Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Up-Converting, DivX & SACD

Amazon Customer Reviews

(5 out of 5)

perfect region free player

Unbelievalbe picture quality like all other reviewers are saying. Changing the player to Region 0 (all region) is easy: 1. Press Setup on remote control to access the setup page, 2.Enter 9210 on the remote 3.A service menu will pop up, 4. Select a region: 0- 6 in region code. 0 is all-region. Press Setup on remote again to exit. It should play all region and PAL discs. Hope that helps.

(added 12/18/07)
I've been using this player for a year now and I still LOVE it. My friend gave me a DVD with several movies in AVI and an XVid formats. Typically, I would have to watch these movies on my PC. I was pretty psyched to find that Oppo will play the files. When I popped in the disc, I see a blue menu with all the files. The player decodes each selected file and it had no problem playing 3 out of the 4 AVI files. For some reason, one of the AVI files won't play. The XVid file played fine. The quality of these compressed AVI files, as you can imagine, isn't great. But depending on the source of the AVI file, the output quality to a 46" HDTV is almost as good as a DVD and much better than VCD or VCR quality.

(5 out of 5)

Fantastic video, fantastic packaging, only minor flaws

We do movie reviews very frequently, so having a high quality DVD player is very important to us. As you probably know if you're into DVDs, the resolution on a DVD is higher than regular TV can show, but less sharp as a high definition TV. That's why Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs are coming on the market, to provide true high definition quality.

However, many of us with high definition TVs have a substantial library of regular DVDs that we still wish to watch and enjoy on our higher quality systems. In many cases these are DVDs that may never be released in a high def format, or personal videos that are simply not in high def format. That's where upconverting DVD players come into play. They help to convert the lower quality signal on a DVD into a high def level of quality, as best they can, by interpolating the existing signal and filling in the details.

We've tested several upconverting units as they get released, and to be honest in most cases the TV did a better job of this task working with a regular DVD player, vs having a DVD player that tried to do that task for the TV. So we approached the test of the Oppo DV-981HD with some trepidation. Would it really work well?

First off, the packaging. We were VERY impressed with how this came shipped! I've got to say it's one of the best packed electronic items we've ever seen, and being game reviewers and electronic gadget fans, we get quite a lot. Kudos to the shipping team for this. "Brilliant", says my boyfriend.

The unit itself is extremely nicely designed. We have several other slim items in our shelves and this really takes the cake. The lights and displays are still easy to read, but the height is extremely short. Perfect for people short on space. It stays nice and cool, too.

The remote has great, glowing buttons that make it very easy to use in the dark. The fast forward / reverse buttons have a great range of speeds. We've got probably 8 remotes on our table and this really stands out as being one of the easiest to use.

All of this wouldn't matter if the picture was awful. But we were really impressed with how *lovely* this made regular DVDs look on our high def TV. Blacks were lush and deep. Colors were vibrant. On a title screen with metallic letters, the regular DVD player had them looking lifeless and flat - but with the Oppo they really did look three dimensional and metallic. Facial textures in particular were extremely nice. Yes, it's still not *true* HD - but that's not the point here. You get a HD player to play HD discs. This is for handling the library you already have of DVDs.

You really do get spoiled - if you're going to watch your existing DVDs, why not watch them with the highest quality image that you can? This will make it harder to test out other upconverters in the future.

Now, this unit isn't 100% perfect in every day. Case in point - the menus. These have got to be some of the worst looking menus I've ever seen on a unit. The letters are kludgy and fuzzy looking. Some menus have options off the bottom of the screen - but there's no scroll bar or other indication that there are more items down there. You just have to page down and see if anything happens.

Also, while I'm reviewing DVDs I often want to get a screenshot of an image to use. When you hit "pause" on this unit, the pause icon stays on the screen. With pretty much every other DVD player I've seen, the pause icon vanishes after a few moments. Not here! I'm also not overly fond of the logo floating around on the screen - but heck, you just turn that off. The tray itself is super thin and fragile, to go with the thin design. However, our PS3 and Wii all have a simple insert slot which works perfectly. Why didn't they use that here?

Really, I can airbrush out the pause lines from my screenshots, so really the only thing I'd want them to switch for a new version is to make it trayless. For an enhancement, we really would love to see a unit with a hard drive recorder as well, so that we can both play DVDs as well as record shows. This combo would make this our primary entertainment unit. Still, until then, this is a fantastic buy for anyone who has DVDs they'd like to watch. Highly recommended.

(5 out of 5)

EXCELLENT - Beats others costing 2x as much!

There are so many great reviews on this unit I'm not sure I can add a lot, but I am so impressed and pleased that I wanted to underscore how awesome this product is.

I have a Denon DVD player that upconverts to 1080p that cost over $400. I've had it a little over a year and it has been acting up (not good for such a young unit). I needed something to connect to my Samsung 46" LCD HDTV so I started researching various units and happened upon this unit on Amazon. I have never heard of Oppo, but after reading the reviews and mentioning it to a co-worker who emphatically said "Buy it! You won't regret it!" I decided to go for it.

If packaging is any indication of the quality and care a company puts into its products, this is no exception. Packaging, while having no effect on the product itself is impressive. The unit is even encased in its own fabric, soft-lined sleeve.

PLUS, it comes with an HDMI cable saving you at least $100 on a decent one. To tell you the truth, I have a $150 Monster HDMI, which I just moved to another TV and used the one Oppo included. Can I tell the difference? Nooooooooo. Save your money.

This unit has a sleek, low profile form factor. Well constructed and pleasant blue lighting. It will fit in the tightest of spots and being half the height with more functionality than the Denon, one gets the sense that Denon needs to welcome in the new millenium.

As for operation... it has been working flawlessly for over a month. I appreciate the ease of use, luminescent remote buttons and the picture quality is better than what the more expensive Denon put out. I can rarely tell the difference of such things even side-by-side, but this unit's quality is definitely noticeable. As an added bonus, the 32x fast forward and rewind is GREAT. I am tired of these high-end units (like the Denon) that give you a *whopping* 4x.

And, how about the customer service? Well, I didn't need it through any fault of Oppo. I being wiring challenged thought something was wrong with the unit at first. I called Oppo, *almost* had to wait, and had a very helpful person on the other end. Very patient and helped me figure out what was wrong. And, you know what, sent me another HDMI cable 'just in case.' Wow.

Listen, before you buy any other unit, do a side-by-side comparison of this unit and its features. You will find the Oppo has more features and is less than half the price. Some cases 1/4 the price. Ask yourself, "do I really need to pay another n dollars just for a name?" I decided the answer was no and haven't looked back. In fact, I would guess Oppo will become the standard by which all others are compared and they will be THE name.

(4 out of 5)

High Quality product but 1080p is not noticiable on a 46" LCD

RESULTS:

Comparison to Sony DVP-NS71HP (same as 75HP)

Both players look amazing and do a fine job of upconverting/scaling your legacy DVD collection for display on the Sony LCD (Full Pixel mode).

During the THX Contrast setup the OPPO showed a slight green tinge on the 2nd block in from the upper left where the Sony did not. Hue and Color changes on the set did not affect it, nor did the Saturation or RGB Range choices offered on the OPPO.

The THX Brightness setup showed with the OPPO having a slightly brighter picture than the Sony that equate to about 1 notch on the Brightness scale (51 on the Sony = 50 on the OPPO). Some of the gray blocks had a slightly green tinge again on the OPPO that was not evident on the Sony.

The THX 16:9 Aspect Ratio set showed better on the Sony with the OPPO having distinct jaggies around the circle where the Sony was smooth.

The sample playback scene on the THX setup showed very well on both players (jaw dropping in fact) with a slight edge to the OPPO for shadows and a decidedly better treatment of edges when the scene stops going to the Sony for not having jaggies (stair steps) like the OPPO.

For Kill Bill I used the duel scene near the end of the movie (Scene 16 on the menu) to audition both players. The OPPO again with the green tinge evident in the snow where the Sony shows a bluer cast (which would be more accurate for snow). The details imprinted on Lucy's robe (Kimono?) was quite evident on both players as was the shine of the blade in the close-ups. The snow falling was exquisite in detail on both players. Both players displayed a slight bit of jumpieness during the scrolling of the credits at the end.

For Battlestar Gallactica the opening credits were a good source of comparison as I had the same images on two different DVDs that I could quickly flip source between. The Sony showed a slight edge in detail as you pan over the water toward the city. There is a fade scene of some text and a cylon robot's head the OPPO handled better with fewer jaggies and the text faded smoothly with no interlacing type gaps in the image. The OPPO also showed the text of "49,284 Lives" in a more uniform way without looking like it was a shadow font. However this was all during frame advance, and completely undetectable during normal playback speed.

The remotes are vastly different. The Sony offers some controls the OPPO lacks such as skip fwd/back with will move about 15s for easy skipping of credits or to repeat a scene. And the OPPO offers some features that the Sony does not, like bookmarks (separate from the A>B loop thing) and On Screen Display of the motion controls that can be operated via the cursor controls (neat but not that useful).

The layout of the buttons on the Sony are easier to maneuver in the dark (neither remote is backlit) and fit better in the hand. Both offer a Slow Play feature but the Sony has sound with it while the OPPO does not. The OPPO also combines both fwd/back on one button which makes it harder to change direction.

The OPPO offers more intermediate levels of Zoom and even offers a couple of Zoom Out positions where you can shrink the image on the screen.

Many of the buttons on the OPPO cycle thru their functions (and return to the starting point after several presses) where the Sony has more buttons dedicated to specific functions or directions and only have 2 or 3 levels to cycle thru. One quirk about the Sony that is annoying is how sensitive the cursor buttons are, often causing one to overshoot the target with anything but the lightest of touch.


CONCLUSION:

Both players offer superb image quality and will extend the life of your DVD collection on your HDTV. I honestly could not tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on the screen. I'm sure there are scenes on some DVDs that will be better under 1080p but I did not find them in my auditions. For the extra $100 the state of the art video processing from the OPPO was wasted on me. In fact, I liked the more natural looking images from the Sony. Plus the remote was the kicker... better control, better ergonomics. I'll be requesting an RMA from OPPO and sticking with my original purchase of the Sony. For what it's worth the OPPO does come with a higher quality HDMI cable than the Sony.

(3 out of 5)

Make sure it's compatible with your TV

If you have a rear projection TV, you may want to consider the DV-980H instead. I have a Sony KDS-60A3000 rear-projection TV. In the forum on avsforum in the Sony KDS-XXA3000 thread, a user posted this message from Oppo customer support:

"LCoS in the SXRD systems is still prone to macroblock enhancement errors. It is not as pronounced as DLP, but it still exists. For this reason, we never recommend the use of the DV-981HD for RPTV, as there will likely be blocking errors.

Secondly, the previous generation SXRD displays did not respond well to the output of the DV-981HD due to bad handshaking errors with your display and proper colorspace. This causes some users to see "green push".

For your display we would recommend the use of the DV-980H. This player will produce the cleanest, sharpest picture on your RPTV display.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.
453 Ravendale Dr, Suite D
Mountain View, CA 94043
Service@oppodigital.com
Tel: 650-961-1118
Fax: 650-961-1119"