Oppo UDP-203
Ordering and Unboxing
I ordered my Oppo UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player the day they became available on Dec. 13th, 2016.
I just went with standard shipping, which turned out to be FedEx Home Delivery ground. The initial delivery date was estimated to be Dec. 20th.
Then things got confusing. FedEx changed the estimated delivery date to the 17th, but on the 17th the last scan was still in California, so it seemed unlikely to arrive in Florida that day (and it didn't).
Finally, late on the 18th, the tracking info said it arrived in Orlando, and also said that the barcode was unreadable (though it seemed to scan perfectly OK while it was in California).
When I finally got it (on the 19th, which was never an estimated delivery date), the label did look quite scuffed up, like it had rubbed on something in transit, so perhaps that explains it:
FedEx in Orlando printed a replacement label, which they apparently stuck directly over the FRAGILE notice:
The outside of the box had a bunch of other random labels on it:
Then it was time to open it up:
The disk had the latest firmware (which installed OK once I got it powered up for the first time).
Clearly the hardware was finalized long before they were shipping these things.
Experiences
I now have it on the cart with my other equipment, and hooked up to the TV and receiver (using the split video and audio outputs since my receiver is way too old to support 4K hdmi).
One odd thing on first power up: The initial display was the prompt to check for newer firmware, but it would not respond to the remote. I couldn't open the tray to load the firmware disk till I pressed the eject button on the 203 itself.
Once I got past that, it seems to work. I've seen the TV indicate HDR when I played a UHD disk, and I've got my Harmony remote correctly starting up the devices.
It does load disks quite fast, but it is still TOO DAMN SLOW!!! (if I have to wait for something, it is too slow :-).
I watched the Jason Bourne UHD disk and found a couple of minor glitches:
- The "Universal" splash screen that plays at the very start after loading the disk only has audio, no video (black or nearly black screen). The main menu video comes up OK right after that though. This is apparently a known bug. If you are desperate to see the video, you can eject the disk and reload it.
- Near the end of the movie when Alicia Vikander was in the car talking to Scott Shepherd, her chin was suddenly detached and the whole bottom part of the screen slid left a little for a moment. I've since watched the chapter a couple of more times and it never happened again, so this looks like a Heisenglitch. [And a firmware update for the LG OLED TV had a release note saying it fixed a "screen tearing" problem like this, so it was apparently the TVs fault, not the players fault].
Aside: I now agree with everyone else about the modes on my LG OLED55B6P TV - turn off all the True Motion junk (or at least turn it way down). The picture looks better without it.
I've also tried out the DLNA support and had no problems watching a TV program I downloaded from my TiVo onto my Fedora Linux box using the minidlna server.
Wow! Just watched the The Martian UHD disc. The picture quality was amazing. A lot of people say the Jason Bourne disc shows off UHD better, but I don't see it (maybe I just like martian landscapes better than Las Vegas :-).
...time passes...
I've been using this for a while, and one problem I started seeing was random occasional video blackouts that would last about a half second then the HDR logo would appear again on the LG TV and the video would come back. I tried all kinds of things: A new UPS with a smoother AC power output, anti-vibration pods to sit under the player, washing the discs before playing, a new monoprice premium certified cable, etc. The blackouts still happened occasionally.
I finally tried switching the cable to the HDMI1 port from the HDMI3 port where I originally connected it. Wonder of wonders! I was able to watch Deepwater Horizon with no blackouts (it was always the worst offender of all the discs I tried). Time will tell if this really fixes it, but if it does that will mean almost all my problems have been on the TV side, not the 203 side.
Perhaps the HDCP handshake timing is slower on HDMI3 or something? I have my computer HDMI connected to HDMI4 and never see a problem, but then the computer never needs the HDCP crap.
I certainly hope the port swap permanently fixes it. I don't want to have to ship it cross country even if it is under warranty (and I threw out the box and foam packing a while back).
...After using this for a while, it certainly seems as though the video blackouts are gone forever. I watched a bunch of movies the day after I made this change and I've watched a few since then and no glitches of any kind have appeared.