Currently I only have one HDMI cable and one component cable (specifically for my satellite) running from the TV to my AVR. Because I now have two video players; my Sony and my Oppo, should I run another HDMI cable from the back of my TV to my AVR?

I would assume this is the only way I can calibrate my TV to each input, which would give optimal results??

Thanks again,
Cam

Edit-I just thought for a second and I can't do that anyway because my 3808 only has one HDMI out to the monitor, so does this mean I would need a HDMI switch in order to calibrate each input separately?

Your AVR likely only has 1 HDMI out, that's the one already connected to your TV.

The "calibrate for each device" was much more important with analog connections. In the analog domain a lot of information was carried by the voltage level, and each device varied slightly.

Now with HDMI and digital signaling, things are much more equal across the board. Not saying that some components don't get it wrong, but for the most part if one piece if HDMI gear is right, then they are all right.

So without any easy way for you to be able to get audio to the receiver, and the picture to the TV separately for each player, I'd say calibrate for the Oppo, and hope the Sony falls into line.

Thanks Chris, I'll do that. If I wanted to calibrate my component input (satellite), does it make sense to switch the component cables over to my Oppo and calibrate, or will the calibration be incorrect because I'm not actually using the source (my satellite receiver)to do the calibration.

Thanks again.

Here's what I'd do:

I believe that Denon has a ADC to convert analog video inputs to output over HDMI. So, yes, hook the Oppo to the component in which you're going to be using later for the satellite. I think it also has some picture controls to adjust how that input is handled. I'd use those to get the HDMI conversion looking the same as the Oppo and Sony. So you still have 1 cable running to the TV.

Calibrate against the Oppo's output. You are also right, this will not be 100% correct for the satellite, but will get you close. Fortunately component video sources are much more consistent from model to model than the older video connections.

Hook the satellite up. Sometimes you'll get lucky and find test patterns on some channels late at night. If you come across that you might be able to dial things in a little better. Unfortunately every analog channels tends to vary a little from one another. The digital channels are much more consistent.

If the Denon's video controls aren't getting you what you want, then connect the component cables straight to the TV and use it's controls instead. Still run the audio connection from the satellite to the AVR. That will complicate things a little, as you'll need to switch video inputs on the TV and audio inputs on the AVR.

Thanks for your time and help Chris, greatly appreciated.

I was reading the Oppo BDP-83 manual. I have a Denon 3808CI so should I am asumming that I should set the resolution to "Source Direct" and let the AVR do the processing rather than the oppo. Am I correct?

No, the Oppo has a better scaler than the Denon. You should set the Oppo to output at the maximum, native resolution of your display.

You should also disable the scaler in your 3808 for whatever input the Oppo is assigned to.