What's new

International New to Region-Free. PLEASE Recommend Some Other Region Blu-rays! (1 Viewer)

dpippel

Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems
Supporter
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2000
Messages
12,295
Location
Sonora Norte
Real Name
Doug
IIRC, the UDP-203 doesn't rip SACDs. You have to go back to the 103/105 or earlier.
 

Osato

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2001
Messages
8,184
Real Name
Tim
There's some amazing classic British TV on blu-ray at Amazon UK... The Persuaders, The Professionals, The Prisoner, The Avengers. Lots of good modern shows too... Pyschoville, Inside No 9, Luther, The Missing, Broadchurch, Ripper Street... Nordic Noir series like The Killing, Forbrylheisen, Borgen, The Bridge.

Getting to see TV from other countries is the best part of being region free. Movies usually end up here, but not all TV does.


I just ordered the avengers series 4 on blu ray U.K.
I also just ordered Sherlock Holmes in New York U.K. blu ray. It stars the late Roger Moore and Patrick MacNee.
 

Osato

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2001
Messages
8,184
Real Name
Tim
Oh I have a mod Sony player that was just under$100. Love it.

I purchased my player from 220 electronics.

I also have an old oppo DVD player. Love Oppo but it's become very expensive!!!
 
Last edited:

Tino

Taken As Ballast
Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
23,575
Location
Metro NYC
Real Name
Valentino
I'm actually Still debating whether to get the OPPO. I'm pretty satisfied with the Samsung 4K plater. Region free advantages aside, Is it that much better than all the other 4K players out there?
 

Mike Frezon

Moderator
Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2001
Messages
60,695
Location
Rexford, NY
I'm afraid I can't speak to that Tino...since the Oppo is the only 4k player I've ever seen in operation.

But I love the UI of it. The menus are all very intuitive and it is extremely easy to use.

It is, however, also my first Oppo. But it seems like an extremely solidly build machine.

I love playing music on it, too!
 

bigshot

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2008
Messages
2,933
Real Name
Stephen
One of the best features of the Oppo is Darbee. It makes a noticeable improvement on my projection system. You can get stand alone Darbee too.
 

dpippel

Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems
Supporter
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2000
Messages
12,295
Location
Sonora Norte
Real Name
Doug
Neither of the current gen Oppo players have Darbee and Darbee doesn't support 4K resolutions, only 1080p.
 

Josh Steinberg

Premium
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2003
Messages
26,274
Real Name
Josh Steinberg
I'm actually Still debating whether to get the OPPO. I'm pretty satisfied with the Samsung 4K plater. Region free advantages aside, Is it that much better than all the other 4K players out there?

BD playback on an Oppo should be identical to BD playback on another device. It should be the same with UHD. All of these players are just decoding digital bits, and as long as there's no scaling involved (in other words, if you're watching HD material on an HD screen, UHD material on a UHD screen, etc) then the player isn't really doing any image processing, so you should just be seeing what's on the disc.

The Oppo shines in a few different areas. To begin with, it's got the best upscaler in the business, so if you're watching a DVD on an HD screen, in my experience, it does a better job of upscaling that DVD than any other brand of player. Though I'm not UHD yet, I would guess that their BD to 4K upscaling would be similarly impressive. The other great advantage of the Oppo is that it has a fantastic DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for audio, so if you allow the Oppo to decode the audio instead of your receiver, it may do an even better job. But since advanced audio formats like Dolby Atmos need to be decoded by the receiver directly, this may not be relevant to many users.

The Oppo UHD player supports HDR 10 and Dolby Vision. I think the Samsung player supports HDR 10 but not Dolby Vision. To the best of my knowledge, no discs currently exist that are encoded with Dolby Vision, but that may change in the future. If your TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, then it's a moot point.

Assuming your Samsung has the same HDR capabilities as the Oppo, I wouldn't expect UHD playback to be different from one device to the other. I think the Oppo will do a better job of upscaling your DVDs and BDs to UHD than any other player, but the improvement may not be enough to justify the price.

When I was only watching movies on a 50" TV screen, I couldn't really tell the difference between the DVD upscaling that the Oppo did compared to my regular, non-flashy Samsung BD player. When I added my 100" projection screen, I did notice a subtle but measurable difference between the Samsung and the Oppo. If you're watching on a TV, it may not matter. If you're watching on a projection screen, you may notice a difference there.

If region free is the only goal, you can purchase an inexpensive modded player from a place like 220 Electronics or Bombay Electronics for little over $100.

YMMV, of course. I don't regret buying the Oppo. Like I said, it does a fantastic job upscaling DVDs to BD. It has Vudu streaming built in which was useful to me (before the Oppo, I didn't have a device that could access Vudu). It does the region free thing, which was a big factor in my purchasing. And it can convert video formats as well as playing other formats in their native frame rate which my projector does support - so I can watch native PAL video as PAL, instead of it converting to NTSC. All of those features are useful to me, but the Oppo isn't the only way to get them, nor the cheapest.

YMMV.
 

dpippel

Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems
Supporter
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2000
Messages
12,295
Location
Sonora Norte
Real Name
Doug
BD playback on an Oppo should be identical to BD playback on another device. It should be the same with UHD. All of these players are just decoding digital bits, and as long as there's no scaling involved (in other words, if you're watching HD material on an HD screen, UHD material on a UHD screen, etc) then the player isn't really doing any image processing, so you should just be seeing what's on the disc.

Not entirely true. Besides, if you're watching Blu-ray (the majority of our content for most of us) with the UDP-203 on a 4K display then either the player or the display is scaling 1080p to 2160p depending on your preference:

 

Tino

Taken As Ballast
Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
23,575
Location
Metro NYC
Real Name
Valentino
BD playback on an Oppo should be identical to BD playback on another device. It should be the same with UHD. All of these players are just decoding digital bits, and as long as there's no scaling involved (in other words, if you're watching HD material on an HD screen, UHD material on a UHD screen, etc) then the player isn't really doing any image processing, so you should just be seeing what's on the disc.

The Oppo shines in a few different areas. To begin with, it's got the best upscaler in the business, so if you're watching a DVD on an HD screen, in my experience, it does a better job of upscaling that DVD than any other brand of player. Though I'm not UHD yet, I would guess that their BD to 4K upscaling would be similarly impressive. The other great advantage of the Oppo is that it has a fantastic DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for audio, so if you allow the Oppo to decode the audio instead of your receiver, it may do an even better job. But since advanced audio formats like Dolby Atmos need to be decoded by the receiver directly, this may not be relevant to many users.

The Oppo UHD player supports HDR 10 and Dolby Vision. I think the Samsung player supports HDR 10 but not Dolby Vision. To the best of my knowledge, no discs currently exist that are encoded with Dolby Vision, but that may change in the future. If your TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, then it's a moot point.

Assuming your Samsung has the same HDR capabilities as the Oppo, I wouldn't expect UHD playback to be different from one device to the other. I think the Oppo will do a better job of upscaling your DVDs and BDs to UHD than any other player, but the improvement may not be enough to justify the price.

When I was only watching movies on a 50" TV screen, I couldn't really tell the difference between the DVD upscaling that the Oppo did compared to my regular, non-flashy Samsung BD player. When I added my 100" projection screen, I did notice a subtle but measurable difference between the Samsung and the Oppo. If you're watching on a TV, it may not matter. If you're watching on a projection screen, you may notice a difference there.

If region free is the only goal, you can purchase an inexpensive modded player from a place like 220 Electronics or Bombay Electronics for little over $100.

YMMV, of course. I don't regret buying the Oppo. Like I said, it does a fantastic job upscaling DVDs to BD. It has Vudu streaming built in which was useful to me (before the Oppo, I didn't have a device that could access Vudu). It does the region free thing, which was a big factor in my purchasing. And it can convert video formats as well as playing other formats in their native frame rate which my projector does support - so I can watch native PAL video as PAL, instead of it converting to NTSC. All of those features are useful to me, but the Oppo isn't the only way to get them, nor the cheapest.

YMMV.
Thanks Josh. That helps. So the 203 has vudu built in?
 

Tino

Taken As Ballast
Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
23,575
Location
Metro NYC
Real Name
Valentino
I was going by what Josh said above that vudu streaming was built in.
 

dpippel

Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems
Supporter
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2000
Messages
12,295
Location
Sonora Norte
Real Name
Doug
The UDP-203 does not have any apps Tino. Period. The only streaming it can do is over your local network from a DLNA server or a SMB share (it may support NFS as well but I can't recall for sure). Maybe Josh has a BDP-103? The previous generation of their 1080p players did have apps.
 

Josh Steinberg

Premium
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2003
Messages
26,274
Real Name
Josh Steinberg
Not entirely true. Besides, if you're watching Blu-ray (the majority of our content for most of us) with the UDP-203 on a 4K display then either the player or the display is scaling 1080p to 2160p depending on your preference:

Yes, I believe I said that, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. What I was saying was, when you use an Oppo to play HD material on an HD display with no scaling, like watching a BD on a 1080p screen, there should be no difference in playback between an Oppo BD player playing a BD at 1080p and a Samsung player playing a BD at 1080p. But Oppo usually has better scalers, so watching a BD upscaled to UHD will likely look better on an Oppo than it would on a Samsung.

Same idea with UHD discs - when watching a UHD disc on a UHD TV, both the Oppo and the Samsung should be putting out an identical signal, presenting the data from the disc without any scaling. The only difference would be whether that disc included some form of HDR (like HDR 10 or Dolby Vision) and whether or not your player can read that data. I believe the Samsung can do HDR 10 but not Dolby Vision, but I am not 100% positive. I believe there are no physical discs that contain Dolby Vision. So while in theory it seems the Oppo might have the edge on that front, the Oppo's ability to play Dolby Vision discs doesn't matter if there are no Dolby Vision discs in existence.

I'm an Oppo fan and in favor of them - but there's also this notion out there that they're so much better than any player, and that they'll magically make every disc better, and I'm not sure that that's really true either. If Tino's not looking to drop $500+ on a player, there are other options out there for less, that will have identical playback of UHD discs, that was the point I was trying to get at, sorry if it was clumsy in the wording.

Thanks Josh. That helps. So the 203 has vudu built in?

I was referring to the 103 -- which I own -- having Vudu built in, as part of the reason why having an Oppo was was more useful to me personally than having a cheaper player. I don't own the 203 so I can't comment on what apps it does or doesn't include.

Sorry if I added confusion to the mix!
 
Last edited:

dpippel

Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems
Supporter
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2000
Messages
12,295
Location
Sonora Norte
Real Name
Doug
Yes, I believe I said that, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. What I was saying was, when you use an Oppo to play HD material on an HD display with no scaling, like watching a BD on a 1080p screen, there should be no difference in playback between an Oppo BD player playing a BD at 1080p and a Samsung player playing a BD at 1080p. But Oppo usually has better scalers, so watching a BD upscaled to UHD will likely look better on an Oppo than it would on a Samsung.

Same idea with UHD discs - when watching a UHD disc on a UHD TV, both the Oppo and the Samsung should be putting out an identical signal, presenting the data from the disc without any scaling. The only difference would be whether that disc included some form of HDR (like HDR 10 or Dolby Vision) and whether or not your player can read that data. I believe the Samsung can do HDR 10 but not Dolby Vision, but I am not 100% positive. I believe there are no physical discs that contain Dolby Vision. So while in theory it seems the Oppo might have the edge on that front, the Oppo's ability to play Dolby Vision discs doesn't matter if there are no Dolby Vision discs in existence.

I was referring to the 103 -- which I own -- having Vudu built in, as part of the reason why having an Oppo was was more useful to me personally than having a cheaper player. I don't own the 203 so I can't comment on what apps it does or doesn't include.

Ah, I assumed we were talking about the current Oppo player Josh. My bad. Anyway, if you watch the video I posted, you'll see that there IS processing (chroma upsampling) performed by these UHD players even on native 4K output. They DO differ. As for Dolby Vision, you are correct that the Samsung doesn't support it. Right now the UDP-203 is the only player on the market that does. The new LG player will get a DV update in August. Software-wise, there are two Dolby Vision 4K UHD titles available as of this week - Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2.
 

bigshot

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2008
Messages
2,933
Real Name
Stephen
Neither of the current gen Oppo players have Darbee and Darbee doesn't support 4K resolutions, only 1080p.

That's a shame because it really helps with upscaling DVDs, streamed video, and projecting blu-rays of films with good contrast levels. I've channeled all of my inputs through my Oppo BDP103D because Darbee does such a good job on everything. Too bad that the new player focuses so much on 4K. That is likely to be a small fraction of the average person's overall collection.
 
Last edited:

Josh Steinberg

Premium
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2003
Messages
26,274
Real Name
Josh Steinberg
Is the 103 still available?

Not sure, but that's BD only, not UHD. I believe it was the same price as the 203 -- Oppo is a little like Apple in that way, they don't really lower their prices, they just replace which items are available at the price categories they have.
 

Brian Kidd

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2000
Messages
2,555
I have absolutely no regrets about spending the dough on my Oppo, but mine is a pretty old model (BDP-80). Sadly, once it decides to give up the ghost, I don't think I'll be in a position financially to get another one. The one I have now was an impulse buy that coincided with my divorce and tax refund coming through at the same time. At least it was cheaper than a mid-life crisis purchase of a Corvette. :) Their customer service has always been great. Just a couple of years ago, they even released a special firmware update when some Blu-rays started using a new copy protection scheme that flat out wouldn't work on a lot of older players. The BDP-80 had been out of production for years and hadn't received any updates in ages. Oppo came through so that those of us who still own one could continue to watch new discs. That kind of service made me a customer for life. You know, if I can actually afford a new one in the future. They're pricey, but solidly built players. Mine has survived multiple moves and is still going strong.

My Region B disc purchases have been largely Horror and Animation related. I know you said that Horror isn't your thing, but as far as animation goes, I almost always buy my Disney films from the UK because they're so much cheaper than the US versions. You can also get the original, uncensored versions of Make Mine Music and Melody Time on DVD dirt cheap from the UK. Even though my Oppo was one of their base models, it does a really nice job of upscaling DVD's and, like others, the mod I installed opened up a great player to any disc I want to throw at it.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,818
Messages
5,123,893
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top