Oppo BDP-83: lossless audio via USB

Posted by Jim F. (A) on December 9, 2009 at 11:48:31

Further thoughts on the issue of getting lossless audio
on the Oppo BDP-83 (or BDP-83SE) via the USB port(s):

It is, of course, rather a disappointment that the new
Oppo Blu-ray player doesn't support WAV (or FLAC, or
WavPack, or WMA lossless) playback via a disk drive
connected to one of its USB ports.

However, looking at the "BDP-83 Media Files FAQ - OPPOwiki"
http://wiki.oppodigital.com/index.php?title=BDP-83_Media_Files_FAQ
in particular, checking out the media container files and
audio and video codecs supported by the BDP-83 (hint: WAV or AVI is a
**container** format; content such as LPCM or MP3 or XVID
requires a **codec**), there may indeed be a way to use the
Oppo as an audio server of sorts via USB, for high-quality lossless
music. It would be kludgy, but it might well work. I hope to try
it out sometime during the coming months.

It seems that while the Oppo does not allow USB playback of
DVD-Video or DVD-Audio iso files (for fear, apparently,
of looking like they're condoning piracy -- and this fear,
and all these format limitations, really come from the SoC --
"System on a Chip" -- manufacturer MediaTek rather than
Oppo itself), it turns out that the Oppo (or more precisely,
the MediaTek MT8520 firmware) **does** support the direct
playback of .VOB ("video Object", the bulk of a DVD-Video disc)
files via USB. According to a review at
http://www.prillaman.net/oppobdp83_review.html
this works reasonably well, in fact.

I have experimented with the latest version (2.40) of Eximius DVD2One V2,
using the "Audio Remaster" function, and it turns out that
this program (more flexible than the last version I remember
having used) will take a 2-channel 24/96 WAV file and output
(together with the whole DVD-V directory structure -- Video_TS etc.)
a VOB file containing the 24/96 audio multiplexed with a black-screen
video stream). I've been able to play an "audio" VOB generated in
this way, at least (so far) on a computer (using WinDVD 6). Such a file
**should** play on the Oppo, as well.

It's likely that other DVD-V authoring software could be used
to create such a VOB file, though probably not as conveniently
as DVD2One. If you don't need 24 bits and 96 kHz sampling,
you might be able to use a different container file format,
such as AVI (converted from a 2-channel WAV file by something
like DeskShare "Digital Media Converter 3.0". Software that I've
seen for coverting WAVs to other A/V container formats than VOB seems to
be restricted to audio specifications of 48 kHz sampling or
less and 16 bits or less. And of course, if you want to play
24/192 on the Oppo, there seems to be no other choice than
to author a DVD-Audio and burn it to a physical DVD-R.

So it looks doable (at least for 2 channel 24/96) but kludgy --
the resulting VOB files would take lots of disk space (having
a useless video stream as well as the uncompressed audio)
and would also have to reside on a FAT-32-formatted drive (since
that's all the Oppo supports). To play these VOBs, you'd select
media type "Movie" rather than "Music" from the menu. This
means you'd get the menu features specific to "Movie" playback
rather than "Music" playback, which might not be particularly
convenient. It's also not entirely clear how tied you'd
be to having a TV connected and running in order to be
able to playback anything from USB. The older Oppo DV-980H
DVD player also supported VOB playback over USB, which worked,
but with some inconveniences -- e.g., chapter stops were
not supported, which would mean that you'd have to have
each "audio" track as a separate VOB file. This limitation
seems also to be true of the BDP-83, at least according to
http://watershade.net/wmcclain/BDP-83-faq.html
("Are DVD directory structures on USB devices supported?")

"When playing .vob files:

- there are no chapters
- there may be no total time or time remaining
- subtitles can be strangely colored
- transition between .vob files will not be seamless"

The same FAQ goes on to say:

"Can the player be used as a media server?

No, not really. It is nice that the player supports USB devices
and some containers and codecs, but for a media server you
would want:

- files larger than 4GB
- .iso files
- DVD directory structures
- more containers and codecs
- network devices
- ...and no doubt other things"

Still, in a pinch. . . ;->

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Topic - Oppo BDP-83: lossless audio via USB - Jim F. 11:48:31 12/09/09 (2)

good luck - Joe Murphy Jr 16:03:12 12/09/09 (1)

RE: good luck - Jim F. 16:51:38 12/09/09 (0)

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