Oppo BDP-83: No BitRate Meter?

[basspig]

I'm considering a BDP-83 before end of year, but one feature my other Oppo player lacks is a bitrate meter. I author a number of discs and use my players as a first-line test. As such, the bitrate meter is useful for analyzing how I encoded the content.
My Sony BDP-S301 has this, as did my earlier Pioneer DVD player. My Oppo 981HD lacks it. I'm reading through the manual on the BDP-83 and can find no reference to a bitrate meter.
Also... a feature I liked on my 981HD, a master volume control, seems to be omitted in the BDP-83.

Owners of the BDP-83, please tell me if your player has these two features.
Thanks for your help!

 

[j_garcia]

"Display" should show you the audio and video bitrates on screen.

 

[basspig]

"Display" should show you the audio and video bitrates on screen.

This is true for my Sony player and my Pioneer, but my Oppo 981 does not display anything but chapter and time info. No meter. I was wondering if the Oppo 83 is the same in this regard, because the PDF manual makes no reference to anything but chapter and time info on the Display menu.

The other missing feature is a master volume control. My 981HD has this and it's a useful feature for the times when the wife starts screaming "IT'S TOO LOUD!!!". The gain is fixed on my system, as the center and surround channels go right to the crossover networks/power amps and adjusting the gain means reprogramming the DSP. So having a master volume on the Oppo 981 is a real help.

 

[j_garcia]

I don't know where it is in the manual, but the display shows you which codecs are being used and actually shows the video and audio bitrates in real time on the 83. That is for Blu-ray, I have not checked if it does the same for DVD. Are we talking about DVD?

 

[basspig]

I would expect the meter to work for either type of video disc, as it does on my Sony BDP-S301. From what I gather, the Oppo 83 does have it, it's just not mentioned in the manual?

Am I also correct in assuming there is no master volume control on the remote? (This was a feature my 981HD has.)

Thanks for sharing notes on the Oppo 83.

 

[j_garcia]

In the top center of the remote there is volume control.

 

[jostenmeat]

basspig, I ran a search on the bitrate meter, and it appears that it's not as helpful as other machines, because it only tells you the combined bitrate of both audio and video, and not separately.

While there might be a few that hope for a FW fix, others wonder if the hardware can support it, and believe it's not such a simple thing. Furthermore, some consumers believe if the split meters ever come, it will be a while because it is considered low on the list of priorities.

I hope you find what you need!

 

[basspig]

j_garcia, thank you for identifying the volume buttons. I missed that because they are arranged differently than on my 981 remote.

jostenmeat, the aggregate bandwidth reading is all I need. I know of no player that can delineate between audio and video bandwidth, so I'm not missing anything there.

It looks like, based on the input from you folks, that the Oppo 83 has everything I'm looking for. I may order it early, as I have an anime club meeting coming up in early November, and could really appreciate avoiding those ten minute wait times for Java loading on some discs.

 

[jostenmeat]

Cool. However, there have been some posts that say the PS3 and certain Pioneer models can detect the bitrate of TrueHD or DTS-MA tracks.

 

[j_garcia]

Cool. However, there have been some posts that say the PS3 and certain Pioneer models can detect the bitrate of TrueHD or DTS-MA tracks.

Sorry, it was the PS3 I was thinking of that was showing me both. IIRC, the PS3 shows the bitrate of the audio, but not in real time and it shows video real time. The 83 shows combined, but at least identifies the audio and video codecs.

As for loading times, the 83 is faster than the PS3, but I don't have my 83 connected to the web.

 

[basspig]

The bit meter is great, as you decribe it. I only would like to know aggregate bandwidth, which is fine for my purposes.

Just out of curiousity, just HOW long is the power on/boot up time, and, how long does it take to load a typical Hollywood BD with lots of Java?

 

[j_garcia]

So far one of the longer discs I've had on the PS3 was Ratatoullie which took about 2-3 minutes on the PS3 (java) vs less than 1 on the Oppo. For "normal" discs, they are about the same. There is no boot up with the Oppo. Turn it on, and it is ready to go. The PS3 is very fast as well, only about 10-15 seconds to display the start up screen and log in typically.

 

[basspig]

That is great news. The killer with my Sony is that it takes almost 2 minutes just powering on. I had one movie, forgot the title, which took close to 9 minutes to load. My wife got impatient and left the room, muttering that it's never going to load.

Even a minute can seem like a long time, especially when you add it to the 3.5minutes of mandatory previews and commercials that many of these discs have. I really don't know why they need to run all that Java code on some discs, when others play fine without it. With my Sony, and Java-enabled BD titles and previews, it'd be a good 10-12 minutes before the movie actually started. Heaven forbid that you get a scratched rental disc that stalls and you have to start the whole sordid process all over again!