Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Assistance with DVD Player Purchase

Thanks for the link but I bought off the Oppo US site a few hours ago. As for Blu-Ray, I guess I have to buy a PS3 now too .

>>As for Blu-Ray, I guess I have to buy a PS3 now

You'll also need an XBox 360 for HD-DVD.

You have to think "total investment". The combo player ends up much cheaper.

If you buy a BluRay/HDDVD combo player you will feel compelled to buy a bunch of high-def disks.

If you buy two game consoles you will feel compelled to buy a bunch of high-def disks AND a bunch of games... and you know how much money THAT's gonna cost you

You're right about the total cost of ownership. But I guess I didn't tell you that I want it ALL! Actually, I want to play the games more than my kids .

You will need an HDMI receiver to listen to uncompressed PCM on the BR / HD disks unless you use the 7.1 analogue inputs. The PS3 is HDMI output only.

One other ‘option’ is to pick up a Toshiba HD-X2. It does an incredible job of up-scaling SD/dvd’s plus it plays HD/dvd’s. This particular model was in a recent shoot out by some guys at AVS. They put it up against a $5000 stand alone video processor (Crystalio 3300 / CII) and it did as well as the VP with a whole battery of tests.

The Oppo’s are great little players too. I was screwing around with the 971 a while back comparing it to my stand alone VP (DVDO VP-50). Sending my projector 720P output from both onto a 104” screen did not have remarkable differences. Definitely not enough to make me feel as if the three grand I dumped on the VP was worth it for up-scaling purposes only.

If you go with the 970, don’t expect it to output anything above 480P via component if the display devise is HD compliant. I’m pretty sure there are ways to hack the player to bypass this, but I don’t know how to do it.

The 971 is DVI output. You will need a DVI / HDMI cable if your display is HDMI. Don’t use the component outputs on this machine. It does a horrible job with component output.

The 981 is HDMI output.

It sounds like I will have to make the jump to an HDMI integrated receiver soon if I want to have BR/HD and games.

I actually bought the 970 and I plan on mimicking the set-up I have now. I will connect the 970 to my Denon using component video and then connect my Denon to the Samsung monitor via component as well. The Denon upscales and so does the Samsung. With this arrangement, when my cheap Sony DVD player is set on progressive, I have a picture that I am very, very satisfied with. I would imagine that the Oppo will be the same or better than the Sony (and last longer and be more responsive too).

Mojo, if you have HDMI on that TV, change your order now! get the 981. The Dennon and or your Samsung are not even close to the Farouda chip and scaler in the Oppo 981, seriously.

971 is no longr available, all Oppos come with required cables.

Chris

I thought long and hard about which model to get. The issue for me is not the extra cost but picture quality. I connected my Samsung monitor via HDMI to a Sony DVD player and was very disappointed. Component video was far better. Now perhaps the culprit was the Sony player...I don't know. If you guys think I won't have this problem with the Oppo, I'll definitely get the 981.