O.K. I'm Old/no Techie....how do I

As others will point out, your assumption that a laptop is not a high end piece of gear is way off. I also used to think like that but after I began using them
I was pleasantly surprised. The trick is getting the settings right and having a good DAC. If USB is to be the interface, make it asynchronous.
If you listen to CD players, keep in mind that they are just computers with limited Operating systems and better D/A conversion than the average PC.
You may be happiest with the Audio products from Marantz, Cambridge Audio, Linn, NAD, etc that are meant to facilitate playing high resolution files from a hard drive.

you'll need to get over your hard drive phobia first. then grab a PS Audio PWD and Bridge. Buy a large high speed hard drive for your existing computer (pc or laptop). load your music onto the new drive and you're there!. the bridge will do hi-res and internet radio. forget the wires and go wifi from your computer to the PWD/Bridge. the sound quality is incredible imho. there are still a few bugs some folks are experiencing but in general, the set-up is phenomenal.

I tried to load flac on a DVD and play it on my Oppo BPD83 SE but with no success.

If you want the very best result, then get a Mac Mini, even a used on on ebay. Put Pure Music on it and play back through a USB DAC. Like all DAC's USB DACs vary a lot in sound quality. The important thing with digital is to put your money where the clock is, that is the Master Clock. For CD's, this is in the Transport. In the case of the USB DAC, it's in the USB interface. More tips (no advertising):

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I heartily agree with the Mac Mini. Notebooks have LOTS of noise (primarily from the monitor) which screw up the sound. No depth, air...all confused...true of all notebooks.

Some DACs or players like the Oppo 95 allow you to play high rez FLAC from a USB thumb drive. This seems like a good solution for those of us who don't want to hook up a laptop to our stereos.
Also you can burn DVD-As from high rez files, although my old player has a hard time reading these. Also I think there's a 24/96 limit to DVD-A, so you might not be able to copy 24/192 files to a disc.

Stl114_NJ, you might try to make a DVD-A instead of copying the FLAC files. If you're using a Mac, there's a program called Burn that is free and can turn your high resolution files into a DVD-A. That way your Oppo won't have to try to interpret FLAC. And it should already understand DVD-A.
There's another program for PCs I've used successfully, but I forget what it's called. You can go to the Phish download site's FAQ (Phish make their shows downloadable in high rez FLAC) and there's a link there to a Turtle Beach (?) website that lists tools for making DVD-As.