Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Up-Converting, DivX & SACD
by OPPO Digital
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List Price: Our Price: $179.00 You Save: $120.00 (40%) 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-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Up-Converting, DivX & SACD
Customer Review: EXCELLENT - Beats others costing 2x as much!
Summary: 5 Stars
There are so many great reviews on this unit I'm not sure I can add a lot, but I am so impressed and pleased that I wanted to underscore how awesome this product is.
I have a Denon DVD player that upconverts to 1080p that cost over $400. I've had it a little over a year and it has been acting up (not good for such a young unit). I needed something to connect to my Samsung 46" LCD HDTV so I started researching various units and happened upon this unit on Amazon. I have never heard of Oppo, but after reading the reviews and mentioning it to a co-worker who emphatically said "Buy it! You won't regret it!" I decided to go for it.
If packaging is any indication of the quality and care a company puts into its products, this is no exception. Packaging, while having no effect on the product itself is impressive. The unit is even encased in its own fabric, soft-lined sleeve.
PLUS, it comes with an HDMI cable saving you at least $100 on a decent one. To tell you the truth, I have a $150 Monster HDMI, which I just moved to another TV and used the one Oppo included. Can I tell the difference? Nooooooooo. Save your money.
This unit has a sleek, low profile form factor. Well constructed and pleasant blue lighting. It will fit in the tightest of spots and being half the height with more functionality than the Denon, one gets the sense that Denon needs to welcome in the new millenium.
As for operation... it has been working flawlessly for over a month. I appreciate the ease of use, luminescent remote buttons and the picture quality is better than what the more expensive Denon put out. I can rarely tell the difference of such things even side-by-side, but this unit's quality is definitely noticeable. As an added bonus, the 32x fast forward and rewind is GREAT. I am tired of these high-end units (like the Denon) that give you a *whopping* 4x.
And, how about the customer service? Well, I didn't need it through any fault of Oppo. I being wiring challenged thought something was wrong with the unit at first. I called Oppo, *almost* had to wait, and had a very helpful person on the other end. Very patient and helped me figure out what was wrong. And, you know what, sent me another HDMI cable 'just in case.' Wow.
Listen, before you buy any other unit, do a side-by-side comparison of this unit and its features. You will find the Oppo has more features and is less than half the price. Some cases 1/4 the price. Ask yourself, "do I really need to pay another n dollars just for a name?" I decided the answer was no and haven't looked back. In fact, I would guess Oppo will become the standard by which all others are compared and they will be THE name.
Customer Review: A Couple Things You Should Know
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first hooked up my new Oppo 981 to my Panasonic TH-42PX60U plasma, I picked out two DVD's from my collection that I thought would have spectacular visuals: "Titanic" and "True Lies".
Imagine my surprise when "Titanic" only filled about the center 2/3 of the screen! When I zoomed to fill the screen, the image was roughly VHS slow speed quality. I then tried 'True Lies", with even worse results. The image was still small, and the quality was awful.
If you've only been watching DVD's on standard definition television, as I had been doing, you probably payed little attention to whether or not the DVD was ANAMORPHIC, since it really didn't effect the quality of the image noticeably. But on a 16:9 HD set, a non-anamorphic "widescreen" DVD, such as the two I just mentioned, will simply not give you very good quality.
Fortunately, there aren't too many of these, but just be aware that they exist and that there's nothing wrong with your Oppo if the quality is substandard. You'll get the same thing with any player. (Another popular movie that's in this unfortunate format is "Ransom", by the way.)
After going crazy for a couple evenings, I learned about the difference between anamorphic and non-anamorphic, and made my peace with it. There was another problem however, that drove me up the wall for several weeks. This one though, I was thankfully able to correct.
Many DVD's had a greenish tint that no amount of adjustment could get rid of, and I had to set the picture temperature to "Cool" just to make anything watchable. I normally set HD broadcasts to "Warm".
Finally, I called Oppo and was informed that there was a firmware download on their web site that would probably take care of this issue. I installed it, and the green tint has vanished! Apparently, most users don't have this problem, but if you do, install this modification before you get overly anxious as I did.
One other thing. As on a good stereo system, the defects of a poor quality DVD transfer will be exposed by this player. Some movies, particularly older ones, may not look as good as they did on your standard definition set.
I don't mean to sound overly negative, since good source material, which most DVD's are, will deliver excellent picture (and sound) quality. DVD's of the "Back to the Future" trilogy and "Spiderman" are close enough to HD quality that you'll see them as you never have before.
Overall, the Oppo is an excellent investment when it's set up properly. I'm just trying to save you some trouble should you encounter the problems I mentioned above.
Customer Review: Amazing Results for an upconverter!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently bought a Samsung HD-5679W here on Amazon. Well I hooked it up to my DVD player (a Playstation 2...), threw in a Superbit movie, expecting to be blown away... Not impressed. Not even close.
Yes, my Tv will upconvert a signal, but that doesn't mean it does a good job at it. Now on to the Oppo. After a lot of research and hours on various AV forums I went for the Oppo.
The DVD player was packaged beautifully. It's also light and thin and the HDMI cable they include seems to be a decent quality cable. After hooking it up to the TV, I threw in the same Superbit Fifth Element DVD- the results this time... Amazed.
Some major pros:
- No macroblocking yet: With DLP's and RPTV's some 1080p DVD unconverters can cause problems, especially on the bigger screens. No problems yet.
- Looks amazing on a 1080p TV. I have seen plenty of HD movies via BluRay and the difference really isn't that noticeable. I find myself re-watching a lot of my DVD's and box sets. When compared to the 1080i HD cable it's very close in my opinion.
- The sound: the difference here is what brought this product from a 4 star to a 5. Running an optical cable to my Onkyo 6.1 from this Oppo produces an amazing sound. My sounds system has never sounded so good thank to the Oppo. It really is impressive.
- Great customer service from Oppo: I sent them two e-mails asking a few quick questions and each time they got back to me within 3 hours or so. It seems they really support their products.
A few minor cons:
- Only HDMI: Not a big deal because I've got a 1080p TV with 2 HDMI ports, but the option of component would be nice, if for some reason I need to use the HDMI's for something else (say a PS3, etc).
- The disc tray: As noted in other reviews- it's flimsy. If I sneezed near it, I'd be worried about it snapping off... hasn't happened yet, but I'll keep an eye on it.
- Out of the box, it was set to 720p resolution, which was a little surprising since it's made for use with a 1080p TV. I had to remove the DVD then access the HDMI settings and flip through the different resolutions. Not a big deal, but just an FYI.
The bottom line- this little piece of equipment is going to make your DVD library worth watching again. Go out and buy it. Then in a year or two when the HD DVD shinanagins settle down go out a get a bluray or ps3 or whatever.
Either way, you'll be happy with the Oppo.
Customer Review: Worth the price
Summary: 5 Stars
I'd never heard of Oppo, but the reviews I read about it here and elsewhere were all good. It received a product of the year mention in a magazine, and that was enough to convince me to give it a try.
This DVD player is expensive, but worth the money. It has a high end video processor that is normally only found on players costing hundreds more. Unfortunately, I've had several upscaling DVD players. I tried Sony, Philips, Samsung, and Toshiba. This one is easily better than any of those. Whether it will last any longer than those did (average seems to be about a year) remains to be seen.
The only negative is that the unit locked up on me a few times, but powering off and on solved that problem in every case but one: it simply wouldn't play that particular disk. Otherwise, it has played every kind of disk I've thrown at it: commericial DVDs as well as DVD +R, DVD -R, DVD RW.
It will also play PAL (European) disks, which most US players will not handle. This gives me access to foreign movies not distributed in the US.
If you have an HDTV and need an upscaling player, this is the best I've found. Oppo's lower end model is similar to units from other makers that cost less, and their flagship model is very powerful and probably the best on the market, but much more expensive. This one hits the right balance of features and price.
End of 2008 update: I did the flash update (download it and install on a USB drive) and it seems to have solved all of the locking up issues. Nice. The unit is still going strong, and I'm still impressed with it. Ran into one other issue that the update didn't fix: with some disks and our Sony HD TV it seems the Oppo and Sony both wanted to process the picture so much that it really...slowed...down the frame rate, to the point that the image would freeze for seconds at a time. I turned off all of the image processing on the TV, then turned it back on and turned it off on the Oppo, then turned them both on the same time. It was only a problem with both turned on. My advice if you run into this problem: turn off the TV video processing and let the Oppo work its magic. The image processor in the Oppo is better than the one in Sony TV we have, and it shows. When the DVD player on our other TV died after a year (another Sony, geesh, what is with these DVD players?), I didn't have to research what to replace it with.
Customer Review: My HD TV is alive!
Summary: 5 Stars
This player is awesome. I bought a new 1080i hdtv about 3/4 months back and had picked up a cheap phillips dvd to get me going. I was so dissapointed with the picture. It made me think back to how i felt when i compared standard VHS to DVD in the first place. It was fuzzy, just very average and didn't scale up well to the bigger screen. I had been doing some searching around on the forums to see what other toys I could buy and there was a lot of talk about Oppo. I had never heard of this company, like most people I suspect, but people on the forums could not speak highly enough about Oppo. Everywhere I read it was telling me that it could basically convert my dvds to HS like picture. I couldn't really buy this, didn't really understand, but obviosuly I wanted it! (i sound like Jessica Simpson :( ) I was really close to buying a Oppo 970 when I read a rumour of a new version. Against my will I held out, and held out and eventually it appeared on the Oppo website. I ordered it the same day and had it a week later.
I was nervous because you now what it's like when you've hyped something up in your own mind and it nearly always doesn't meet expectations. Like when the trailer has all the good bits, and the movie itself sucks. Once I got this baby up and running (make sure you get the right resolution first) I was truely blown away. It was just like watching HD. I had both of my dvds connected and kept switching between them and rubbing my eyes. For the average punter who just likes to sit and watch DVD movies in great quality I can't believe there is a better DVD player for the price. Dont' worry that you haven't heard of this brand, their support is excellent, there is some many forum posts on it if you need help or assistence, and it's just better than anything else out there within the price range.
It plays every format you through at it, and plays them well. Great sound as a CD player.
There is also a very simple multi-region hack you can apply so if you are like me and have lots of DVDs from all over the world (from living different places) - you are covered!
Make sure you download the latest firmware from the website. The version I got had a problem if you switch HDMI ports on your TV and then switch back, it loses all it's constrast settings. Fixed with the firmware though so that won't affect my rating.