Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater DVD-A/SACD, upconverting (upscaling) players

Here is a discussion on the AVS Forum of the relative merits of the 970 and 981.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=785398

From the AVS Forum posted by Bislander:

Quote:

---

The internal DAC on the DV-981HD and the DV-970HD are the same Cyrus
Logic chipset. They are rated at 192Khz/24-bit. Bass management is
non-user adjustable. If you set the speakers to Small, all information
80Hz and lower will be sent to the subwoofer. Large will bypass the
subwoofer all together.

Both players convert DSD to PCM for multi-channel analog and HDMI
connections.

The DV-970HD is better designed for audio performance as it is a single,
4-layer PCB board which has the possibility of removing noise and other
interference artifacts. The DV-981HD is designed around 3 daughter
boards connected by ribbons. This lack of shielding can cause a loss of
audio fidelity.

Our DV-970HD has been favored over other DVD players for its price
point, and has been likened to players several times its cost for
DVD-Audio and SACD audio playback quality. The DV-981HD has similar
audio performance, with higher quality video de-interlacing and
scaling.

The video DAC in the DV-970HD is a MTK solution. We do not generally
recommend the use of the component output, for the simple reason that
they are protected by CSS. If a disc is CSS encrypted, then we will be
forced to 480p only. We generally prefer the HDMI output of the
DV-981HD for plasma displays.

On our Panasonic TH-42PX50U we have macroblocking errors with the
DV-981HD, but they are infrequent and only a minor inconvenience.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.

---

I also have a Samsung DLP using an Oppo 981 and have only noticed macroblocking once in about 50 movies and uncounted hours of SD and HD TV viewing. The only time I’ve seen it is in one brief cut near the beginning of “Master and Commander” where the ships boats are pulling the ship into the fogbank.