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

Why would you bother with a lesser DVD and the Oppo?

Edit: Actually, I guess this would come up with a cable/sat box via HDMI.

Also, the Oppo BDP is region/zone locked. So once I get one, I'll still have to hold on to my old player for my Eastern Europe imports. (Although I'll probably just rip them to my media server--or even reburn them without the region info.)

Got it. Well, if nothing else, at least you could take solace in the fact that the 3808 only uses the old standard Faroujda anyway (not that I've really been following the whole upscaling debate as I still only have an SD projector).

There is some very conflicting information that you can come across in forums, even if they are dedicated to a specific component.

I found information in the official 3808 forum on AVS that the "i/p scaler" should be turned off, along with the "video convert". Then I get a response on Oppo's forum providing me with the link above that states that there is no scaling done over HDMI, even though there is an option to disable it?????

Oh yes, on top of that, there is also more info in this review about upscaling and the 3808.

All very very confusing

Yeah.

Let's talk about models instead!

I got my Oppo today. So far I've just tried a Blu-ray, a Super Audio CD, and a DVD-Audio. Oh, and a Divx MKV file that Chris was kind enough to send me (Regina Spektor playing "Blue Lips" on Later with Jools Holland). They all played, so I guess I'm in business. What was the issue with the SACD DSD output I thought I heard about? It played 5.1 DSD fine, so what was the deal?

I believe there was some slight noise using the DSD out; which isn't present with PCM. It is so slight a lot of people were not hearing it, and it may not affect all titles.

And that file uses the next generation of codecs after DivX/Xvid it is x264!

I'm really out of the loop with those file formats.

Is there conjecture as to why there's noise with DSD? Just curious how that works. Would it not be a problem with how the receiver processes DSD, not how the player outputs it?

I've not read the AVS thread for a couple weeks now, but at the time I stopped no one had even offered a guess.

DSD is a strange format. While PCM stores the quantified volume level which was sampled at a point in time, DSD stores only if the waveform was increasing or decreasing since in the last millionth of a second. PCM can store perfect square waves, and DC voltage (neither of which is good for speakers). But DSD has a slew rate and the closest it can get to DC is storing one step up and then one step down alternatingly. There are also re-sync points stored every-so-often to allow for scanning forward or reverse.

There are so few receivers which support DSD over HDMI, and so few players which send it; that an implementation issue in the receiver may be hard to narrow down vs. a player problem--although I think Oppo's last DVD player also supported it and didn't have problems paired with the same receiver. But if I had to guess I'd point toward the ups and downs not tracking completely and once a re-sync point arrives there's a hard transition to the now correct level causing a little click.

Interesting stuff. I'm glad there are people like you who read and then remember what you read. Here's hoping Oppo addresses the issues people are having in the next firmware.

I didn't notice anything odd in my few minutes of SACD playback. I'll have to try both PCM and DSD and see if I can even tell a difference.