$150 Oppo 970HD or $70 Sony DVP75H

You can get an oppo 970-hd for $119.00 refurbed if you call them and ask for one on the phone,
I also have a 970 and it is a great value and I got it refurbed for $119.00

the reburb'd 970 has the same warranty as the new one. it's a win-win situation.

Best,
jeff

Customer support.

-Bill

I just ordered the refurbed Oppo for my Vizio p42. Let you know how it works out.

So far I really like the player. The upscaling looks great at 720p and 1080i on the plasma (though I've never had another upscaler). Plays absolutely everything I can through at it. The best thing I like about it is the response time. Press a button and bam, it happens. Not used to that.

Wouldn't play .avi movies over the USB slot when I put in together with a slide show, but maybe another firmware version will fix that.

The gentleman I spoke with when ordering it informed my that there were plenty of 970HD refurbs ($119) available and a few 971 refurbs ($169) would be availing in a few weeks.

I have the Sony and I'm very pleased with it.. for the price... it's very nice. I also bought the refurbished one as well.

I don't need the other features of the Oppo, so I went with the Sony. If I was spending $400 on a player, I would re-consider Oppo, because of their customer support, but for $60, I'm not too worried..

I'm also considering the Sony DVP75H... unless there is something better coming out for the same price.

Same price? Not going to happen.. $60 for a decent up-converting DVD player in unheard of. Aside from it being refurbished, it still comes with a factory warranty.

Philips 5982 and Pioneer 400V. Former has new MSRP under $70, latter has been showing up on sale in the same price range. Both are 1080p upconverters based on the Mediatek chipset. Philips has other decent upconverters (only 1080i) based on the same chipset with a street price ranging down to $40.

There are also decent Zoran Vaddis-based upconverters (eg, from Samsung and LG) that are occasionally available in the price range.

Honestly, there is a wide and thriving market for budget upconverting DVD players, several of which can easily hold their own against the Sony. That doesn't mean that the Sony is a bad machine to buy, but it hardly owns this market sector. - DR

My apologies; I haven't heard much of these players here, so I assumed there wasn't any/many that are under $75 and do a decent job at up converting.

so does the sony use the same chipset or whatever as the phillips or samsung?? if it does how come everyone raves about how good the picture quality is for the sony? I would much rather get the phillips 5982 for the divx support but is the pq going to be not as good as the sony? also the new samsung 1080p upconverting player, do you know how that would compare with the sony. those are the main ones that i am debating on right now, and whichever as the best pq is the one that i'll most likely be going for.

There is more to PQ than just the processing chipset, players do a certain amount of postprocessing: for example, the Sony postprocessing corrects for the slight vertically compression that plagues many MTK chipset players, though apparently at some cost of sharpness. Different players also have different amounts of adjustment available to the user - more options (like on the Oppo) means a careful owner might be able to calibrate to a better picture. That said, on the machines I've played with in person there is a strong family resemblance in deinterlacing and decoding quality among players with the same chipset.

If you view a lot of 4:3 material, note that the Sony and Oppo will 'pillarbox' the picture before sending it to your TV, while the Philips and Pioneer will not - that means that with the latter two players you need to either watch in 480p mode, or the picture will be stretched to 16:9.

Among these players, the Oppo usually does best in reviews for PQ, especially reviews that submit the player to a standard quality test suite. The Sony is usually a big step down, and the (older) Philips a hair below that. On the other hand, the Sony cannot handle PAL, DivX, or region-free as the Oppo and Philips do, and the Philips handles multimedia over its USB port better than the Oppo does. Lots of tradeoffs.

As for the Samsung, their former budget player (the 860) had serious problems with freezeups, layer changes, and DivX; until we have better evidence that these faults are corrected in the new player, I would give them a miss.

I know it is a hard decision, but if one machine was better in every respect the others wouldn't have a market! - DR

If you check the tests here http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi you'll see that players using the same chipset get different scores. It depends on how the chips are supported by firmware and other hardware.

-Bill

Another factor to consider: The 970HD comes with an HDMI cord. Buy the Sony and you're going to have to shell out for the HDMI cord. I'm just sayin'.
J

The Toshiba is better than either the Sony or Oppo for SD DVD.

Unless you buy the Costco version of the Sony 75H (NS71H, I believe). Obviously a new player, not a refurb. These Costco "exclusive" players (same player as the 75H with some minor cosmetic diffs.) come packaged with an HDMI cable for around $100-$120. Plus you have 90 days to walk it back in to Costco for a refund if you hate it.

I've had a 75H for about 5 months now. Really enjoy it, great PQ. Lacks the Oppo bells and whistles, but if a solid Region 1 player is all you need, the Sony isn't the "wrong" choice.

However, some of the score differences are a matter of one machine passing one discrete benchmark, and another one not, and some of the features tested for will have little effect on the appearance in practice of the picture. This is similar to PC benchmarks - useful tools, but should be understood in context.

Obviously, all else equal one wants the machine that does best on as many tests as possible; one great appeal of the Oppo is that it has few if any measurable flaws (other than the MTK squeeze - which, BTW, Kris has downmarked some MTK machines for, but not others). - DR

Not the HD-A1 in my opinion since I have all three players. The better Toshiba HD DVD players are better, I am sure.

Chris

The XA2, I have heard from many people, is the best up converting DVD player out there.

The MediaTek chipsets suffers from a flaw: when upscaling, the image is compromised by being vertically compressed - everything in the image will be a bit shorter and fatter. There is a firmware fix for this, but it causes horizontal resolution loss clearly visible on the Avia Resolution patterns.

In addition, I have found the HD-A1 and A2 to produce a bit of a sharper image than MediaTek players as well as more overall "punch." The difference is not huge here by any means, but somewhat noticable.

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for a new DVD player. My immediate need is for a low profile unit that can handle DTS audio. Multi-region capability would be a plus but not a must.

The problem is that I still have an old SD TV. I would rather buy an upconverting player now because I expect to buy an HDTV in the next 1-2 years and I can use it to play my old DVD library until Blue Ray and/or HD DVD becomes a little more affordable.

My 2 choices were going to be between the Oppo 970 or 971 and the Sony often mentioned above. I was leaning toward the 970HD but I haven't been able to find any good info regarding how these units actually look on an old NTSC TV set. Do they interface well to the old format for now and then work well with an HDTV later? Or should I just buy a DTS compatible, non-upconverting DVD player now and re-invest in a proper DVD player for HDTV later? If so, what is a good choice for a DTS, non-upconverting DVD player?

Thanks!

What are the inputs on your SD TV?

I am using a Oppo 971 on a 20" CRT and it looks fine, but probably no better than many other players in this circumstance.

Do they make non-upscaling players anymore? If they do, I suspect they are pretty low-end.

-Bill

Actually, a friend of mine walked in and returned his 6 month old Sony. He bought some groceries and picked up a 981 from his dealer.
That DVD player was not much money, so I wonder how much leeway they still have to do returns. I still think it's a shame that scam artists destroyed that policy, but such is the American dream - to find a loophole in a major retailers return policy .

From memory, I have S-video as my best connection. Nothing better.

S-video and composite are limited to 480i (576i for PAL). So neither an upscaling nor progressive scan player will do you any good with this display.

Of course you could buy a better player now, use it at 480i for the moment, and be ready for your next display.

-Bill

Yeah, you can still get non-upscalers, even name brands. Most are under $50, though.

Even saw a Magnavox recently that didn't do progressive scan. Best it did was S-video.