Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Wait for R-972?

If you are looking for great upscaling of standard DVDs at a great price and just get an Oppo. It can not be beat in terms of what it can do for what you will pay. It completly blows anything Denon has. Or, you might want to want a couple of months and look into what Toshiba has to offer. They have announced a line of what they claim will be near HD quality upscaling players. I don't doubt it since they've decicded NOT to go Blu. A friend of mine had done a test a few month back and purchased both a Sony Blu and Toshobia HD-DVD to test them. He found that, side by side the Toshobia HD-DVD did a better job of upsampling standard DVDs than the SONY Blu. However, when he saw my Oppo he said it was better than both. The oppo also does more, including PAL DVDs for the money it's just plain simple math.
- Scott

I totally concur with ditcin's thoughts on the Oppo. Back three years ago I purchased a Pioneer Elite 59AVi which was originally a $1500 player. I wanted another unit so I got the Oppo 980($169.00US)a couple of months ago. I spent several hours making audio and video comparisons between the two(presently, I have only component connections) and if there was a difference, I couldn't see or hear it! There is also some terrific features on the Oppo that doesn't exist on the Pioneer product. In addition, since the player came out just within the last year, there has been two firmware upgrades to add to the performance. I don't believe they were really required but they did it anyway. If there is any doubt about the performance of the Oppo product, read a recent test done by "Secrets" on the Oppo flagship 983 player($399.00). It was the only unit ever, that passed every single video test they threw at it. This was in comparison to some players in the $5-6000 range.

Oppo's overall impressive performance AND service just is too good in that I am willing to bypass the purchase of any mainstream company's Blu-Ray player to wait for what they have to offer in the future.

+1 on the Oppo. The upscaling on the 980 is stunning. Without something to compare it to side-by-side, I find watching DVD's via HDMI every bit as rewarding as watching DTV HD content.



Does the Oppo (or any PC solution) provide for Region 2 playback?

The review I read on CNET a month or so ago mentioned one of the good things about the Oppo being that it was pretty easy to turn into a region free player, although they didn't go into detail. I'm sure it's easy to find somewhere though

I used the code on my Oppo to make it region free, but the playback of the Japanese DVD I have was really crappy. Not smooth at all. It played perfectly on my previous modified JVC player, so I know it's not the disc. I don't have the Oppo anymore, so I guess I'm waiting for the player that does it all before I can watch Battle Royale again.

Mine was made region free and it plays PAL discs fine. I had ordered a UK release of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (live on stage) and it plays flawless. The Oppo allows switching from 480i, 720p, 1080i and I noticed that the PAL disc is better at 480i and I let my Anthem reciever do the rest - if I set the Oppo at a higher level I do get a strange distortion on the bottom of the picture every once and while like a damaged video tape. This is probably due to the difference in speed of the PAL format. Also, my player is over a year old and only up converts to 1080i - the newer player is 1080p
I bit of advise, if purchasing the Oppo save your money and DON'T bother with the unit that has Faroudja chip - it can run into compatibility problems with many TVs causing pixelation. I ran into this years ago with the Denon units, most noticable on DLP TVs, but also on LCD. Oppo themselves told me to avoid it since I already know of the problem with Denon. I save some money and purchased the player without it and was amazed by the quality. I inquired Oppo if they plan to produce a Blu player and their response was NO. They would wait until the format proved itself and settled down to a single standard. Until then they would wait because they feel it is unstabel evolving. I don't blame them. With the constant line of patches to make a player work for every new disc release down the pipline it is an annoying way of doing business which I agree with Oppo as to why they have a wait and see point of view.

BTW - "CV" above me posted a problem in playing back a Japanese DVD - I would bet the probelem is with the DVD and not the Oppo since Japanese DVD are NTSC like North American DVDs unlike the UK PAL ones. Once the region is unlocked there shouldn't be a problem.

- Scott

As I mentioned, the disc played fine on my previous region-free player.

Video upscaling is only one feature I'd be interested in. I'm also keen on checking out the Dolby HD and DTS whatchamacallit formats, the auto audio calibration (and EQ), the SACD playback via HDMI...

Besides, I really like the convienience of using my PS3 for everything.

I also have the Oppo DV-980H, and I can really recommend it.
I can honestly say that I've put about 30h of internet research just reading what I think is everything that there is out there about these players before deciding. Was looking at some reasonably priced Denons but that was a no-go compared to Oppo.

For the price, there is absolutely no player out there that can match it, both video and audio wise, and unless your a VERY sensitive "phile" the money saved would be much better used elsewhere.

I mean it plays everything incl DVD-A, and SACD with native DSD output as an option to PCM... not many players that can do that.
Sure it's tech stuff, but if you want a player that puts out EVERYTHING through a single HDMI cable, and does it good, it's the way to go.
Even the analouge stage is very good. Im currently saving for a Denon 3808, and Im especially curios about how CD's will compare using HDMI vs. the analouge outs. Hopefully the DAC's in the Denon are even better than the 980's.
Also looking forward to doing some testing between the Oppo's scaling/de-interlacing vs. Denon's Faroudja. Many say the Faroudja is more "film like" while the Oppo is sharper. Opinions differ on which is the best.

And, I just love the USB port being able to play DivX/Xvid/MP3/Photos/VOB's!

I live in Norway, so I mainly use PAL discs, and now with the later firmwares it completly supports PAL 2:2 cadance detection.

The only minor thing I don't like about it is that's a little slow to load, but thats about it.

Read these very good in-depth reviews:

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=67357
http://www.prillaman.net/oppodvd_review.html
http://www.prillaman.net/oppo980_review.html

More info:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=879341&
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596390&
http://www.oppodigital.com
Europe: http://www.opposhop.com

That should get you started...