My review of the Oppo Digital BDP-83 Blu-ray player appears in the newly released issue of Sound and Image magazine. Let me cut to the chase: this is the best Blu-ray player I have yet tested, and I have tested nearly all of them. The reasons are speed, quality, versatility and convenience.
Read the review to find out all the details.
But one thing did arise yesterday that confirms my view about this player.
I am presently reviewing a 65 inch (165cm) ‘Premiere’ plasma display from Panasonic. This TV is simply glorious. It is sold only through specialist retailers, not through chains. As part of the deal from Panasonic you get an in-situ professional picture calibration from an Imaging Science Foundation qualified technician. So Panasonic arranged for Aaron Rigg, from Melbourne-based Avical Australia Pty Ltd, to drop in and perform the calibration. You can see Aaron in the video clip here.
Both the process and the results were extremely impressive. Aaron uses high quality instruments and software to measure the colour from the screen to ensure that things are as close to perfect as the display is capable of producing. But it soon became apparent that his eyes and experience would allow him to do much if this without using instruments. He kept consistently predicting what his instrument showed.
The quality of the Panasonic panel was such that there was almost no compromise at all in his settings.
He used the Oppo Blu-ray player as the source device, along with the DVE HD Basics Blu-ray test disc to generate the patterns for measurement. Given his job, he’s probably about as experienced as me when it comes to using Blu-ray players, and he was impressed about how smoothly and quickly the Oppo ran, especially with the smoothness of the animated menus.
He completed the calibration, and then to double check he used patterns from my DVDO iScan VP50Pro video processor. But these produced a green tinge on the display (even I could see this). He thought that this suggested that the Oppo was messing up the colour output. The display was calibrated for the Oppo. If another — more accurate — source gave different results, then the Oppo must be wrong.
So Aaron plugged in his signal generator to check. And discovered that the Oppo was correct. It was the DVDO processor that was incorrect.
I shall revisit the DVDO another time and discuss its myriad of other problems.