PRODUCT REVIEW: JANUARY 5, 2007
OPPO DV-981HD Upscaling DVD Player
Do your DVDs suffer in quality when viewed on your new 1080p HDTV? OPPO to the rescue!
This is the second DVD player I’ve reviewed from OPPO. I wasn’t exactly bowled over with the DV-970H, reviewed in August of 2006. So I didn’t have great expectations for the DV-981H when it arrived in December of 2006.
Turns out, there’s a difference between the two in performance — a big difference. As luck would have it, I also had 52-inch and 50-inch 1080p flat-panel displays in for testing at the same time the DV-981H arrived. That meant the DV-981H would get a pretty stiff workout with close scrutiny, and there’d be no place to hide if it couldn’t cut the mustard.
Figure 1. Oppo’s DV-981H has a thin, sleek look to it.
OUT OF THE BOX
The DV-981HD is about as minimalist as you can get. It’s a little over 1.5 inches tall and weighs just over 5 pounds. The outside finish is a matte black with silver buttons, which I prefer to the silver appearance of the DV-970H. Oddly, the remote control is the same silver finish with black face that’s used on the older model.
This player is billed as being able to play virtually any DVD format, from DVD-Video and DVD-Audio to DivX 3.11 — 5.1, SACD, CD, HDCD, Photo CD, and of course all of the CD and DVD –R, +R, and RW variations. It will also accept DVD+R dual-layer discs (8.5 GB capacity).
The connector panel, which was sparse to begin with on the DV-970H, is even simpler here. There are the usual composite and S-video jacks, but no component (YPbPr) outputs are anywhere to be seen! That means you’ll have to use the HDMI connector exclusively for progressive-scan and HD-scaled playback, which is a bit of a sales risk if a potential customer only has an older HDTV monitor or projector.
Figure 2. The rear panel connections don’t include a component video output.
There are two digital audio outputs (SPDIF and Toslink), plus discrete six-channel analog audio jacks for surround-sound systems. That’s even more puzzling — why include analog multi-channel output jacks, providing some degree of backwards compatibility, but leave off the analog component video outputs, which can support 480p and 720p playback?
The DV-970H provided four output resolutions through its component and HDMI jacks — 480i/30 (native), 480p/60, 720p/60, and 1080i/30. This time around, 480i/30 output is gone from the DV-981H, replaced by 1080p/60 which can’t be sent through analog component video jacks.
REMOTE AND MENUS
Yep, it’s the same old OPPO remote, which frankly could use a little jazzing-up. There are just too many buttons on it and they’re all so small that it’s quite easy to hit the wrong one. The disc navigation controls are on the lower third of the remote and clustered tightly together, but they should be up above the navigation and Select buttons.
The DV-970H menus are more than adequate for set-up. You can choose from four different output aspect ratio formats (4:3 pan/scan, 4:3 letterbox, 16:9 wide/auto, and 16:9 wide), change the brightness of the front LED display, select from four different audio downmixes including virtual surround and 5.1 channel, and specify large or small front speakers.
The digital audio output is available as a “Raw” format (native encoding for Dolby or DTS) or as a pulse-code modulation (PCM) bitstream. You can also trim the levels of all five channels using a sliding bar GUI that’s pretty cool. There’s also a variable audio delay in 10-millisecond steps (100 milliseconds maximum) that is handy if you have an outboard video scaler in use.
The HDMI interface can be set up to pass linear PCM, native Dolby and DTS coding, or shut off if the coaxial SPDIF or Toslink connection is used. Further video tweaks are also available (brightness, contrast, sharpness, and color saturation) along with TrueLife Faroudja/Genesis image processing. This circuit enhances 480i chroma and luma response.
The menu is rounded out with a three-level digital noise reduction circuit. The manual cautions to use it carefully as image blurring or ghosting may result. (I usually just leave it off.) There are also two Video modes for variable cadences — Video 1 is primarily for NTSC discs, while Video 2 is used for both NTSC and PAL playback through the HDMI connector only.
IMAGE QUALITY TESTS
I tested the DV-981H primarily through its HDMI interface to Sharp's LC-52D62U LCD HDTV (which supports native 1080p through HDMI) and Panasonic's TH-50PF9UK (which doesn't support native 1080p through HDMI) to see how well it could de-interlace video, correct for motion errors, and upscale everything to 720p and 1080p resolutions — quite a bit of heavy lifting for screens this large.
I was quite surprised to see the player sail through most of the Realta HQV DVD tests. The rotating and moving bars in the Jaggies #1 and #2 sections were as clean as I’ve seen from any video scaler, and the waving flag sequence was smooth as could be. The latter test will dig out any interlaced scan line artifacts, but I couldn’t find any.
The 3:2 detection sequence (from Super Speedway) showed the OPPO’s processor locking up quickly and staying locked — something that a few HDTV sets have trouble with.
However, the player could not handle any of the oddball cadences (2:2:2:4, 2:3:3:2, and 3:2:3:2:2 Varispeed) on the Realta disc. (Something for OPPO to fix in their next player, perhaps…) The final Realta sequence features horizontal and vertical 2:2 video title crawls over 3:2 video content, and they passed through just fine.
Figure 3a-b. A 300-line diagonal pattern, scaled to 1080p by
Sharp’s LC-52D62U (top) and by the DV-981H (bottom).
Figure 4a-b. A 400-line diagonal pattern, scaled to 1080p
by Sharp’s LC-52D62U (top) and by the DV-981H (bottom).
Where the DV-981H really shines is in its ability to hold and even enhance fine image detail during the steep climb from 480i to 720p or 1080p. The Fine Detail sequence on the Realta disc shows a stone bridge with intricate lines, angles, and textures, all of which held up nicely without ringing or excessive edge enhancement on the Sharp and Panasonic displays. (In fact, the LC-52D62U added some unneeded enhancement that I had to dial back out.)
If you have any doubts about the ability of this player to push 480i video all the way to 1080p without trashing it, look at Figures 3 and 4. These show 300- and 400-line test charts from Video Essentials; first, as 480p/60 video scaled by the LC-52D62U to 1920x1080, and then as scaled 1080p passing straight through. The 1080p version is actually cleaner coming right from the DV-981H.
That’s great news for those of you who decided to take the plunge and buy a new 1080p LCD or rear-projection HDTV this past holiday season, and then discovered you need to upgrade your DVD player. (Hey, the DV-981H is a lot cheaper than HD DVD and Blu-ray players!)
CONCLUSIONS
OPPO’s DV-981H is indeed a big step up from its predecessor in many ways. It offers top-notch 1080p up-conversion for a very reasonable price, not to mention 480p and 720p for those with lower-resolution EDTVs and HDTVs. As long as the DVD content is encoded as 3:2 frames, you’ll have silky-smooth pictures.
But variable-speed and other cadences won’t look as nice, so if you record a TV movie to DVD and want to play it back later, you may see some scan line artifacts and flicker in areas of thin detail. Ditto any home movies or Web video burned to recordable DVDs.
I am still puzzled by the omission of component video outputs and the inclusion of analog multi-channel audio outputs. Perhaps it’s because the advent of 1080p displays has happened as HDMI interfaces have come into widespread use, and most new HDTVs provide at least two HDMI inputs.
