OPPO DV-981HD Upconverting SD DVD Player

[Richard]

In the summer of 2005 I came across a well regarded DVI upconverting DVD player from a new kid on the block by the name of OPPO and decided to give it a whirl. This culminated in August of 2005 into a Review in Progress report for the OPDV-971HD in which I gave the product a very high rating. I have been recommending OPPO ever since.

Since then, OPPO has released another model, the DV-970HD. The DV-970HD added HDMI output, SACD and DVD Audio, analog audio with the ability to turn the video stages off for better audio reproduction, and a unique 480i output directly from the disc for the scaling videophile.

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/reviews/2007/06/oppo_dv-981hd_u.php]Read the Full Review[/url]

[Richard]

[b]HQV Benchmark DVD[/b]
The DV-981HD has manual or auto 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios providing the ability to test the content in its native aspect ratio.

Color Bars (4:3) FAIL
Color Bars (16:9) PASS
Using the 4:3 aspect the horizontal 720 box was dramatically rolled off for luminance and the horizontal 180 box for chroma showed large banding.

Jaggie 1 (16:9) PASS

Jaggie 2 (16:9) PASS

Flag (4:3) PASS

Detail (16:9) PASS

Noise (4:3) PASS
The noise reduction feature offers three settings