I'm trying to decide which dvd, dvd-a and sacd player would be best for my situation. I am a student, and a lack of income has kept my budget down. $225 USD at most.

I recently purchased a yamaha htr-5960 receiver (http://yamaha.com/yec/products/productdetail.html?CNTID=200502&CTID=5000400). I thought about using my xbox 360 for use as the dvd and cd player, but I remember reading oppo has a good universal disc reader/player on the market. So i looked into the oppo dv-970hd (http://www.oppodigital.com/dv970hd/dv970hd.html). I read through a bit of the tech info, looked at the price and thought to myself i had a good possibility on my hands.

I thought I'd head over to yamaha and see if they had anything to compete with the oppo. I found the yamaha dvd-s657 (http://yamaha.com/yec/products/productdetail.html?CNTID=200088&CTID=5001800) to have comparable specs. Remembering the receiver on the way, I think it would be really nice to have a few yamaha components stacked on each other.

I know the oppo has an HDMI plug, but I dont have an HD television. By the time I have a new tv, I hope to have a new receiver or pro/amp anyway, so the dvd would be upgraded as well.

In my situation, what do you all think would be best?

I had the yamaha and I then wanted to see the oppo's picture quality ,well I took off the yamaha and I gave away to my friend.

HMMmmm... For me that would be like deciding between a Ford Focus or a BMW 323i for the same price!!! No contest, get the OPPO!!!

It's not a directly relevant comparison (different Oppo and different Yamaha), but I made some comparisons between the Yamaha DVD-S1500 and the Oppo 981HD in my 981HD review (http://www.prillaman.net/oppo981_review.html). I found that the 981HD was very comparable to the S1500 on DVD-Audio and actually perhaps a bit better on SACD - and the 970HD is going to be equal to the 981HD for the multichannel analog. I also elected to originally invest in an Oppo player back in May '05 largely because I had become so frustrated with the user interface on the Yamaha. The front panel display on my S1500 displayed only elapsed time - except for a few seconds when changing track or chapter, there was no track number on CD's and no chapter number on DVD's. The fast forward/rewind functions are combined with the chapter/track skip buttons, and I never seemed to be able to hit the skip back button fast enough to skip back multiple tracks.

I'd probably go with the 970HD since you don't have an HD display yet. When a new TV arrives, you will have the option to hang onto the player if you wanted to.

thanks guys, oppo is dominating the poll.

I have an Oppo970HD and an older Yamaha S2500 (which cost about three times as much as the Oppo); both are universal players. The oppo can pass DVDA and SACD via its HDMI (converting SACD to 88.2 kHz PCM first) , while the Yamaha does it via ilink (SACD passed natively as DSD) but not via HDMI. I have an ilink (Pioneer) receiver too. There are interesting quirks and features for each player but both are fine as music players and perfectly adequate as video players. I use the Oppo more because I prefer the one-connector solution to the two-connector solution, and because it offers more different HDMI resolution settings (including 480i, which lets my projector do de-interlacing and upscaling). The Yamaha is now relegated to its separate 'system' (where it''s just a DVD player, connected directly to a TV). In terms of cost/benefit the Oppo appears to be significantly less expensive than the Yamaha S57 under consideration, so I would recommend the Oppo, but if you can find the Yamaha at the same price, it could be a toss-up.

Ok, thanks for all the help above.

I found this yamaha (http://yamaha.com/yec/products/productdetail.html?CNTID=200080&CTID=5001700) for an unbelievable price. The feature that i like most is the multi-disc capability. This, along with the reciever, will be playing on a SDTV for a while, and wont see an HDTV untill maybe 2010.

If I link the above player with the reciever, should it be through a toslink fiber optic, or through composite cable via the multi channel out? I already purchased a fiber optic from monprice for the 360, and want to know if I should order another.

revised for finding new price.

For audio from the DVD player to the receiver, you should use a digital audio connection (either optical or coaxial digital) as your standard connection. You've got four optical and two coaxial digital inputs on your new receiver.

This will apply for all cases except for DVD-Audio and SACD, both of which must be output over the multichannel analog connections. If you don't intend to pick up any DVD-Audio or SACD discs, there's no need to connect the multichannel analog outputs.

I'm trying to decide which dvd, dvd-a and sacd player would be best for my situation. I am a student, and a lack of income has kept my budget down. $225 USD at most.

I know the oppo has an HDMI plug, but I dont have an HD television. By the time I have a new tv, I hope to have a new receiver or pro/amp anyway, so the dvd would be upgraded as well.

Get a decent TV first.
Dont' waste your money on a fancy (expensive) DVD player now, cause you will see very little difference.
The players are being updated all the time. Get one when you're ready to take full advantage of its features..

I'm a student. no income, no house. the money i'm using couldnt pay for a 22 inch lcd. I bet the current formats and players will still do a good job with expanding tv techs. I'm staying under 500 for reciever and dvd player.