14 DAY TRIAL // The Oppo DV-981 is the latest addition to the DVD world. Maybe the news is not among the best since the producer is not that old, nor does it represents a brand such as Sony or Panasonic. Nevertheless, the latest products coming from Oppo represent a very good solution, especially for those of you who prefer to watch DVDs upscaled in 720p or 1080i resolution. I didn't mention 1080p because there was no Oppo DVD player capable of doing that. Until now.
1080p resolution is the best you can get at the moment. Taking that into account, I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the upsampled content. If you play an SD DVD in an upsampled resolution, what you generally get is a slightly better picture but the noise also gets to a higher level. In some cases, the image even seems rather plain and the color spectrum is not so good. However, Oppo's products are somewhat different and they provided one of the best viewing experiences ever.
Talking of which, the new DVD player comes with HDMI support and analog/digital audio output capable of 7.1 channel mixing. The DVD lacks analog video component output, but since HDMI is way better - because it can also carry sound - there's actually no need for analog here. Coupling the unit to a fully capable 1080p display will result in an image that looks more HD-DVD like than SD. And the best part is that the unit can also upscale Divx titles.
The experience with Divx is even better than the DVD-playback. I'm not saying that the movies look better in Divx mode than in DVD but the upscaler does a great job, proving that standalone players can actually do better than PCs when it comes to MPEG-4 decoding. On the downside, you'll have to do a lot of tweaking in order to get the best out of the Oppo DV-981. The Faroudja image enhancements will take some time to get used to, but the result is great. The filters do an excellent job and they add a lot of crispness to the output while at the same time keeping the noise at low levels. With an expected price of about $230, this is one of the best DVD players at the moment. Highly recommended.