OPPO DV-980H 1080p Up-Converting Universal DVD Player with HDMI and 7.1CH Audio
by OPPO Digital
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List Price: Our Price: $150.00 You Save: $19.99 (12%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of OPPO DV-980H 1080p Up-Converting Universal DVD Player with HDMI and 7.1CH Audio
Customer Review: CLEARLY ABOVE THE REST!!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
A superior work of machinery!!!! First thing that grabs you is the packaging of this unit! Player comes in a snug fit black bag with a large
silver OPPO logo with a fold down velcro latch flap and supported by soft shock absorbing foam and a snug fit box....impressive! Some major electronic manufacturer's could learn a lesson from this company on how to package a DVD/CD player!!
The unit overall appearence is very nice. Some time & thought seems to have gone into the design of OPPO players. Has a nice pleasent to the eye blue LED readout. As of now I'm using it on a standard analog 27" flat screen TV with an S-video cable and the picture is superior to that of my old GE DVD player. Presently using a optical cable, soundtrack is rich and detailed coming out of my Yamaha HT receiver and really brings out the best in my Dayton Reference Speakers! Hopefully in the near future I will upgrade to a widescreen.. Plenty of adjustment for your picture quality and type of TV your using.
On the audio side, can go up to 7.1 HT and 5.1HT. or regular hookups for basic 2 channel stereo with optical cable, standard RCA analog cables & S-video. Just about every kind of hookup is on the back of this unit!! Another nice feature is SACD's.
According to the manual this feature can be used with an HDMI supported receiver or a standard HT receiver that has standard RCA 7.1 or 5.1 hookups. OPPO encourages you to use this discrete treet!! Certainly read the manual, there is a lot of information in setup to suit your needs!!
I bought this unit for several purposes...Music & Movies!! As a CD player it certainly puts my Sony CE-375 carousel player down a notch or two.Very nice natural sound and not as bright as the Sony and great detail, just using an optical cable! Will be getting a set of cables for 5.1 and maybe buying a few SACD's A pure pleasure for music listening. I am more then satisfied with my purchase of this unit.
An Update On the OPPO DV-980H DVD Player!! Just purchased some really nice RCA patch cables to hook up the 5.1 aspect of my OPPO player to my Yamaha HTR 5930 Receiver and what a nice surprise. Great detailed sound and performance and all the fun and amazement of 5.1 HT. Certainly a big step above dolby surround sound! Can't wait to purchase some SACD's now!
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Customer Review: Oppo did it again!
Summary: 5 Stars
A little history ... I used to have the OPPO DV-971H feeding my Optoma H31 480p projector over DVI. I was so happy with this setup that I stopped going to movie theaters ...for about 2 years! After upgrading to a Panasonic PT-AX200U 720p projector, I had to use a DVI/HDMI adapter and didn't like the way the assembly was "pulling" on the HDMI input of the projector, and also felt the picture wasn't was it used to be. So I went to a local store and bought the "highly reviewed and recommended" $ony DVPNS700H with HDMI out. The picture and sound quality were ok, by I didn't feel that my 720p upgrade was justified. During the past 4 months, I barely used the projector and started going to the theater more often! I bought a Blu-ray drive for my computer and must admit that the picture and sound were phenomenal, I just don't like to use a full size computer to watch movies ... and I'm not paying $400 for a standalone given today's movie selection.
Long story short ... enters the DV-980H. I got it 2 days ago, and I've already watched 6 full movies. If I didn't have to go to work during the day, I would have watched movies all night! Now I felt the 720p upgrade was justified! The picture is awesome (colors, dynamic, etc ...) and the sound is excellent! I had to turn down the volume on my receiver (and sub) and was still able to hear the dialogue (I had issues with the $ony were the dialogue would be muffled and I had to crank up the volume to hear anything!). Last night, I watched Apollo 13 and Transformers and realized that I won't be going back to movie theaters for a while!
How does it compare to Blu-ray? I watched the 1st Pirates of the Caribbean on BD and DVD back to back; there is definitely a difference. BD offers uncompressed audio and a 1080p/24 picture that is encoded more efficiently ... and DVD is just an older format! Nevertheless, the DV-980H gives me about 75% of the BD experience for less than 1/2 the admission price ... and I can still enjoy my full movie collection. Life is good again!
If it helps anyone, here's my setup: DV-980H (digital coax audio + HDMI video), D-link DSM-510 network media player (digital optical audio + HDMI video), Denon 787 receiver, Klipsch B3 / C2 / S2 / Sub-10, 92" gray Elite screen, PT-AX200U, audio and video computer calibrated ... and ALL wires from BlueJeans cable.
Customer Review: For Divx fans...
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this DVD player for 2 reasons: 1) to Play DVDs with 5.1 surround and 2) to play Divx movies via USB.
DVD: Setup for DVDs was a snap. I like that the DVD remote features its own volume control (which doesn't work with all connection types). This quickly allayed my fears of having to use 2 remotes to control the DVD player and the receiver. Being able to apply special sound effects and control the volume of each speaker is also a nice plus. It had every feature I needed.
DIVX: Divx was also very easy. Press the USB on the remote, navigate to your movie files, and press play. Very, very cool. Worked with my USB flash drive without any problems. The files take a moment to "Index," but seem to load quickly enough. I like that you can see a good number of letters in each file name, and I was impressed at what you could do while playing a Divx file: Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, etc. However, when you press the stop button on a Divx movie, it goes all the way back to the beginning. Grrrr. Having it continue where you left off (just like with DVDs) would have saved us a lot of fast forwarding. But really not a big deal. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the playback on Divx files.
DRAWBACKS: If I were going to nitpick about the little things, and I am, I would ask for 1) a longer power cord, 2) a dimmed or smaller "power off" light and 3) a USB port on the back for connecting to external drives. Other than that and the other items I mentioned, it's perfect!
OTHER DIVX OPTIONS: I should mention I considered a few other options for playing Divx movies: the TakeTV by Sansa, a wireless Media hub connected to a PC, and a Phillips DVD player with USB. But the aforementioned all had their drawbacks. The 8GB TakeTV is almost as expensive as the Oppo DVD player, and doesn't play DVDs, doesn't have the option of using an external hard drive, and looks like a "temporary attachment" to your entertainment center. The Media hubs looked very promising at first... but so far they all have mediocre reviews. (For now, they look to be more of a hassle than just transporting your music, photos or movies via a USB or external hard drive.) Lastly, the Phillips Divx players were much cheaper, but also seemed to be plagued with issues.
For now, I'll stick with the Oppo.
Customer Review: If you have good eyes and ears, stay clear
Summary: 1 Stars
This upsampling job was intended for both SD and HD tv's. It doesn't work well on either. The 980H has the worst color rendition and motion handling I've ever seen in a modern DVD player. It is impossible to get correct skin tones or brilliant images from this player, despite its menu of controls. Skin tones have obvious cyan color casts; all dimly lighted, shadowed, night time, or other low-density scenes have irritating blue or olive-green coloration depending on the cables used. Night scenes are especially awful; not only are all the colors off in dark scenes, but Oppo's Mediatek chip seems to be juicing up the reds, making them look posterized. Jaggies are everywhere. Every time something moves or a camera pans across a scene the mosquito noise bristles almost violently. The HDMI output cleans up some of it (but definitely not all of it), but motion smearing remains clearly visible. Looks worse on standard SD-TV, but almost as bad on HDTV. The audio has thin bass and ragged treble; the audio menu has options such as "Pop", "Rock", etc., but they are too mild to matter. Better to just leave the audio EQ "off", but even that ain't so great. Audio dynamics are weak, with an upper-midrange "blast" that's really annoying even at low volume. Images have a dim and grimy appearance through all outputs. The luminance range seems severely constricted; adjusting the player's or the tv's image controls makes it worse. Shadows remain blocked-up with little detail; even with the controls adjusted to min or max, colors and luminance levels just never look right. The image is very sharp but looks artificially enhanced; the natural grain of many movie videos is exagerrated and unpleasant to watch. If you expect to play commercial DVD's thru the component outputs, forget it; the DVD industry's moronic copy protection schemes make those outputs useless for all but home-made discs. I see many rave reviews about this product -- but I have no idea what those reviewers are seeing or hearing. This Oppo had the latest firmware updates. If it was defective its defects are too numerous to inspire confidence in the company. I spent the best of 48 hours trying to get at least $50 worth of performance from this machine, but it just ain't there. Probably works well on cheap a/v setups, but its performance with my expensive gear was very poor.Customer Review: Fabulous Player Indeed
Summary: 5 Stars
Sure, the packaging of this DVD player is chic and impresses you when you open your Amazon delivery box, but the performance of this device is what matters. And guess what . . . you will not be disappointed. This Oppo unit delivers as promised, yielding fantastic video and audio outputs.
I needed a new DVD player to feed my new Panasonic 1080p plasma set. With a 50 inch viewing area, I wanted to go for the whole shebang and get the BlueRay player, but I decided not to play format chicken and give the BlueRay technology a little longer to mature with the various manufacturers. Thus I settled for an up-converting DVD machine to play my conventional DVDs.
Setting up this Oppo player was very intuitive and quite easy. The unit does everything I want it to do, without me even having to look at the instruction manual. The onscreen menus are easy enough to navigate and get you ready for action. The one thing I've learned is to go to the DVD's setup menu before playing the disc, in order to select your desired audio output. My old Sony player would default to the highest Dolby or dTs audio that was loaded on the disc, but the Oppo needs to be told which audio track to use during each disc playback.
The video output is quite pleasing, illuminating my big plasma screen with near high-def quality. Recent holiday gifts looked great, including the Simpson's Movie and Ratatouille literally seemed to come to life, showing the fine life-like details that Pixar movies are noted for. I think I enjoyed watching the movies even more than the kids did - I feat that would not have been possible without the excellent video resolution that the DV-980H provided.
The unit delivered as expected with my normal audio CDs. It also played a filled mP3 audio CD without any reservation. I noticed it didn't choke on some of my other DVDs that gave my elder Sony unit fits - another plus in my book.
You can find other up-converting DVD players for less, no doubt. But for me, paying a little extra here was worth the value I received in tremendous video imagery to my plasma set, ease of use, and a very nice looking unit on my entertainment center. I'm sure you will not be displeased either if you choose the DV-980H to be the heart of your home entertainment system. Good luck!