Technical Issues and Questions

[Matt]

According to what I see poking around online, it is region free, but it doesn't do PAL>NTSC conversion. You need a player that is both region free and converts PAL to NTSC. Did you keep your receipt?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I forgot about the PAL-NTSC conversion! #-o It all makes sense now. I’ve had this dvd player for over a year so the receipt will do me little good now. I got it from Best Buy in 2007. I’ll have to ask them for the Sony models that have PAL-NTSC conversion – if they even know what that is. Thanks, Matt.

[Morbii]

I upgraded to HD-DVD and now have that player (which I love) plus a pile of HD-DVDs. I'm not going to buy into another format until there are players which are exactly what I want: cheap(er), reliable, and region-free. This is really disappointing news about the Oppo, which I was really looking forward to . . . I know they make great players, but $499-599 for a region-locked player is out of my budget for the forseeable future, especially if someone came along six months later with a code-free machine at the same or a cheaper price . . . I'd really be kicking myself.*

*Like I did when HD-DVD tanked four months after I got the player. Sigh.

Yeah, I only had my HD-DVD player for about a month when it tanked. Oh well - I'm actually glad that Sony won (and even wanted them to win when I bought my HD-DVD player - they were so cheap, so I couldn't pass it up). I will say though that my PS3 is *light years* ahead of my A35 (well, if you don't count audio/PQ where it's virutally the same thing - just talking about the player as a ... player). and I feel that my desires for Sony to win were not unfounded. I will say, though, that the real unfortunate thing is the region locking.

[zedz]

So when they say "With the BDP-83, we intend to release a full-featured universal Blu-ray Disc player", they don't mean universal in the sense that it plays every Blu-ray disc in the universe?

Maybe they meant it will only play Blu-Rays issued by Universal - which would be about as much use to me as this debacle.

[kekid]

So when they say "With the BDP-83, we intend to release a full-featured universal Blu-ray Disc player", they don't mean universal in the sense that it plays every Blu-ray disc in the universe?

Maybe they meant it will only play Blu-Rays issued by Universal - which would be about as much use to me as this debacle.

This discussion has been very confusing because just this week Digital Bits announced that both Oppo and Denon are ready to release region-free Blu Ray players in near future. This made me very happy, until I opened this thread.....

[StevenJ0001]

This discussion has been very confusing because just this week Digital Bits announced that both Oppo and Denon are ready to release region-free Blu Ray players in near future. This made me very happy, until I opened this thread...

I believe Digital Bits reported that Oppo and Denon would release "universal" Blu-Ray players, meaning that they would play SACD and DVD Audio in addition to Blu-Ray and DVD Video.

[swo17]

So assuming that the Oppo Blu-ray player is not going to be able to offer the region-free capability that we all had hoped, what other players are people considering? If I can't have region-free capability, I would like to focus on getting the absolute best PQ possible, including quality of upscaling. I'm sure the Oppo would be good at this, but I'd also be paying more for several features I would never use. I've read good things about this one. It doesn't have BD-Live, but that's not really important to me. Does anyone have any suggestions about this player or any others?

[Elephant]

So assuming that the Oppo Blu-ray player is not going to be able to offer the region-free capability that we all had hoped

It definitely isn't going to. I emailed Oppo and asked about it:

The BDP-83 will support DVD Region 1 and Blu-ray Region A only. The Blu-ray Disc Association does not allow us to support any region unlocking capabilities, even for DVD-Video playback.

As Blu-ray is a relatively new platform, we want to make sure we can sell Blu-ray players for many more years to come. We do not want to implement or excise any content control which could jeopardize our standing with the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.
2629 Terminal Blvd., Suite B
Mountain View CA 94043
USA
Tel: 650-961-1118
Fax: 650-961-1119

[fdm]

Does anyone have any suggestions about this player or any others?

Pretty happy with my Panasonic, even though it's the previous generation model (the 50 -- not quite so happy with its SD processing with the BD bonus supplements I've checked out, but it's tolerable, and I suspect DVDs would playback similarly (but I have a better player for that purpose anyway so don't really care one way or the other)). Its BD performance is excellent.

That aside, the current generation Panasonics (the 35 and 55 models) have apparently cleaned up the SD part, and the rest is already pretty much state of the art (i.e., all the hi-def audio formats can be decoded internally for output to analog or digital (HDMI 1.1 is PCM (which is what I use)), or can be bitstreamed directly to HDMI 1.3 recievers). Audio can also be output via normal (lossy) DTS & DD, if you want to use coax or optical connection. The 55 gives you basically 7.1 channel analog, the 35 would only give you stereo analog, otherwise for all intents and purpose they're the same basic machine, and if you don't need/want analog, then the 35 is the way to go.

The 35 was selling a bit more cheaply earlier this month (e.g., 200 at Costco), but still is reasonable at around 280, since it has everything ready to roll out of the box. The 55 is around 350. Save you some cash vs the one you pointed out.

Panasonic is always there with the firmware updates, so few people complain about them being unable to play anything. (Not sure how well Pioneer deals with this, Sony either for that matter, though I often see playability issues mentioned a lot wrt the Sonys.)

Anyway http://www.hometheatermag.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and http://www.guidetohometheater.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; have reviews of these Panasonics, as well as many of the other players out there. In fact the glowing review of the 35 and 55 is now on the first site's home page, the 55 is also on the second site's home page (they reviewed the 35 a bit longer ago.)

If you want to explore some of the other brands, beware that some of them are pretty bad about getting around to firmware updates, so you may not be able to play some of the newest BDs until they get around to the fixes. (Unlike Panasonic.)

[Just a happy customer, honest.]

[swo17]

Those do look like a better value than the one I had pointed out. Thanks!

[fiddlesticks]

My mother, who is on a small fixed income, is dying to buy an HDTV. She'll probably end up with a bargain brand, like Vizio or Sceptre, and a smallish size, like 32", but she's not what you might call a "high end consumer" and will be more than thrilled with the image quality of such a set. However, her current DVD player does not upscale. I was thinking that she'd have to get an upscaling player or else her DVDs wouldn't really look better, just bigger. But is that the case? Mustn't the TV itself do some sort of upscaling, if only to use all the pixels it has? If HDTVs, even "cheap" ones, do upscale standard-def DVDs, do they do a halfway decent job of it?

[domino harvey]

I had a regular (ie no upscaling 480 resolution) player on my Vizio for about eight months before I bought my Oppo. It didn't look amazing but it didn't make me want to drive spikes through my eyes either

[StevenJ0001]

All fixed-pixel HDTVs upscale DVDs--you don't need an upscaling player. The TV may or may not do a decent job of upscaling, but I doubt it will be much of an issue for the screen-size you're talking about.

[subliminac]

Seconded. DVDs should look fine on a 32" flat screen. Just be sure to take a little time and callibrate it. The out of the box settings are always terrible.

[Antoine Doinel]

I have some very good quality .avi files that I would like to watch on my TV. However, when I burn the film to a DVD with Roxio, during the encoding/burning process I'm guessing it does some compression of sorts which, when I view the finished product on my LCD TV, results in a less than ideal picture. I'm not sure how to describe the effect except to say it contains a lot of noise and the picture quality is considerably worse, where the original is fairly solid. My other option is to connect my laptop to my TV and view the files that way. My question is, will I notice the same kind of noise/distortion that I get from burning the disc or will the file "stream" seamlessly? I'm going to be theoretically connecting the laptop using a DVI to HDMI cable.

[domino harvey]

I've on occasion used a jumpdrive to watch AVIs on my Oppo and I've never seen anything look good, but I've watched DVD-Rs sourced from AVIs and they look fine. Can you burn your AVI files as a DVD file instead?

[Antoine Doinel]

That's what I was doing last night - creating playable DVDs from the files in question (unless you're talking about a something different?). I've looked at the files again and they aren't perfect and think in the jump from my laptop to my LCD the imperfections are becoming far more noticeable on a larger screen. It's not a big deal to watch them on my laptop, and since I get cables at cost via work, I'll still try hooking this up directly to the TV and seeing what happens.

[Dadapass]

I have a Coby DVD755 and thought it was region free. I only have two Region 2 DVDs, Mirror(AE) and Satantango(AE). Mirror and the 3rd disc of Satantango played without a problem but the first two discs did not. The screen would only display 'invalid region'.
Any ideas?

[fiddlesticks]

I have a Coby DVD755 and thought it was region free. I only have two Region 2 DVDs, Mirror(AE) and Satantango(AE). Mirror and the 3rd disc of Satantango played without a problem but the first two discs did not. The screen would only display 'invalid region'.
Any ideas?

DVD Player and Blu-ray Player region codes

[Dadapass]

I've tried it but step 3, when the number should show up, never happens.

[nsps]

My mother, who is on a small fixed income, is dying to buy an HDTV. She'll probably end up with a bargain brand, like Vizio or Sceptre, and a smallish size, like 32", but she's not what you might call a "high end consumer" and will be more than thrilled with the image quality of such a set. However, her current DVD player does not upscale. I was thinking that she'd have to get an upscaling player or else her DVDs wouldn't really look better, just bigger. But is that the case? Mustn't the TV itself do some sort of upscaling, if only to use all the pixels it has? If HDTVs, even "cheap" ones, do upscale standard-def DVDs, do they do a halfway decent job of it?

I'd agree with the sentiment that you don't need an up-converting player, but if her current player has progressive component output, it'll probably look MUCH better than the composite hookup. It's definitely worth the upgrade, although any three RCA cables will do—you don't need to spend $50 on BS high-end ones. You may need to make some adjustments in the player's setup menu as well.

[Dadapass]

I have a Coby DVD755 and thought it was region free. I only have two Region 2 DVDs, Mirror(AE) and Satantango(AE). Mirror and the 3rd disc of Satantango played without a problem but the first two discs did not. The screen would only display 'invalid region'.
Any ideas?

DVD Player and Blu-ray Player region codes

Because the hack did not work I emailed Coby and they sent me the hack.
Is it normal for companies to give this type of information for their products?

[swo17]

I have recently become more sensitive to this as the new owner of a plasma TV. I'm not sure how susceptible these still are to burn-in/uneven phosphor aging, and perhaps I am just being paranoid, but I've got the wife on a strict regime of zooming out all black bars on programs she watches, and whenever I've "treated" myself to watching something in its proper, non-16:9 ratio, I've always felt a little dirty afterward. My owner's manual actually says, "Avoid showing signals that fill only part of the screen. Images that fail to fill the screen may cause temporary or permanent image retention depending on the frequency and duration." So this matter of stretching signals to completely fill the screen may not be entirely due to consumer ignorance.

On a side note, and perhaps this belongs more in the Technical Issues and Questions thread, but are there any other plasma owners out there who can ease my mind about watching more programs in their original aspect ratios with black bars?

[brendanjc]

On a side note, and perhaps this belongs more in the Technical Issues and Questions thread, but are there any other plasma owners out there who can ease my mind about watching more programs in their original aspect ratios with black bars?

I suppose I'll let one of the mods move this - I think it depends on the brand and how new your television actually is. I recently picked up one of this year's Panasonic models (800u) and I haven't bothered to burn the screen in or stretch any content. I've noticed a scant few times a bit of temporary image retention (particularly after watching Seven Samurai one afternoon where the black bars were, and on ESPN), but within a few minutes on a screen-filling channel it has completely disappeared, and it's never distracted me. I would say if you have one of the top tier brands and a set from this year or last, you probably don't need to worry at all about permanent image retention. If you want to be completely sure check the thread for your set on avsforum.

As far as the trend that david brought up, I've definitely seen it a number of places (the most egregious offender is TNT's HD broadcast, where they stretch almost everything to 1.85). More disturbing, Koch International has announced an upcoming blu-ray release of the animated Gulliver's Travels which will be cropped to fill widescreen TVs - the years of campaigning for films needing widescreen releases might cost us cropped 4:3 releases going forward.

[swo17]

Yeah, I got one of the newer Pioneers. I'm probably just being paranoid. But it's precisely that I want to protect my investment (and the absolutely gorgeous pictures this thing produces) that I'm a bit cautious.

Mods, feel free to move this.