Oppo Blu-Ray Player

Blu-ray Disc is the the standard and technology that provides High Definition video and significantly greater optical disk storage for computers. A standard DVD typically contains 8GBs of data (some formats contain more); a Blu-Ray disc stores 25GB or 50GB. Panasonic has developed technology that supports storage of up to 500GB on an optical disk. Blu-ray Disc technology uses a 405 nano-meter (nm) blue-light laser which supports much finer granularity when reading the data encoded on an optical disc as compared to a DVD. (For you truly geeky folks out there, it's actually a violet wavelength, but stay with the crowd on this one.) Incidentally, a DVD uses a red-light laser at 650nm. As most of the folks reading this care about the High Definition application of Blu-ray, a standard DVD only contained enough storage space for a movie picture of around 350,000 pixels. Blu-ray, by comparison, supports over 2 million pixel resolution pictures, providing those great, crystal clear pictures we all like to see. So much for the technical geeky stuff -- if you want to know more, Wikipedia has great write-ups on DVD and Blu-ray.

This is a great time to get into Blu-ray. Over the past year, HDTVs and Blu-ray players have drastically come down in price. Most (all?) Blu-ray players are backwards compatible and can play your DVD collection. For you audiofiles out there, some of the mid-range Blu-ray players have better audio sections than many of the top-line DVD players. It just doesn't make any sense now to buy a DVD player. Of course, you need your media, too. Fortunately, you can get Blu-ray discs now at very reasonable prices. New releases still tend to be a few dollars more expensive than DVDs (they should -- it costs more to master and provide Blu-ray). However, you can get Blu-ray discs on sale at prices that are nearly as low as DVDs -- at you local super market, online (Amazon anyone?), and other places.

What are some of the features you want to look for?

• A great video processing -- Processing information from the disc to produce the great pictures you see is serious business, and takes major computational power. Getting a player with a upgraded video processor will provide you with a better, more vibrant picture with fewer artifacts (sometimes undesirable visual effects from video processing).


• A great audio processor -- One of the big bonuses of Blu-ray is an improved standard for audio information on your movies, too.


• Universal disk -- Blu-ray is the state-of-the-art for both video and audio reproduction. However, there are a lot of formats out there with great content. DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, SACD, WMA, MP3, and many more. A great Blu-ray player will apply it's fantastic technology to these formats so you have a great choice of video and music.


• Connections -- There are four key things to keep in mind for connections -- dual HDMI (high definition media interface) ports is really nice; multi-channel audio out; Ethernet; and SPDIF digital. Dual HDMI is nice because it will allow you have one HDMI interface go to your TV and another to your audio receiver. If you get a great player like the Oppo 93 or upcoming Oppo 95, you might want to use analog audio out (5.1 or 7.1 channel RCA audio jacks) to get the full benefit of the audio processing the player provides. Ethernet is critical for Internet streaming (WiFi is nice, but also have an RJ45 jack). And finally, relying on the optical SPDIF digital audio is fine. These four options should provide you great flexbility in how you use your Blu-ray player.


• Web or Internet features -- Netflix, Block Buster, Yahoo TV, Google TV, YouTube -- all these great web services can be seen on your TV using a great Blu-ray player. Unfortunately, this is an area that still has a lot of evolution to go. Web applications on HDTVs and Blu-ray players can be buggy and proprietary -- these aren't computers and they don't have browsers. To ensure you get the most of your player, you want to get one with upgradeable firmware. Oppo has excelled there!


• Blu-ray 3D -- This was the hot home theater topic for the 2010 Christmas season. I'll discuss this in more depth in another section.

Blu-ray 3D was one of the major raves during the Christmas 2010 season. Avatar had been such a big hit and there were some pretty good animated movies available in 3D Blu-ray. There were some fairly incredible package deals that were good deals even without the 3D features and content. However, there is so much hype on the market about 3D right now; it's hard without research to know exactly what you're buying. It's important to know that Blu-ray 3D is a specific standard and format; there are other 3D methods that are not compatible.

Blu-ray 3D is a standards based implementation of 3D HDTV that extends the capabilities of Blu-ray and is supported by the Blu-ray Disc Association (http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en.html). It is based upon active shutter technology. Your TV sends two 1080p HD streams which you view with glasses. The active shutter glasses alternate between frames - on one frame, the right eye is active and the left eye is shuttered; on the next, the right eye shutters and the left I becomes active. This is so fast that most people can't see it and our brains interpret the resulting stereoscopic image as 3D. However, at today's frame rates, some people can and find the experience uncomfortable. In fact, some people may suffer from stereo blindness.

To enjoy 3D Bluray at home, you're going to need several compatible components:

3D HDTV (with active shutter 3D glasses)

2022 3D Blu-ray player

2022 3D Blu-ray movies

2022 High-speed HDMI cables

What is a 3D Blu-ray player? These DVD players are able to read and deliver two simultaneous 1080p HDTV signals - one for each eye. This is a much higher bandwidth that typical Blu-ray, so HDMI 1.4 is required and possibly higher quality HDMI cables. The Blu-ray 3D standard is fully backwards compatible with standard Blu-ray, so if you get a 3D Blu-ray player, you'll still get to watch standard Blu-ray. The Oppo-93 and Oppo-95 are both excellent 3D Blu-ray players.

Note the newer version of HDMI. If you route your video through a receiver (which is optional and may not be considered best, anyway), you will also need a home theatre receiver that is 3D Blu-ray compatible (supports HDMI 3D pass-through).

The glasses actually work with the HDTV - not the Blu-ray player. The interface between the glasses and the TV may be proprietary (which means glasses from one manufacturer will probably not work with another manufacturers 3D Blu-ray TV). The glasses may use infrared or BlueTooth to connect to the TV. They'll either require batteries or be rechargeable using an included USB based charger. There may be a couple of generic brands of glasses that work with different HDTV brands. However, the glasses are color matched to the HDTV's screen, so you're experience may be mixed. The HDTV may provide other 3D experience beyond Blu-ray 3D, but that will be specific to the HDTV and you should research your product carefully before buying.

Legacy 3D-ready TVs will likely not work with 3D Blu-ray. Again, do your product research carefully. You won't be able to view both 2D and 3D at the same time. 3D content viewed without glasses will appear ghosted and distorted. I found the glasses fairly dimming - so you probably want to view in a darker room so contrast can be higher.

Finally, you're going to need content. At the time of writing this, Amazon had less than 40 titles available for 3D Bluray. There are a few titles not shown there, but they are only available in package deals from specific manufacturers. For example, if you want Avatar in Blu-ray 3D, you need to get a Panasonic setup.