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post #16 of 86
12/19/09 at 2:34am
The OPPO will do 1080i over component but as was stated HDMI is the only way for 1080p
and as for all Blu-Ray players having the same quality picture the AVS Forum will have
a lot of info on this one may exhibit a color push may not handle 1080p/24 correctly or
have slight noise in the picture there is hours of testing and reading over there.
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post #17 of 86
12/19/09 at 3:55am
Component will do 720p no problem. Does the receiver really decode the video if it is outputting HDMI to your TV?
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post #18 of 86
12/19/09 at 3:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by CrackBerry9000 View Post
Component will do 720p no problem. Does the receiver really decode the video if it is outputting HDMI to your TV?
If you set your player to Linear PCM then yes it should.

EDIT: sorry i read that wrong, i thought you meant audio...

If your talking about HDCP then your blu-ray player will decode it and transfer that into an HDCP compliant display. The receiver can have an affect on quality but it doesn't do the actual decoding itself (other than audio). In fact you can actually plug the player directly into the TV without going through the sound system for the video.
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post #19 of 86
12/19/09 at 4:12am
I think I see where you are coming from. On standard DVD players, expecially in the old days, there were vast differences in picture quality from one player to the next. Color push, chroma bug, macroblocking, layer change delays, de-interlacing issues.... it was a mess. And spending big money didn't guarantee performance either. I remember feeling a bit embarassed when the Oppo 971 ($200) tested higher in the Secrets of Home Theater benchmark test than my Lexicon RT-20 ($5000).

As for Blu-Ray playback performance, I am under the impression that all players are the same. Or at least they are so close as to be virtually indistinguishable from one another. I've got an old 2nd gen Samsung BD player that looks just as good as my new Oppo player, and the high end Denon player I demo'd recently. DVD playback and numerous other features are still a factor of course.
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post #20 of 86
12/19/09 at 4:28am
Despite what others say there are variables in quality from different players.

The ability to upscale DVD varies greatly between players,as does build quality.

Some very important things that get overlooked are the quality of the display,and the quality of the AVR,not to forget the quality of the speakers.

There is a lot more to be "sorry about your wallet" than head-fi.
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post #21 of 86
12/20/09 at 12:55am
You might send the audio to the receiver, but the video is still processed on the player.

I have a pet peeve about receivers and hdmi cables. If you send the signal to the receiver, it's generally no longer possible to calibrate the picture for each device. Calibration on the tv set is typically done on a per input basis. Using a receiver, the tv only sees one input. If the set has some way to store different calibration settings, you can switch the settings each time you switch the receiver. Otherwise, you lose the capability.

Given how expensive it is to get good sound, I opted to toss the av receiver away and stick to my 2 channel system. All my sources connect to the tv using hdmi and the tv's digital audio out goes to a stereo DAC. My rear speakers replaced my computer speakers for games, and the center... is idling. The sound sometimes lag a bit, but I can't afford 8 channels of good DAC and a barrage of hdmi splitters.

Okay... I'm also pretty peeved over the morons that let the hdmi cable come to market. It's about as secure as a scoop of ice cream in a cone on a blistering summer afternoon.
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post #22 of 86
12/20/09 at 12:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SiBurning View Post
You might send the audio to the receiver, but the video is still processed on the player.

I have a pet peeve about receivers and hdmi cables. If you send the signal to the receiver, it's generally no longer possible to calibrate the picture for each device. Calibration on the tv set is typically done on a per input basis. Using a receiver, the tv only sees one input. If the set has some way to store different calibration settings, you can switch the settings each time you switch the receiver. Otherwise, you lose the capability.

Given how expensive it is to get good sound, I opted to toss the av receiver away and stick to my 2 channel system. All my sources connect to the tv using hdmi and the tv's digital audio out goes to a stereo DAC. My rear speakers replaced my computer speakers for games, and the center... is idling. The sound sometimes lag a bit, but I can't afford 8 channels of good DAC and a barrage of hdmi splitters.

Okay... I'm also pretty peeved over the morons that let the hdmi cable come to market. It's about as secure as a scoop of ice cream in a cone on a blistering summer afternoon.
Does your player not have the ability to route the video and audio out to different sources? I know with my PS3 I can set the video to output to HDMI (tv) and then the TOSLINK to go straight to the receiver.
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post #23 of 86
12/20/09 at 8:40pm
I recently got a Pioneer Blu-Ray player, and I hate it with a passion. The whole format seems to be designed for complication. Disks take time to load before you can access the menus, there are multiple disorganized menus for a bunch of different stuff, and one disk I bought (Disney's Snow White) wouldn't even play until I dug out the instruction manual and figured out how to do a firmware update.

I am a little bit above average when it comes to figuring out technology, but I can't see how the average person will ever be able to cope with the seemingly deliberate complexity of this format. What do people who just want a play, stop, fast forward and rewind do? I was ready to throw my player through the window after about an hour of fighting with it. I find myself just playing DVDs (which look great) instead of fighting with the Blu-Ray hoo haw menus.
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post #24 of 86
12/20/09 at 8:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wsh View Post
Does your player not have the ability to route the video and audio out to different sources? I know with my PS3 I can set the video to output to HDMI (tv) and then the TOSLINK to go straight to the receiver.
I had it set up that way before, but then I need to switch both the audio and video. This way, I just switch the source on the tv. With the 5.1 it has to be done separately because my tv will only forward a stereo signal. Since I decided to go back to the stereo for better sound quality, there's no point in adding the extra step since the tv just routes the digital signal. The only down side is a bit of lag that can only be corrected on some sources. I'm still hoping for a better solution or a boat load of money some day.
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post #25 of 86
12/20/09 at 10:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SiBurning View Post
I have a pet peeve about receivers and hdmi cables. If you send the signal to the receiver, it's generally no longer possible to calibrate the picture for each device. Calibration on the tv set is typically done on a per input basis. Using a receiver, the tv only sees one input. If the set has some way to store different calibration settings, you can switch the settings each time you switch the receiver. Otherwise, you lose the capability.
This is true for ANY video routed and switched through the receiver - composite, S-Video, component and yes, HDMI. The fact that it's an HDMI connection doesn't have anything to do with the issue. If you want to calibrate your display for different video sources then the only option is to bypass the receiver and connect each component to its own input on the display, then calibrate for each. Alternatively you could resort to storing separate settings for each source if your display supports it.
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post #26 of 86
12/20/09 at 10:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SiBurning View Post
You might send the audio to the receiver, but the video is still processed on the player.
Absolutely correct. The player decodes and if necessary deinterlaces the video stored on the Blu-ray disc and then outputs it to the receiver, which then passes the 1080P stream directly to the display with no processing. This talk of all Blu-ray players having the same video performance is false. A Blu-ray player operates exactly the same way that a standard DVD player does as far as its basic role as a video processing computer. The only difference is that it must negotiate HDCP handshaking with upstream components in order to output anything over HDMI.
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post #27 of 86
12/20/09 at 10:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dpippel View Post
This is true for ANY video routed and switched through the receiver - composite, S-Video, component and yes, HDMI. The fact that it's an HDMI connection doesn't have anything to do with the issue. If you want to calibrate your display for different video sources then the only option is to bypass the receiver and connect each component to its own input on the display, then calibrate for each. Alternatively you could resort to storing separate settings for each source if your display supports it.
Depends on the source. Most sources have a limited set of outputs, some only get sent through hdmi. In that case you're sharing or need a splitter or pass through or I don't know what. Other than that, you're right.

My complaint about the cables wasn't about that, but about the lousy physical connection of the jacks. Maybe I shouldn't have put them in the same sentence. Thanks for clarifying. They've already adapted a newer connector, but it'll take a while for them to catch on, any meanwhile we're stuck.
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post #28 of 86
12/20/09 at 10:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SiBurning View Post
Depends on the source. Most sources have a limited set of outputs, some only get sent through hdmi. Other than that, you're right.
The point I was trying to make was that if you route video sources through an A/V receiver and are sending the output to the display via one cable, the result is the same regardless of the input source. It's not an HDMI thing.
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post #29 of 86
12/20/09 at 10:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigshot View Post
I recently got a Pioneer Blu-Ray player, and I hate it with a passion. The whole format seems to be designed for complication. Disks take time to load before you can access the menus, there are multiple disorganized menus for a bunch of different stuff, and one disk I bought (Disney's Snow White) wouldn't even play until I dug out the instruction manual and figured out how to do a firmware update.

I am a little bit above average when it comes to figuring out technology, but I can't see how the average person will ever be able to cope with the seemingly deliberate complexity of this format. What do people who just want a play, stop, fast forward and rewind do? I was ready to throw my player through the window after about an hour of fighting with it. I find myself just playing DVDs (which look great) instead of fighting with the Blu-Ray hoo haw menus.
Way too complicated.

Last time I checked, there are very few choices for serious high end sound out of these a/v receivers, and all of them have annoying defects. One thing that was obvious is videophiles have tin ears compared to what we might like on head-fi, so while I look to some of those sites for help and ideas, I don't believe anything there about how great something sounds.
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post #30 of 86
12/20/09 at 10:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dpippel View Post
The point I was trying to make was that if you route video sources through an A/V receiver and are sending the output to the display via one cable, the result is the same regardless of the input source. It's not an HDMI thing.
Yup!

I responded too quickly and managed to confuse things. Maybe this will clarify the additional point.

If the hdmi cable carries both audio and video it creates a dilemma. You might want the hdmi to go to the tv to do the separate calibrations, but you might also want an audio format sent to the receiver that your source can only send over the hdmi cable. I think a splitter would work here, but they're an expense, and you might end up needing to use several remotes to get things done.

This is one way things get complicated when you're trying to put a system together or upgrade some part of it. I can't figure out a good upgrade path to take, so I initially just bought an outdated 5.1 system hoping to gain a bit of hands-on experience and get an idea whether it was worth bothering with. It did point out some issues. The main thing I got out of that exercise is that I just don't trust the a/v receivers to give audiophile sound, and it's expensive and complicated to work around it. Two separate systems, including two sets of speakers solves the problem neatly, and is kind of impractical, but the more I go through the exercise, the more I'm leaning that way. There are alternatives, and it's possible to hook up a stereo system as the front speakers of a surrond system, but it adds complications. In my case, I couldn't calibrate the outputs on the av receiver to balance the output volume for the fronts and rears. Might try it again.
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