My previous player which the BDP-83 replaced, a Panasonic DMP-BD10A, had a "DNR" noise reduction circuit which really helped with cutting down the random and compression noise on poorly mastered DVDs (the player's DVD upconversion, on the other hand, was laughable); the circuit didn't seem to do anything for Blu-ray playback (film grain noise, etc.).
Oppo, with its Anchor Bay processor in the BDP-83, utilizes a mosquito noise reduction technique that doesn't seem to do anything for cutting down on noisy DVD transfers. Instead of just an ON/OFF toggle like my Panny had for noise reduction, the BDP-83 has a scale that goes from 0 to +8; Oppo has recommended me to not go beyond "+4" for the NR setting, but this doesn't seem to cut down on any artifacting on bad DVDs. When I raise this level beyond +6, the picture softens considerably, so I backed it down to +6 where it seems to get rid of perhaps a TINY bit of noise in an image.
Does anyone have any effective noise reduction settings for the BDP-83 that they have experimented with? Is it advised to leave the NR off completely even for standard DVD playback? I liked the effect my previous Panasonic had when its DNR was engaged for DVDs; the Oppo's approach is much different.
