Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Up-Converting, DivX & SACD
by OPPO Digital
|
List Price: Our Price: $99.99 You Save: $199.01 (67%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Up-Converting, DivX & SACD
Customer Review: Outstanding Performance and Price
Summary: 5 Stars
Hooked up to my brand new Samsung 46" HDTV via HDMI (audio to my Denon via optical) and the picture look very similiar to real Hi-Def. No artifacts, wiggles or other annoying twitches. Sound is awesome through the TV or the receiver. Although all (most anyway) new HDTV's will "upconvert" (stretch) to 16:9...this machine does it so much better, clearer, cleaner and faster than my TV allowing the TV to spend it's time processing the color not the format and pixels. Without a doubt, the best video processing for standard def DVD's. A lot of nice menu features for the techno type but simple enough and more than good enough if you just pop in a DVD and hit play. Well worth the $ especially if your old DVD player can't upconvert and it must rely on the TV to upconvert the picure to 16:9 and then process the video too. This processor is soo much better than a TV's video processor. As far as the competition out there for upconverting players...this one is just as good as my $500 Denon when it comes to the upconversion and picture quality. If you are like many of us and are waiting for the 3rd (or 4th) generation of Blu-Ray (to work out their bugs and final standard) before jumping into that market, this is a very nice "tide-me-over". And this will probably still be better than a cheap blu-ray at upconverting and video processing. EnjoyCustomer Review: ...plus an excellent CD player
Summary: 5 Stars
A lot of people have already written some very nice things about this player - it has excellent picture quality, comes with a very nice HDMI cable, good overall finish (except for the tray) etc., so I don't want to ramble on about these features.
The one thing that has not been covered by anyone before is the fantastic audio quality of this player. Simply put, it compares to some of the top line hi-fi cd players out there. So this is more than well worth the price as a stand alone cd player. Of course one needs a good audio system to go with it. My moderate hi-fi system consists of a NAD C352 amplifier and a pair of Monitor Audio S8 speakers. I listen mostly to old Jazz and classical music. One of my all time favorites is Nina Simone. There is a certain richness to Nina's voice that I have never heard before. This player brings out many of the subtleties of the recording that can be so engrossing that it really transports one back to the era. Same goes for many of the classical recordings. In a nutshell, the feeling is very different and it is very difficult to put it in words.
If you like listening to music and have a decent audio system I would highly recommend this player as a cd player alone. That it upconverts regular dvds so well and is a universal player makes this player an incredible bargain.
Customer Review: Loving It!
Summary: 5 Stars
After my mother-in-law bought my family a Sony 40" Bravia, I knew I needed to purchase an upconverting DVD player for all my many standard Def. DVD's. At a friends recommendation, I went with a $99 Sony machine and right from the get go was not impressed. It was alright, but I was expecting more and some of the DVD's were rather fuzzy actually. After a lot of research I went with the Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Up-Converting, DivX & SACD and man is it great. First, it arrives in just a couple days from Amazon...and that is with the free shipping offer and at Christmas time! Then as soon as you open the box I was impressed with the cloth wrapping of the machine. Nice! Then I am impressed with it's sleek look and then its easy set up and then the blue light for the open button is nice when viewing in a dark room. Then I tried a sampling of about 5-6 DVD's...some old some new. Great! I even had my wife come compare a recently watched one on the Sony...she agrees. Much better. I have a 720p native resolution TV and I will say be sure to set the DVD player to whatever your's is, but after that just watch the obvious upgrade. And a bonus, the sound. The sound on movies and then last night I played some music CD's. Wow! Great sound, too. I know this machine costs more than some, but it is worth it.Customer Review: Another positive review.
Summary: 5 Stars
Set up was a breeze, and *it does* make many standard dvd's look like they are HD. In fact, some disc look better than some of the HD programming from the cable company(cable companies love compression!). It's not blu-ray, but it does a fantastic job up-converting standard disc. I should mention that I am using this on a 50" plasma also.
I know after buying this, I won't be so quick to shell out more money for a blu-ray player considering the picture looks fantastic and I don't see any real need to spend money on the same titles that I already own. They look better on this Oppo than my prior JVC and Sony dvd players.
I noticed a few reviews that felt Oppo wasn't going to have any firmware upgrade to this two year old product, but there is a firmware upgrade as of July 8th 2008 at Oppodigital(dot)com
Glad I bought it.
***Update***(11/16/2008): There is also a firmware update from August 6th and this update corrected the fact that this player would play some hybrid SACD's as regular CD's. Since I performed this upgrade, the player plays my hybrid disc as multi-channel disc, as they should be. I'd definitely recommend upgrading the firmware at oppodigital to correct the faults of this player, especially to take full advantage of SACD's multi-channel capability.
Customer Review: Just Say OPPO!
Summary: 5 Stars
Just got this unit last week and I am very impressed with its elegance and performance. First of all, I have never seen an electronic device packaged with such TLC. Easy to open, clean packing materials; a nice little black protective cover wrapped lovingly around the unit; easy-to-ready user manual in a zip-loc bag. These are the little things that indicate that this company is trying to take that proverbial "extra step" to build a good reputation and ensure customer loyalty. It works guys!
The look of the unit is very sleek and pleasing. But the best thing about it is its performance. It plays everything I throw at it and it does it almost flawlessly.
To test the upconvert feature, I popped in "Star Wars: Episode I," and WOW! A clear improvement over my old JVC player. It really brings out the best in our Panasonic 42" plasma! Our plasma only ED, but the improvement in picture quality makes it seem like we upgraded to HD! Makes me want to watch all my DVD's again!
After setting the Region code to "0", I tried one of my Region 2 DVDs and ol' "OPPO" played it like a champ! OPPO also played DiVX with ease, along with mp3, jpg and many others.
So, consider me another of the OPPO converts! We no longer call it the DVD player...we just say "OPPO"!