I’ve had to return 2 Blu-ray players in one week!!

With 2 different players acting the same way, I might suspect that it is what you have them hooked up to and/or how you have them hooked up. How did they play Blu-ray video discs? Possibly, I'd try buying a higher end unit. I bought a Sony Blu-ray player back in 2010 and it never played Blu-ray audio discs the way I thought it should. I think that they made some sort of a change to the Blu-ray audio format and Blu-ray audio discs that I've bought in the last several years either didn't or hardly played. Some of these audio discs were also available as DVD audios and those played just fine.
Seeing as how your old Oppo player did what you wanted, why not buy a new Oppo player? I finally broke down and called Oppo several weeks ago and bought a new UDP-203 from them. It's the best player I've ever had, for playing any optical disc. Why fool around, just call Oppo and see if they can come up with a player for you.

 

Missed the news about Oppo stopping making players? You'd have to get your order in for the last batch of 203/205s, if it's still possible, and the handshake issue the OP has might still cause the noise issue.

 

Of course I knew that Oppo was ending production, that's why I called them directly and bought one, even after their website didn't have any for sale. They were selling so fast that I assume they had to pull them from their website and call them directly to get one. The OP stated that the old Oppo played just fine, so a newer one might also(if the problem isn't outside the players themselves).

 

Did you ever go into the onscreen menu and turn off secondary audio on either player when setting them up? I have the X800 and the menu is pretty easy to navigate. It is definitely a setup issue. Do you use the audio running through the ARC HDMI input on your TV monitor?

 

Yeah, turned off everything. No arc either.

 

Connected straight into the TV? No DAC or any other device of any kind between the player and TV?

 

If its only music BR's potentially it relates to the TV power saver mode.

I got a new Panny recently (replacing an old Plasma panny) and I play ripped DVD's via kodi from a silent PC (which also is my music server).

The TV will auto shutoff after a few minutes (I havent changed the settings yet) if it is just displaying a static image from the PC desktop (obviously monitors pixel changes and if there are none... the power safer kicks in).

As others have noted , HDMI doesnt tolerate a lack of a video signal or a loss of video connectivity so if the TV shuts down, the whole HDMI stack will stop.

Peter

 

Are all blu players manufacturing coming to end, should I stockpile by buying a few players ?

 

Only if you are looking for a specific player. Otherwise you only need to begin worrying once the last major Hollywood movie is pressed, and then you have about a decade after that until the last player is produced (going by precedent).

 

This should be a Rorschach of sorts: what does your mind go when you hear "hash"?

I thought "corned beef"!