So, as I've stated before, once Oppo announced that they were going to downgrade their player with a future firmware release, I jumped on the opportunity to own an Oppo player that will playback .iso images. And, it's been an interesting experience so far, so I wanted to share my findings and my experiences with this player.
First thing I did was to upgrade the firmware to the newest version that doesn't disable .iso playback, which is the state the player will stay in forever. And after finding the right software to make proper .iso backups of my dvd-a collection, I found that this feature is absolutely wonderful! Whoever is responsible for blocking this from becoming a continuing feature should be shot. Having all of my discs available to choose from without having to get up is great. The industry is really getting in the way of technology, and this is a prime example. Here we have an opportunity to have easy access to all of our media, for ultimate convenience, and the industry is putting an end to it. Anyways, the fact that this player will do both SACD and DVD-A playback, and does playback of DVD-A from .iso images alone makes this player worth the price, so already I'm recommending the purchase....so long as you can get one that still supports .iso playback.
So, after you drop a chunk of change into a player, you see what else it does, and try to utilize the thing to it's fullest capabilities. So, I picked up a s-ata dock and hooked it up to the Oppo player via the e-sata port. This will allow me endless storage, all I need to do is buy another s-ata hard drive if I need more storage space. So, now that I had my dvd-a collection dealt with, time to turn to the CD collection and see what I can do with that.
First of all, the .iso format is only working when it comes to video formats. Which I guess dvd-a technically counts as, since it's dvd based. Iso images of CDs are a no go. Neither are bin images. So, I figured, ok, time to rip my CD collection to .flac files. May as well have a backup of my collection anyways. And, that brought us to a major flaw in this player. No gapless playback of files.
DEALBREAKER!
So, at this time, the Oppo player is inadequate for .flac playback, which is a major bummer.
I've also played around with video file playback. I like to grab some files of things I want to watch, and now instead of firing up the computer hooked up to my tv, waiting for it to boot up and get windows all load up, I just hook up an external drive with my files I want to watch, and I'm ready to go. So far I've had good luck with this. My wife ran into some issues though with some files, I guess she got some files that came from various sources, and have found some will play with no sound, and some will play with no picture. So, I suppose the player isn't completely universal as far as video and audio formats go, but with so many different formats out there I guess that's to be expected. But, it's played most of what I've thrown at it.
When contacting Oppo about the lack of gapless playback, they said it was in the chip, and so a firmware could not be developed to fix this issue, which is fine since I have no intent on downgrading my player, even if it would come with an upgrade. So, to me, this player is a bit frustrating. I find it quite frustrating that we clearly have the technology and the ability to create the perfect box that will do everything you need it to do, and yet instead we end up with an almost perfect box. The Oppo is almost there. And now with the .iso fiasco that has developed, Oppo will probably never get the opportunity to finish the job, because even if they do develop a model that will do the gapless playback, it will be missing the .iso playback, and will therefore still fall into the almost perfect category.
So sad that no one can finish the job. We were so close.
Meanwhile, I'm looking into other alternatives for gapless .flac playback. After spending the time I have ripping my discs, I'm kind of committed to it. I have a friend that's been hounding me to buy a roku box, talking about how "perfect" it is. I told him I would buy it just as soon as he finds a way to do SACD playback on it, which had funny results that unfolded on my show over a few weeks. But, now that I was looking into adding something for gapless flac playback, that had me checking out the roku again. And......nope, can't do flac from an external drive on a roku box.
So, to sum it up, is the Oppo worth buying? Yes, if you need a dvd-a and SACD player. If you're already set for dvd-a and SACD playback, it's only a yes if need the upgrade for a particular reason, or if you get it before .iso playback is phased out.
Meanwhile, to work towards the perfect system, I still have to figure out the following:
Gapless flac playback from external drives
A way to rip and playback ripped DTS CDs
A way to deal with SACDs. I know things can be done with the use of a PS3, but I'm hoping to see things evolve further with SACD ripping.
First thing I did was to upgrade the firmware to the newest version that doesn't disable .iso playback, which is the state the player will stay in forever. And after finding the right software to make proper .iso backups of my dvd-a collection, I found that this feature is absolutely wonderful! Whoever is responsible for blocking this from becoming a continuing feature should be shot. Having all of my discs available to choose from without having to get up is great. The industry is really getting in the way of technology, and this is a prime example. Here we have an opportunity to have easy access to all of our media, for ultimate convenience, and the industry is putting an end to it. Anyways, the fact that this player will do both SACD and DVD-A playback, and does playback of DVD-A from .iso images alone makes this player worth the price, so already I'm recommending the purchase....so long as you can get one that still supports .iso playback.
So, after you drop a chunk of change into a player, you see what else it does, and try to utilize the thing to it's fullest capabilities. So, I picked up a s-ata dock and hooked it up to the Oppo player via the e-sata port. This will allow me endless storage, all I need to do is buy another s-ata hard drive if I need more storage space. So, now that I had my dvd-a collection dealt with, time to turn to the CD collection and see what I can do with that.
First of all, the .iso format is only working when it comes to video formats. Which I guess dvd-a technically counts as, since it's dvd based. Iso images of CDs are a no go. Neither are bin images. So, I figured, ok, time to rip my CD collection to .flac files. May as well have a backup of my collection anyways. And, that brought us to a major flaw in this player. No gapless playback of files.
DEALBREAKER!
So, at this time, the Oppo player is inadequate for .flac playback, which is a major bummer.
I've also played around with video file playback. I like to grab some files of things I want to watch, and now instead of firing up the computer hooked up to my tv, waiting for it to boot up and get windows all load up, I just hook up an external drive with my files I want to watch, and I'm ready to go. So far I've had good luck with this. My wife ran into some issues though with some files, I guess she got some files that came from various sources, and have found some will play with no sound, and some will play with no picture. So, I suppose the player isn't completely universal as far as video and audio formats go, but with so many different formats out there I guess that's to be expected. But, it's played most of what I've thrown at it.
When contacting Oppo about the lack of gapless playback, they said it was in the chip, and so a firmware could not be developed to fix this issue, which is fine since I have no intent on downgrading my player, even if it would come with an upgrade. So, to me, this player is a bit frustrating. I find it quite frustrating that we clearly have the technology and the ability to create the perfect box that will do everything you need it to do, and yet instead we end up with an almost perfect box. The Oppo is almost there. And now with the .iso fiasco that has developed, Oppo will probably never get the opportunity to finish the job, because even if they do develop a model that will do the gapless playback, it will be missing the .iso playback, and will therefore still fall into the almost perfect category.
So sad that no one can finish the job. We were so close.
Meanwhile, I'm looking into other alternatives for gapless .flac playback. After spending the time I have ripping my discs, I'm kind of committed to it. I have a friend that's been hounding me to buy a roku box, talking about how "perfect" it is. I told him I would buy it just as soon as he finds a way to do SACD playback on it, which had funny results that unfolded on my show over a few weeks. But, now that I was looking into adding something for gapless flac playback, that had me checking out the roku again. And......nope, can't do flac from an external drive on a roku box.
So, to sum it up, is the Oppo worth buying? Yes, if you need a dvd-a and SACD player. If you're already set for dvd-a and SACD playback, it's only a yes if need the upgrade for a particular reason, or if you get it before .iso playback is phased out.
Meanwhile, to work towards the perfect system, I still have to figure out the following:
Gapless flac playback from external drives
A way to rip and playback ripped DTS CDs
A way to deal with SACDs. I know things can be done with the use of a PS3, but I'm hoping to see things evolve further with SACD ripping.
. So I can stream multichannel dvd-a iso's from my PC through DLNA?
