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

Everyone talks about the Oppo because it is the "sleeper" of the industry right now. It's inexpensive, slightly ugly, and performs WAY out of proportion to its price, especially the ones with the Faroujda processors.

Personally, if there were any chance of you using this as your primary video player I would go with the 981. It's the Faroujda processing that catapults the Oppos from middle of the pack to the head of the pack.

The Panasonic S97 and similar are probably next best in terms of high quality video for the $$, but I don't think they do DVD-A and SACD. The Pioneer 587 (which I have) was the best DVD-A/SACD player for the $$ but ranked much lower on the video performance scale.

There is a humongous list which ranks the video performance of about 150 players, does anyone have a link handy ? It's worth reading just to see how "out of place" the Faroujda-based Oppo is on that list.