Oppo BDP-83, making repairs

[user510]

Let me begin by stating that I've had this player since late 2009 and it performed flawlessly up until sometime in 2017 when I noticed the "stuck loader tray drawer" situation. But I learned to deal with that simply by leaving the unit powered up. Or, after about one hour of being turned on, the drawer appears to perform normally. So that really wasn't an issue, except in the back of my mind somewhere. But fast forward to today and it is something different. This site is not allowing me to link photos from my website

Above photo, note that the blu-ray movie disc is in the drawer. And it is clean on the shiny side.

And....the laser reader transport thingie hunts for what it wants and then reports "no disc".

Hmmm. Seems like it's dead doesn't it?

Does that look like a pair of leaking caps to you too? I'm no electronics guru but that sure does look like a puddle of something beneath that pair.
reached out to Oppo Customer Support in Menlo Park, California. And they were responsive. First they advised that I clean the reader LED's with a q-tip/alcohol. I'd already tried that to no avail so I reported that it did not fix the problem. They they offered a repair service as follows: $99.00usd plus outbound ship. They fixit whatever it needs and return it to me, no ship charge. That does seem like a fair deal.

Mulling this over I searched a bit more on the web and came across a thread on StereoNet.Austrailia where one reader had run into the same thing but found that one of the capacitors on the power board in his sample had gone bad. So he replaced the bad cap and it was back up and working just like new. This caused me to take the cover off mine yet one more time to make a visual examination of the caps on my power board. Here's what I found...

Thoughts?

Note, because I can't seem to get this forum to receive my photos I offer this link to a page where all of the photos describing this subject are to be found.
http://www.theanalogdept.com/oppo.htm
-Steve

 

[NorthStar]

Hi Steve, I've read about other owners of the same player with the same issue.
Best is what you mentioned; send it to Oppo's headquarters in California.
They'll fix it for that very reasonable low price. Nothing can beat that.
They know those players better than anyone else.

Cheers,
Bob

 

[user510]

Thanks for that reply. Yeah, they will know their product. I guess the company (Oppo) no longer will be producing blu-ray players but will maintain customer support for some time to come. I must say that it did present a very good picture. The brown stuff I noticed in the power board photos is not from a leaking capacitor, it is a contact cement that is used the hold the caps in place during the soldering operation. So my first "aha!" moment turned out to be a dud. Both caps measure per spec at 68.2 uF. One cap I unsoldered and removed from the board. It was not leaking and appears just fine. No bulges. The other I left in place, then reinstalled and soldered the removed cap back in place. Powered up and nothing caught fire so I must have put the tabs in the right holes. (grin)

I also noticed, with the covers off, that as the blue ray player powers on the transport will do a laser search kind of zipping back and forth. However I also noticed that the disc does not spin during this initial process. I've watched CD players with covers off that will spin the disc while the transport searches disc contents. I wonder if this bd player shouldn't also be spinning the disc while the laser does its search?
-Steve

 

[NorthStar]

The model 83 is still loved by people who have large collection of movies on DVD.

As for your last question I cannot answer it with 100% certitude. Just email Oppo in California, they will.

 

[user510]

http://www.theanalogdept.com/images/spp6_pics/Oppo/BDP-83/BDP83_nodiscmovie_1.MOV
Above link is a quicktime movie made with my dslr of the loader tray in action. There is no disc loaded so that we may view the transport as the laser hunts for disc content. But watch also for the turntable in this video. It does not spin. With a disc loaded (no movie of that) the disc does not spin during the initial load-up. And it is my position that it should indeed be spinning while the laser reader hunts for content.

What I've learned so far; The drawer mechanism is indeed powered by a drive belt. That belt seems to be working fine, exhibits no evidence of deterioration and appears to be clean and free of any foreign substance. The little turntable that spins the disc, about which I am concerned, appears to be of the direct drive type and is really just a round plate on the end of the rotor shaft of a stepper motor.
Yes, I know, Oppo can have it fixed for $99.00 plus ship. I am really kind of curious and would like to hear from anyone who has actually had one of these models apart and to know what you may have learned.

-Steve

 

[NorthStar]

1. You can send your player to them.
2. You can order a new disc drive.

Me, I would send my player to them.
Or, I would buy another player, like a 103, or 105.

I never dismantled a 83 because I never had one. But like you I've read a lot about the issue.
Many other disc spinners I tried to fix myself because of a faulty disc mechanism, misalignment of the laser, burn motor, bad belt, ...I never completely succeeded. The time and frustration is not worth it anymore. I can buy very good disc spinners for few hundred bucks, new or used.

I know how it is when you want to fix the problems yourself, that's why you can order a new disc transport and put it yourself. Or get it done by Oppo, they'll check everything else.

The 83 is notorious for a faulty disc transport, and the several attempts in trying to fix it are futile.
What works is to replace the entire disc mechanism. Even the most advanced audio scientific engineer would do the same.

There are hundreds of threads all over about the 83's broken disc transport, even here @ WBF where both you and I posted before.

I don't know anything else to suggest than what has been said all over the internet for years and years.
Find a 105 for a good price here or there, and throw the 83 overboard. That's the best.

 

[astrotoy]

My Oppo 83 way out of warranty refused to open. I sent it to Oppo and it came back 2 days later (I am in the SF Bay Area) working like brand new. No charge for anything - return postage was paid and the unit was in a brand new box with the nice bag they normally give you. Larry

 

[NorthStar]

http://www.theanalogdept.com/images/spp6_pics/Oppo/BDP-83/BDP83_nodiscmovie_1.MOV
Above link is a quicktime movie made with my dslr of the loader tray in action. There is no disc loaded so that we may view the transport as the laser hunts for disc content. But watch also for the turntable in this video. It does not spin. With a disc loaded (no movie of that) the disc does not spin during the initial load-up. And it is my position that it should indeed be spinning while the laser reader hunts for content.

What I've learned so far; The drawer mechanism is indeed powered by a drive belt. That belt seems to be working fine, exhibits no evidence of deterioration and appears to be clean and free of any foreign substance. The little turntable that spins the disc, about which I am concerned, appears to be of the direct drive type and is really just a round plate on the end of the rotor shaft of a stepper motor.
Yes, I know, Oppo can have it fixed for $99.00 plus ship. I am really kind of curious and would like to hear from anyone who has actually had one of these models apart and to know what you may have learned.

-Steve

I did download your video and watched it.
You are correct, the spindle should move/spin, but it doesn't.

Like this (only for example purpose):

https://youtu.be/RiUCROAfpUY

* Once I was asking for help on how to adjust the three potentiometers of one of my Blu-ray players (only a year old) because it wouldn't play Blu-ray discs anymore. Never in my life I will return to that site, ever.
It's the most violent and the most bullying of them all.
It's best right here.

This is an example of what I was looking for:

https://youtu.be/3foh4Sq61w8

https://youtu.be/WsPUuiaw9Cc

You want to learn and some people they won't permit to open players because they are in the selling business and are stuck.

It was a top-of-the-line Panasonic BR player. I've talked to one of their tech people and he admitted that this model had a laser reading issue.

The Oppo 83 had a disc tray issue. No player is perfect, and it doesn't matter if it costs $500 or $5,000
It's the same with everything else; there are batches of some model years that are more reliable and others having quality control issues. It's the same with cars, refrigerators, AC conditioners, climate temperature controllers, global warming, plastic wastes in our oceans.

 

[user510]

I did download your video and watched it.
You are correct, the spindle should move/spin, but it doesn't.

Like this (only for example purpose):

https://youtu.be/RiUCROAfpUY

* Once I was asking for help on how to adjust the three potentiometers of one of my Blu-ray players (only a year old) because it wouldn't play Blu-ray discs anymore. Never in my life I will return to that site, ever.
It's the most violent and the most bullying of them all.
It's best right here.

Yes! That's a great descriptive video for what apparently is routine maintenance ... long term.
-Steve

 

[NorthStar]

I've been told that sometimes the little motor that spins the discs is caput.

They wanted $450 for the disc mechanism part. Of course it was the wrong audio shop in Victoria, BC. Some people they'll suck you right dry up and have no remorse. Replacing a nineteen cents resistor...$50. Total time: two minutes.

It's too bad Oppo Digital left the building.
Now we have an eye towards Panasonic THX certified 4K UHD player...the 900, and Pioneer Elite...the LX500.

We don't have anymore BR players that costs $10,000
The most expensive ones are the top modified Oppo 105 and 205, some with premium high grade tubes and separate power supply.

Turntables are a better business today, than disc players and DACs.
They sound better, are more earthy, closer to real life.
The only trouble with turntables is that they don't play movies.

 

[user510]

To conclude this thread I can say that I found the most economical path forward to solve this problem with the non-functional BDP-83. I replaced it with something far less expensive....and....perhaps something that fills the purpose just as well. A factory refurbished Sony BDP S1700. All it does is play Blu-Ray and DVD discs. Plus with a cable hook-up it can stream. I just wanted the disk player parts of it. Cost: $32.00 free ship over eBay.
Performance? I can't tell the difference in picture quality or sound. Perhaps others could. It boots up quite a lot faster than does the BDP-83.

So this begs the question; What is the point of a $500 disc player when you can fulfill its purpose for a fraction of that price!
I suppose I can answer to parts of that.

1) I don't need a blu-ray player that also plays SACD's, CD's and DVD-A...which the BDP-83 will do.
2) The BDP-83 wasn't the best sounding CD/SACD player in my system. I have other units that can out perform it on those aspects.
3) I marvel at why I bought that Oppo in the first place.

-Steve

 

[NorthStar]

Amen!

 

[rwwear]

Let me begin by stating that I've had this player since late 2009 and it performed flawlessly up until sometime in 2017 when I noticed the "stuck loader tray drawer" situation. But I learned to deal with that simply by leaving the unit powered up. Or, after about one hour of being turned on, the drawer appears to perform normally. So that really wasn't an issue, except in the back of my mind somewhere. But fast forward to today and it is something different. This site is not allowing me to link photos from my website

Above photo, note that the blu-ray movie disc is in the drawer. And it is clean on the shiny side.

And....the laser reader transport thingie hunts for what it wants and then reports "no disc".

Hmmm. Seems like it's dead doesn't it?

Does that look like a pair of leaking caps to you too? I'm no electronics guru but that sure does look like a puddle of something beneath that pair.
reached out to Oppo Customer Support in Menlo Park, California. And they were responsive. First they advised that I clean the reader LED's with a q-tip/alcohol. I'd already tried that to no avail so I reported that it did not fix the problem. They they offered a repair service as follows: $99.00usd plus outbound ship. They fixit whatever it needs and return it to me, no ship charge. That does seem like a fair deal.

Mulling this over I searched a bit more on the web and came across a thread on StereoNet.Austrailia where one reader had run into the same thing but found that one of the capacitors on the power board in his sample had gone bad. So he replaced the bad cap and it was back up and working just like new. This caused me to take the cover off mine yet one more time to make a visual examination of the caps on my power board. Here's what I found...

Thoughts?

Note, because I can't seem to get this forum to receive my photos I offer this link to a page where all of the photos describing this subject are to be found.
http://www.theanalogdept.com/oppo.htm
-Steve

That's more than likely glue around the capacitors that you see. In older equipment from long ago some glue was corrosive and could damage surrounding devices. I doubt that's what is happening in this case.

 

[rwwear]

In addition I had the loader replaced in my 83 a couple of years ago. It was out of warranty but Oppo replaced it free of charge with free return shipping. It might be woth checking with them. They say they will still perform repairs even though they are no longer making players.

 

[user510]

That's more than likely glue around the capacitors that you see. In older equipment from long ago some glue was corrosive and could damage surrounding devices. I doubt that's what is happening in this case.

Yes. I figured that out some time ago and made note of it in post #3 this thread.
re: your post #14. I'm also aware of Oppo's service and support for this player as per discussion in above posts this thread.
I just decided that, after all was said and done, I was somewhat miffed at the reliability issues with this $500 player that are well known around the web and so I choose to look elsewhere for a BD player...which is also noted above within this thread. (see Post #11)
Thanks for your interest.
-Steve

 

[rwwear]

It's still a very good player if you had it repaired. Mine has worked very well after having done so. It was actually a lot longer ago than I remembered(December 6, 2012) and it's still working well. I imagine the loader was replaced with an improved version.

 

[NorthStar]

I agree, the Oppo BDP-83 was a great universal Blu-ray player for only $499, and still is for some (including the ones who had a new loader replaced for free, even after the warranty expired).

It's too bad Oppo doesn't make them anymore; their last ones...203 ($549) and 205 ($1,299) are amazing universal 4K Blu-ray players. Now mainly available on eBay for roughly three times their MSRP.

Today for $500 you won't find that type of build quality, reliability, customer service, unique features and universality in the type of discs. For $1,000 yes, the Pioneer LX500.
For $200, the Sony X800.

Remember, you got almost eight years out of your Oppo BDP-83 player; that's roughly $65 a year.

* Oppefully your $32 Sony Blu-ray player will last you as long. Amen.

 

[ajant]

I agree, the Oppo BDP-83 was a great universal Blu-ray player for only $499, and still is for some (including the ones who had a new loader replaced for free, even after the warranty expired). It's too bad Oppo doesn't make them anymore.

Oppo BDP-83: Movable zoomed image control?

While my Oppo BDP-95 has zoom control, it cannot move the zoomed image up and down and sideways on the screen, like my old JVC XV-NA70BK DVD player can.

Then I noticed during a search that there’s a zoom mod kit for the BDP-83. Can that kit or another kit enable the 83, and/or other Oppo BD players. to do what my JVC DVD player can?

I had first asked Oppo support if any of the BD player models had this advanced zoom feature, which my 95 lacks, and they said no. It seems unlikely that they could be mistaken. But if you know otherwise please confirm.

Also, does the 83 do DS-HD Master audio via the analog outputs?

 

[NorthStar]

I just don't know.

It reminds me of my first Toshiba DVD player with a zoom function like your JVC.
I've never seen this in any recent BR players (regular and 4K).

The Oppo guy was right; no moving zoom function on a particular area.
The players today they give you zoom functions similar to this ...
• https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1203906/Oppo-Udp-203.html?page=33

Your last question, yes.