----- HDTV Magazine Tips List -----
THE ELECTRONIC JUNGLE
October 21 2005
If there were a walk of fame for DVD players, the Oppo Digital
OPDV971H would be down on its hands and knees, ready to immortalize its
prints in concrete.
The Oppo - let's give it the star treatment it demands with a
single-name identifier - has become an underground hit in only a few months
by performing a single task spectacularly well. It upconverts a standard DVD
picture to near-HDTV quality, but only through a digital video connection.
So if you don't own an HDTV with a digital video connection, either
DVI or HDMI, you can't see what the Oppo can do. But here's what you're
missing: a DVD player that, for $199, produces a picture rivaling DVD
players costing hundreds, even thousands, more.
This DVD player - it's Oppo, pronounced like Edgar Allan Oh-Poe -
comes from Oppo Digital, a North American creation of BBK Electronics of
China. (An unknown here, but as a manufacturer, BBK is bigger than Sony.)
Oppo Digital has started slowly, selling a few products like the OPDV971H
DVD player, a mini-DVD home theater system, an LCD TV/DVD combo and a
portable DVD player mostly through its website (www.oppodigital.com).
The Oppo DVD player attracted an immediate following with its quality
construction and high-value performance. Then it finished first in highly
technical picture-quality tests of some of the top DVD players by Secrets of
Home Theater and High Fidelity (www.hometheaterhifi.com). The Oppo received
the top score in the site's "DVD Benchmark Review," beating such players as
the $13,000 Teac Esoteric UX-1 and the $1,600 Pioneer Elite DV-59AVi.
That could be the biggest shocker since Kirstie Alley lost 50 pounds.
Oppo Digital did it by pouring a significant part of the player's price into
technology that manipulates the pixels in the DVD format's lowly 720x480
resolution (the numbers refer to pixels, horizontal and vertical) so that,
almost magically, it resembles typical HDTV resolutions like 1280x720 or
1920x1080. Bottom line: The DVD, with 480 active scan lines, can't come
close to high-definition pictures with their 720 (progressive) or 1,080
(interlaced) active scan lines without some electronic trickery.
Other sub-$200 DVD players offer this "upconversion" feature, but not
like the Oppo's combination of Faroudja's DCDi video processing and
all-digital video connection. The Oppo is unlike any budget DVD player I've
seen, even the way it's packed, double-boxed, and wrapped in a blue,
cloth-like sleeve. Oppo Digital also supplies a DVI cable and a second
digital-video cable with a DVD connection on one end (for the Oppo) and an
HDMI connection on the other (if your HDTV is so equipped).
This svelte (less than 2 inches high) player accommodates the usual
digital discs, all recordable DVD formats and also high-resolution
DVD-Audio. Unlike most DVD players, which work only with certain discs
depending in which of the globe's "regions" you live (for DVD purposes, the
United States is Region 1), the Oppo is a "region-free" player that accepts
all the world's discs. If you're a Bollywood fan, start ordering movies now.
The Oppo's video capabilities are the main attraction, though. Let's
see, then, what it could do with an Optoma H78DC3 high-definition projector
splashing an 80-inch diagonal image onto a Studiotek 130 screen from Stewart
Filmscreen. In maybe two minutes, I had set up the Oppo and inserted a DTS
test disc with a scene called, appropriately, "Blue Room" from Zhang Yimou's
extravagant martial arts film "Hero." With clothing and background bathed in
blue, it was easy to detect the difference in clarity when watching at DVD
quality (720x480) and, with a click of the "DVI" button on the Oppo's
remote, switch to the native resolution of the Optoma high-def projector
(1280x720).
Skin textures were now more accurate, sharper, but most dramatic was
the virtual elimination of graininess, or video noise, throughout the image.
It was, in fact, close to HDTV quality.
The Oppo also breezed through the extremely difficult HQV Benchmark
test disc from Silicon Optix (www.siliconoptix.com). In only one test, when
it displayed a brief moir
THE ELECTRONIC JUNGLE
October 21 2005
If there were a walk of fame for DVD players, the Oppo Digital
OPDV971H would be down on its hands and knees, ready to immortalize its
prints in concrete.
The Oppo - let's give it the star treatment it demands with a
single-name identifier - has become an underground hit in only a few months
by performing a single task spectacularly well. It upconverts a standard DVD
picture to near-HDTV quality, but only through a digital video connection.
So if you don't own an HDTV with a digital video connection, either
DVI or HDMI, you can't see what the Oppo can do. But here's what you're
missing: a DVD player that, for $199, produces a picture rivaling DVD
players costing hundreds, even thousands, more.
This DVD player - it's Oppo, pronounced like Edgar Allan Oh-Poe -
comes from Oppo Digital, a North American creation of BBK Electronics of
China. (An unknown here, but as a manufacturer, BBK is bigger than Sony.)
Oppo Digital has started slowly, selling a few products like the OPDV971H
DVD player, a mini-DVD home theater system, an LCD TV/DVD combo and a
portable DVD player mostly through its website (www.oppodigital.com).
The Oppo DVD player attracted an immediate following with its quality
construction and high-value performance. Then it finished first in highly
technical picture-quality tests of some of the top DVD players by Secrets of
Home Theater and High Fidelity (www.hometheaterhifi.com). The Oppo received
the top score in the site's "DVD Benchmark Review," beating such players as
the $13,000 Teac Esoteric UX-1 and the $1,600 Pioneer Elite DV-59AVi.
That could be the biggest shocker since Kirstie Alley lost 50 pounds.
Oppo Digital did it by pouring a significant part of the player's price into
technology that manipulates the pixels in the DVD format's lowly 720x480
resolution (the numbers refer to pixels, horizontal and vertical) so that,
almost magically, it resembles typical HDTV resolutions like 1280x720 or
1920x1080. Bottom line: The DVD, with 480 active scan lines, can't come
close to high-definition pictures with their 720 (progressive) or 1,080
(interlaced) active scan lines without some electronic trickery.
Other sub-$200 DVD players offer this "upconversion" feature, but not
like the Oppo's combination of Faroudja's DCDi video processing and
all-digital video connection. The Oppo is unlike any budget DVD player I've
seen, even the way it's packed, double-boxed, and wrapped in a blue,
cloth-like sleeve. Oppo Digital also supplies a DVI cable and a second
digital-video cable with a DVD connection on one end (for the Oppo) and an
HDMI connection on the other (if your HDTV is so equipped).
This svelte (less than 2 inches high) player accommodates the usual
digital discs, all recordable DVD formats and also high-resolution
DVD-Audio. Unlike most DVD players, which work only with certain discs
depending in which of the globe's "regions" you live (for DVD purposes, the
United States is Region 1), the Oppo is a "region-free" player that accepts
all the world's discs. If you're a Bollywood fan, start ordering movies now.
The Oppo's video capabilities are the main attraction, though. Let's
see, then, what it could do with an Optoma H78DC3 high-definition projector
splashing an 80-inch diagonal image onto a Studiotek 130 screen from Stewart
Filmscreen. In maybe two minutes, I had set up the Oppo and inserted a DTS
test disc with a scene called, appropriately, "Blue Room" from Zhang Yimou's
extravagant martial arts film "Hero." With clothing and background bathed in
blue, it was easy to detect the difference in clarity when watching at DVD
quality (720x480) and, with a click of the "DVI" button on the Oppo's
remote, switch to the native resolution of the Optoma high-def projector
(1280x720).
Skin textures were now more accurate, sharper, but most dramatic was
the virtual elimination of graininess, or video noise, throughout the image.
It was, in fact, close to HDTV quality.
The Oppo also breezed through the extremely difficult HQV Benchmark
test disc from Silicon Optix (www.siliconoptix.com). In only one test, when
it displayed a brief moir