HiFi Writer Blog

Early this year I foolishly purchased a Blu-ray disc from one of those shops that insist on opening the sealed cases. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I got around to doing anything with the disc, and what I did do was scan it with BDInfo to gather information for my Blu-ray database. (Yes, I do also watch movies as well! But often the scan comes first.)

The scanning went swimmingly until about 51 minutes into the disc. At that point, BDInfo informed me that the disc was unreadable. I examined the disc and, yes, there it was. Can you see it in the photo? A scratch! About 1.5 millimetres of nastiness.

Not just a scratch, but the worst possible kind for a digital media disc: it was at a tangent to a circle concentric to the disc, rather than radial to it. That means that it essentially obscured a sequence of data over a significant length. A radial scratch (ie. radiating from the centre outwards) obscures just as much data, but only a small amount at each point as it crosses the ‘tracks’. The error correction is generally able to reconstruct the original signal in that case.

But a tangential scratch: if it cannot be read around or through somehow by the laser mechanism, then one this length means too much data is lost for repair.

I was torn. Should I take the disc back or keep it? I put it into a player I had handy, and it made the player stutter and skip until it had gotten past that point. That sealed it: I decided I’d better keep the disc. Clearly, it was an ideal test disc.

Thanks to Warner Bros for sending me a shiny new one to replace the damaged one for its original purpose: data gathering and enjoyment.

Anyway, since this valuable new test has now come into my hands, I have started to use it. Here are my notes for the first two players (no brand names since my reviews haven’t been completed) I tried it on:

Looped around 51:30 for some seconds, then got back to normal after jumping to 51:47.Paused at 51:02, then skipped to 51:15, then froze at 51:28. Would not skip or ff out of this. Had to stop disc.

The first player was less expensive than the second.

The third player I tried it on was the Oppo BDP-83, which I have on long term loan courtesy of the manufacturer and the Australian distributor. Here’s my note:

Played perfectly 3 out of 4 times. 1 out of 4: a tiny stutter at ~51:40.

Who would have thought that a player could make so much difference?

For the past year or more I’ve had on long term loan from Sony Computer Entertainment a Sony Playstation 3. This has been the source I’ve been primarily using for my Blu-ray reviews. At the time, the PS3 was the only Blu-ray player that delivered all the performance I needed. Certainly, there were no standalone Blu-ray players that could do the job.

The payback to SCE for the loan was mentions of the unit from time to time in my reviews of home theatre receivers, TVs and the like, and a specific mention at the foot of my printed Blu-ray reviews.

I haven’t been inclined to try replacing the PS3 with any standalone players since then, despite one drawback of the PS3 for my purposes: it would not provide the new audio standards as a bitstream, necessary to test home theatre receivers.

Yesterday, following my Oppo BDP-83 review, I broached with Merlin Audio and Oppo Digital the possibility of a long-term loan on similar terms to that for the PS3. The reason: this player does absolutely everything I require of a Blu-ray player, it does it all well, and does it quietly (the PS3’s cooling fan does fill the room with bit of swishiness). And, of course, in addition to decoding all audio standards, it will deliver the audio as a bitstream to a suitable home theatre receiver.

I’m happy to say that Oppo and Merlin have agreed to my proposal, so the BDP-83 shall be the major test platform for Blu-ray discs in my office for the forseeable future.

Aside from doing everything well, the Oppo does everything promptly. Here are timings I have made for a number of Blu-ray players. The only one that matches the Oppo for speed — and is a similar pleasure to use for this reason — is the LG BD370. Unfortunately, it does not offer the same level of performance in other respects.

What do these timings mean?

With the first, I press the ‘Open’ key on the unit while it is in standby mode. The figure is the seconds until the drawer is fully open.

With the second column, I place the Blu-ray of Sky High on the open tray and press ‘Close’. The figure is the time taken until the opening language-selection menu appears. This disc is single layer and very simply organised, so it represents a kind of quickest starting Blu-ray.

With the third column, I place the Blu-ray of Speed on the open tray and press ‘Close’. The figure is the time taken until the Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment video logo commences to play. Before this the player loads a section of BD Java programming from the disc, so this timing includes this extra work.

For the fourth column, this is simply the time taken after a press of the ‘Eject’ button, while sitting in the Speed menu, for the tray to open fully.

The final column shows the approximate time taken for a layer change in a dual layer DVD to be negotiated. I use my copy of The Matrix, since I’ve been using the same disc for this purpose for about ten years. My methodology is to select the music commentary audio track, because the fellow talks right over the layer change (which occurs at 59:12 on this PAL DVD), making it easy to measure. The time shown is the period of the gap in the sound.

The pale blue highlight marks the Oppo. This is a current model. The pale yellow highlights mark the players no longer available.