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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: OPPO Digital Shutting Down
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 04-06-2018 05:43 PM
Honestly I never considered remote control as important as other features. As in general, in a cinema, all you typically need is play/pause. It's not that you actually need it to juke-box over RS232. Many discs can not simply stay in pause because they use their own authored screen saver, so, simply issuing 'play' will typically not work for them anyway as soon as the player is pausing for more than a few seconds. It is also very easy to generate the necessary 'play' infrared signal from any server through GPOs even if the player has no RS232/TCP remote control option.
IF remote control, then a proper RF wireless remote that allows you to operate the player from within the auditoriums for special applications. It is annoying having to jump between auditorium and booth in order to switch chapters or repeat passages, or shout commands into a walkie-talkie or cell-phone.
- disable OSD completely (OPPO was late with that feature)
- direct, invisible access to audio and subtitle tracks (not just through an OSD/menu).
- subtitle shift option (so you can shift subtitle from the letterbox bars into the visible image area for flat and scope discs)
- remaining feature run-time display on the device hardware display
are the most important features for me. Many players compete in having one or the other of these features, but I haven't found one that offers all these features. As a matter of fact, we use a SONY AND a Panasonic as a backup machine, and depending on the job, sometimes I use one, sometimes the other. I couldn't care less for UHD, though.
OPPO players are very expensive to get in europe. For a long time, they did not even bother having european resellers.
- Carsten
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 04-06-2018 07:54 PM
As far as the home physical media market is concerned, it IS in severe decline (in the U.S.). It was almost $12 billion in 2009 and it was only $4.72 billion in 2017.
In the U.S. music market, physical (CD and LP, etc.) comprised just 17.6% of the market in dollars in 2017. Downloads were 15.7% and streaming was 66.7%.
For better or worse, it's a streaming world. Maybe at some point the culture will change again and people will want to own stuff, but as of right now, the masses don't.
In addition, physical UHD penetration is pretty low as far as disc sales are concerned (4K penetration of TV's is another story, but obviously, not too many people are watching 4K on them). While the recent UHD release of "The Dark Crystal" achieved a 47% UHD share, the top title achieving a 5% to 45% share is more typical and among the top-20 titles, the total average UHD share is usually just 4-10%.
I think OPPO made a mistake removing the streaming from the last generation of players. Having a high quality CD, DVD, Blu-ray and Streaming player all in one was a definite positive and advantage (for home users). Although the 105 and 205 are 4K, they don't have the streaming. OPPO probably didn't want to deal with the licensing issues.
I had the BDP-95, which I sold when I bought the 105. I sold the 105 a few months ago. Loved both those players for both audio and video. Upon hearing the news, I ordered the 205. Hope that doesn't turn out to be a bad decision if it ever needs service.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 04-06-2018 10:40 PM
quote: Carsten Kurz
Honestly I never considered remote control as important as other features. As in general, in a cinema, all you typically need is play/pause. It's not that you actually need it to juke-box over RS232. Many discs can not simply stay in pause because they use their own authored screen saver, so, simply issuing 'play' will typically not work for them anyway as soon as the player is pausing for more than a few seconds. It is also very easy to generate the necessary 'play' infrared signal from any server through GPOs even if the player has no RS232/TCP remote control option.
We've done some pretty elaborate scripting, including "juke-boxing" over tracks using the RS232 interface. We're also using the RS232 interface to display the remaining time in the current track and even to dynamically fire cues on it, including intermissions, lights on, etc. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
We've implemented this for the Oppo RS232 protocol, so I wasn't really happy to see it go, although we rarely use it anymore, since the standard workflow is to build a DCP from Blu-Ray content.
Now, the Cambridge Audio machine seems to have exactly the same protocol, so let's hope they don't EOL it in the next few months or Mediatek pulls the plug on the chipset, leading effectively to the same result.
quote: Carsten Kurz
OPPO players are very expensive to get in europe. For a long time, they did not even bother having european resellers.
That's unfortunately true, they're treated as some audiophile specialty item, which makes them pretty hard to get at reasonable prices in Europe.
Depending on how you're using the device, like for a machine for film festivals or for screening purposes, you really want to get a "region free" system, which also adds to the costs.
Fortunately, making your Oppo "region fee" is still perfectly legal in Europe.
quote:
Of course, now you get to deal with service drops, lower quality and limited selection, so... wow, way better!
And that's exactly why they won't root out piracy. As long as pirates have a less shitty experience watching their content as those who are willing to pay for it, it will never vanish.
I'm not a big Netflix fan, but it did its part in reducing piracy, at least around here. Now when the content on Netflix keeps falling apart into several services, all requiring separate subscriptions, then I'm pretty sure piracy will see a major uplift.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 04-07-2018 03:14 PM
The value of RS232/Ethernet commands varies greatly by site. I'd agree that for the majority, we don't use it but for places that use the players a bit or in traditional A/V installations, it is an absolute requirement. With RS232 (Ethernet), you no longer have to worry about remotes/batteries and can provide controls that are not on the front panel and one can get controls that do not bring up menus and can effect quick changes.
As I said, it depends on the installation as to when/if we worry about it. Honestly, with us moving more towards Q-SYS as our audio platform, I'm more inclined to add in a Blu-ray control with it (again, depends the installation).
Like others, many are ripping to DCP for planned shows but many are still direct off of disc.
I agree, that in 2018, UHD is of near zero value but I could see that change as Series 3 projectors become more of the norm than the exception.
[UPDATE] The higher-end UDP-205 is now SOLD OUT. Oppo is considering a "last run" but no guarantees.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 04-07-2018 07:14 PM
The "retail apocalypse" is certainly having an effect on physical media sales. I'm not too surprised to hear Oppo is pulling out of the video disc player market.
Regarding RS-232, I'm surprised anything is still supporting that very old standard. Serial ports used to be a standard feature on personal computers. Now they're very very rare. I would be surprised if any make of notebook still featured a serial port; it was already disappearing from laptops over a decade ago. I had to use a USB to Serial adapter on the notebook I replaced 7 years ago. How many modern desktop PCs have such ports? How well is the RS-232 standard supported with current computer operating systems?
quote: Martin Brooks
For better or worse, it's a streaming world. Maybe at some point the culture will change again and people will want to own stuff, but as of right now, the masses don't.
I think some of it boils down to a "down-sizing" trend among a couple of different age-generation demographics. I've been hearing about the trend of older, "empty nest" couples ditching big, family-sized houses for more modest sized homes (with far more modest house payments, utility bills, etc). If you're going to down-size to a smaller living space you're not going to have room for nearly as much "stuff." They have to get rid of boxes filled with books, magazines and movies on VHS, DVD, etc. Then you have young adults trying to launch. They can't be dragging around boxes of stuff, like a giant collection of music CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, etc, especially if they'll have to share an apartment with other roommates.
I cut off all my magazine & newspaper subscriptions over 15 years ago. I don't have enough room for that shit in my "bachelor pad." I donated a bunch of books to the library and other groups that would take that stuff. I kept a few out of what was a giant collection of movie magazines; the rest went into the recycling bin. When the Kindle was first released I thought it was a ridiculous idea. But when you look at the chore that it is to pull up stakes and move or just do a Spring Cleaning all that physical stuff really starts to suffocate a home owner or rental tenant. I can't watch one of those "hoarder" reality TV shows without it freaking me out a little. With that in mind, owning "digital" versions of many books, or having access to a giant library of them via a service like Amazon Prime, makes quite a bit more sense.
Still, I have a bunch of DVDs in a plastic storage bin and a few dozen movies on Blu-ray disc. But I just haven't been buying movies at all lately. Hell, I won't even buy the "HD Digital" download versions either. These days I typically watch movies at the movie theater, on HBO, Netflix or Prime Video. That's it.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 04-08-2018 02:38 PM
Despite RS232 being an ancient port, it's still actively being used and deployed on this very day on a lot of gear as a means of remote control or out-of-band access.
Very much every "professional" grade switch, router or firewall made by the likes of Cisco, Juniper, HPE, Fortigate, Brocade, Dell, etc. etc. comes with a "console" aka RS232 port and for automation purposes, the port still isn't dead.
Interfacing with RS232 is also pretty easy. Many servers still come with a traditional RS232 port and I just recently bought a bunch of new RS232 to USB dongles. Keep in mind that USB in essence is just a pretty advanced serial protocol after all.
RS232 is also pretty much alive in embedded environments and won't go anywhere in the foreseeable future. Chipsets supporting RS232 are cheap and abundant. RS232 is even so simple, it can even be simulated using modern-day generic high-speed GPIO. So, there is really no cost reason to drop RS232 support at all, especially not on devices that aren't optimized to the penny.
Why did it go on traditional desktop PCs? It used to be the de-facto standard to interface with your mouse. We found better ways to deal with that, like USB in various iterations. It's a pretty bulky port in DB9 or even DB25 form-factor and rarely being used by normal office workers. That's why it was "optimized" away, just like the Centronics/Parallel port, which was even bulkier.
Yet again, there is so much CURRENT gear out there that still requires RS232, it will simply not be gone within now and the next 20 years.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 04-09-2018 03:14 AM
As a major transport interface, it has been on it's way out for at least a decade or probably even longer, which is understandable. The maximum speed of 115200 bps isn't something to write home about and long since insufficient for many modern, data-intensive applications.
And as a normal consumer interface, it has already close to zero relevance. The thing is, in industrial/professional applications, stuff tends to hang around for a bit longer, especially if the merits of the technology have been proven.
And still, to this very day, an RS232 interface is usually a lot cheaper than a high-speed USB interface. A high-speed USB interface also requires sufficient processing power to deal with the potential data.
While this is a no-brainer for modern PCs, there are still tons of embedded applications, where processing power is pretty limited. So, for anything involving simple point-to-point communication on low bitrates, it's still one of the most common interfaces, also for tons of industrial applications.
That's also why you'll still find it on stuff like communications equipment. It's a perfect port for emergency out-of-band access, initial setups (whether automated or manual) and debugging.
Modern Cisco equipment often features an USB port, but this port actually is nothing but a Prolific USB-to-RS232 interface for example.
Heck, even a current version of the Alcorn McBride V16 Pro Showcontroller (the de-facto standard hardware for large-scale automation in the entertainment industry) has 16 RS232/422 ports.
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