What would be a good dvd player for this set? Im not sure I want to go hd yet until a format wins the war.

Whats all this buzz about oppo?

What would be a good dvd player for this set? Im not sure I want to go hd yet until a format wins the war.

Whats all this buzz about oppo?

Oppo is a small company that has made a big splash because it has offered dvd players with very good price/performance, features that many of here want, and excellent customer support including frequent firmware updates. 30-day return, 1-year warranty.

They were well-reviewed here, which helped a lot: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all&type=&manufacturer=68&maxprice=0&deInt=0&mpeg=0

That site is mainly about deinterlacing performance. The 981 review is not up yet, but is expected to be similar to the 971.

That being said (and I have been happy with my 971 and 981) they are not miraculous machines: they are SD-DVD players, not HD. I think people's expectations are sometimes unreasonably elevated and they are disappointed by the results.

-Bill

The other major upscaling player that gets mentioned here lately is Sony's DVP-NS75H. There are many opinions from many posters as to which is the better upconverting player.

I personally have both the Sony NS75H and the Hitachi 51F59A . I had read all the gushing reviews of the Oppo units and briefly considered one, but didn't feel that I was gonna get that much improvement vs. cost, PQ-wise, over the older Panny p.scan changer I'd been using for the last couple of years.

New Years Day, the wife and I did some major living/dining room rearranging. A tall IKEA corner unit that had been in the dining room for several years saw itself getting moved into the living room; it's bottom half is now our A/V rack. Every component fit nicely EXCEPT the Panny DVD changer. Saw that BestBuy had the Sony on sale for $108. Decided that then would be the time to give an upconverting player a shot. If the Sony totally blew (and/or didn't play nice w/ my F59's HDMI input), I could easily drive it back to BB. Picked one up and shot across the street to Target for an 8' HDMI cable (for 30 bucks--wasn't gonna spend almost as much/more than the Sony for a stinkin' cable @ BB!).

After getting everything all hooked up, I tried a few DVDs in the Sony. I immediately noticed the difference in PQ first w/ MATRIX RELOADED. Not an earth-shattering improvement, mind you, but a bit better than the PQ of the Panny via component. Color and sharpness was just a hair or two nicer with the Sony. Same results on several other discs.

Biggest improvement I've found so far is with some of my older DVDs. The ones that are "widescreen/letterbox", but not "anamorphic" (display as a rectangular box in the middle of a 16x9 screen). To get the image to properly fill the screen, you must "zoom" the picture either with the TV ("16x9 Zoom" aspect setting on the F59s) or the player. This is where my only real beef w/ the Sony lies. The Sony's zoom function displays the zoom amount icon on-screen at all times during it's operation, so it's basically useless. The old Panny didn't do this and if the film had subtitles on, they were not cut off by the zoom process as they are when zooming the image from the TV. The trade-off is that the PQ of the zoomed images on the Sony are far better than that of the the Panny. The recent "unaltered" Star Wars Trilogy discs (which are NOT anamporhic) look much better zoomed on the Sony than the Panny. Just have to either tweak the F59s' zoomed screen position to see Greedo's/ Jabba's subtitled dialog--or just not see it at all. If you've seen those films as much as I have over the last 30-odd years, you know what they're saying anyway. :)

Now, is the Sony better/worse/the same as an Oppo. Everyone has an opinion. I've never seen/used an Oppo on my TV, so I cannot say. But I can report that the Sony DVP-NS75H's upscaled 1080i output DOES look very nice on my Hitachi CRT RPTV and plays along nicely w/ that TV's HDMI input. The Sony is easy to obtain from any big box electronics retailer (which means it's easy to return if you hate it). If you just want a upscaling DVD player for simply watching movies--and don't think you'd utilize the Oppo's admittedly cool extras---the Sony might just make ya smile.