Lupin
28-04-2005, 05:02 PM
First impressions:
Unit was well packed with foam in cardboard carry case.
Comes with RCA leads, remote, 2 X AAA batteries, manual and 1.5m DVI cable (still cant believe that)
Nice looking unit with the same build quality of other players in the $300 - $500 price range. Remote is well layed out, with an illuminating face. Play/Stop and Pause buttons could be more prominent.
Pics of the unit, remote and supplied accessories can be found here:
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h_images.html
Manual is easy to understand and looks to explain all that needs explaing for initial setup and basic playback.
Copy of the manual can be found here: http://www.oppodigital.com/Download/OPDV-971H_Manual.pdf
Power lead is US standard and non detachable, so I needed to use a $5 plug/adapter from Hardly Normal. This is the first and only problem I have with this player. Being multivoltage, no other adapters or converters were needed.
Before I get to picture quality, I should mention my only reason for getting this player was for upscale playback over DVI. This player WILL NOT upscale over component, and I did not test component. Testing was done on DVI only.
Equipment used:
2 X Panasonic AE700 Projectors calibrated with DVE and AVIA (Borrowed the second unit to make testing easier) native resolution is 1280 X 720
Momitsu V880 DX connected via DVI > HDMI cable
Oppo DV971H connected via DVI > HDMI cable
Zensonic 330 connected to a CRT TV (this unit has no DVI out and is used in this test to compare for disc compatibility and error handling on faulty DVDs only since, to date, it is the only player I have that can play anything I put in its mouth)
Onto the testing.
Colour:
To my untrained eyes, this player produces excellent colour with no blue or green push that has been associated with some of the denon players sharing the same chip. My projector has a colour warming filter that, when properly calibrated, gives me 65k from 20 to 100 IRE. Flesh tones with this player look like flesh tones, not orange, pink or red. Although the Oppo passes blacker than black over DVI I was unable to get fine shadow detail on very dark scenes simply because this LCD projector DOES NOT pass blacker than black regardless of what DVD player or source is feeding the signal.
Sharpness:
AE700 display uses smooth screen technology and at times can seem a bit soft. With the Oppos sharpness controls on "low" I was looking at a very sharp, crisp image. For me, this is great, for others whose display either doesn’t have sharpness controls to soften the signal form the player or who like a softer picture, this may be an issue for you. This is completely display dependent and won’t bother most people. Oppo Digitals future firmware release may resolve this (they are aware of some users who would like to lower or disable sharpness and to date they have implemented users requests when possible)
Disc compatibility:
The Oppo played DVD-R/RW DVD+R/RW and DVD+R dual layer. I did not bother with CD material since I believe any player should handle these across the board by now. This universal player had no issues playing material at both R4 PAL @50z or R1 NTSC @60Hz (progressive and interlaced) at resolutions of 480i/480p 576p 720p and 1080i. No stuttering at 720p or 1080i for PAL or NTSC which is an issue with many upscaling players including the momitsu.
DVD-A.
I don’t have DVD-A, so lets get that out of the way now. The following review for DVD-A has been cut and paste from AVS forum form a trusted source.
-----------------------------------
DVD-A review
ted_b
Senior Member
Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Westlake, OH
Posts: 380
My Oppo arrived yesterday and I let it sit for a day before installing it today. As I posted earlier, the first review of the machine would be for DVD-Audio quality only. It first needed to best my first-generation built-like-a-tank Technics DVDA-10 in sound quality (esp mulitchannel) before I unpack the Dtrovision converter to test it on my Runco pj.
I initially set it up via component just to be able to navigate the menus and set up the audio correctly. The first glitch came there. In the "downmix" menu screen I attempted to set the machine for 5.1ch in order to set the rear and center speakers, and make sure the multichannel was enabled. The first attempt at doing that resulted in no surround sound and a muffled center channel, along with the inability to reset the center and rears in the menu, regardless of setting (5.1 is the only setting the enables those line items but I tried everything.) They remained grayed out until I unplugged and replugged he machine. All is well and has been since that first and only glitch.
My Technics A10 uses an old MASH 24/192 dac chip, but uses very good op amps and the remainder of the analog circuit is well-made. Conversely, the Oppo uses a much newer (duh!) Crystal 24/192 dac but the rest of the analog stage looks to be spartan. Well, what did I expect for this level of player. Then came the music. I used the following DVD-A's: AIX DVD-A sampler, Donald Fagen's Kamakiriad , Beck Guero, Paul Simon You're The One and a little snippet from the Chesky set-up disc.
The Technics player is plugged into a PS Audio P300 Power Plant (ac regenerator) with a tube multiwave setup. The Oppo was initially plugged into a cheap power strip and then into the wall. The A10 is characterized by a lush sound with a somewhat bloated or exaggerated midbass, but it's a sound I'm used to. I spent about an hour listening to several cuts, the last being from Kamakiriad. Then I switched cables and put the Oppo into play. Jaw-dropping soundstage expansion, jaw-dropping resolution, jaw-dropping micro-dynamics. The only thing missing was the prodigious midbass that I'm used to. So I tried a few other cuts, inclduing the Cello concerto from the AIX demo. Very well-defined, very clean and almost clincal in its precision, but lacking the last octave and a half vs the A10. Hmmm, the Oppo is clearly the king, but damn, it's a bit clinical (not hrash mind you) and I'd love to have it all.
Then I removed the A10 and plugged the Oppo AC into the PS Audio Power Plant tubed multiwave. Voila. The lowest ocatve is there in spades. The midbass is back and not nearly as exaggerated, but that's probably a good thing; I just need to listen a bit longer. Overall, I am blown away by the sound of this little machine. I'm sure the Denon 3910 trounces it, and my HT system is articulate enough to hear the difference, but at this point in time in the life of hi-rez, blue-ray, etc it just ain't worth it.
My A10 is a great player, is built with incredible quality and has an SDI modded output for video scalers. I will be able to sell it easily for the SDI capability.
Now it's onto the video side of the house to see if my new resident DVD-A player will also become my video source for my crt pj(Dtrovision DVI-to-VGA converter will be unpacked and set up tomorrow). It needs to beat a very simple but rock-solid Modwright modded Sony 999ES with extra large power supply, 480p output. I'm guessing it will go 2-for-2 this weekend.
Ted
------------------------------------
Hope that covers DVD-A performance for those who wanted to know.
Back to the video side of things.
Error Handling:
A few months back I went to several AV stores with a copy of "The butterfly Effect". My copy of this DVD has extremely exaggerated pixilation at a certain chapter point on many players. So I played this chapter on about 8 different players with mixed results. Two Sony players failed, Samsung failed, a pioneer player skipped the chapter entirely, Deneon 1910 and 3910 played through with no pixilation (this surprised me since I thought the loaders in Denons were sensitive to such things), my momitsu failed, zensonic 330 passed with flying colours and the Oppo?............ What pixilation.
Next in my collection of buggered discs is a poorly authored copy of Independence day. This did not load on the denons on the same day I tested the "the butterfly effect". The momitsu will sit trying to load this disc for 5 mins and then decide it is a data disc and load the ISO menu. The zensonic is far more forgiving and loads/plays fine. The Oppo also played this DVD without complaint. Lastly, I have a very scratched DVD that most players lockup on at several parts of the disc. The best I can ever hope for is for the player to continue playing when it gets to these points. Many players lockup completely and wont play past the first read error it encounters. The Oppo faired well here too, at all times the Oppo froze for 1 -3 seconds then continued on. This DVD is unwatchable of course, but it was interesting to see the Oppo just keep slogging away at it.
Macrobloking:
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the macroblocking bug, here is a brief rundown:
Macroblocking appears on some DVD’s as an artifact of heavy MPEG compression. It is normally very subtle, but the Faroudja chip exaggerates it, so that it becomes distracting on some displays. Macroblocking looks like patches of moving/pulsating off-color blocks, and is most often seen on background walls and floors, in mist, and in fade-in/fade-out scenes.
The momitsu doesn’t have this problem since it doesn’t have a Faroudja chip.
When I had the opportunity to play around with the denon 1910 and 3910, both of which use a Faroudja chip, I did notice some enhanced macroblocking on some DVDs. This was very minimal on my display and I had to look for it to see it. Two that come to mind were "Finding Nemo" and some of the fog and water/horizon scenes from "Master and Commander" So I used these two discs to see if the Oppo has the same issue. On my display there was some very minimal macroblocking in Finding Nemo, and less in "Master and commander". It should be noted that the presence of exaggerated macroblocking is very display dependent. Some users see it, others do not. A properly calibrated display minimizes macroblocking even further almost to the point of non-existence. The degree of macroblocking was not an issue for me with this player, I've seen much worse on much more expensive players.
And now the problems.
The Oppo has only one issue at the moment.
The problem has been noted by many users on AVS forums and that is vertical edge enhancement. This fault rears its head on only some displays and again when properly calibrated can be greatly reduced or eradicated. If you imagine watching an image of someone in a black pin stripe suit, the high contrast white vertical lines of the pin stripes can appear to shimmer and crawl. The effect is extremely pronounced and very distracting. This crawling shimmering effect is on Oppo Digitals priority list at the moment and we can fully expect the next firmware to address this.
Other notes:
The DVI output of this player is non HDCP compliant. This means users who own an older display with a DVI port can still take advantage of the upscaling capabilities of this player. (This does not affect upscaling on displays that have a DVI port that IS HDCP compliant)
Going from one scaled resolution to another is alot easier on the Oppo than the momitsu. The Oppo remote has a DVI button that, when depressed, will cycle through resolutions in stop mode. With the momitsu, and others, you need to stop play, enter setup menu, enter video options, then cycle through to the resolution you want, press enter, then exit setup menu... ACK!
Conclusion:
Aside from the vertical line shimmering issues, this unit excels. The picture that this player produces is the best I have seem on my display. The image is sharp and clean with excellent colour reproduction on PAL and NTSC. The overall impression when watching a movie at 1080i was simply breathtaking. I'm impressed with Oppo Digital’s first offering, if the coming firmware resolves the issues pointed out earlier then this unit will become my resident player and the 2 momitsu v880DX units and a Samsung HD 747 I have will be destined for eBay.
Hope this has been of some use
Regards
Peter
This unit can be purchased directly from Oppo Digitals website www.oppodigital.com
Unit was well packed with foam in cardboard carry case.
Comes with RCA leads, remote, 2 X AAA batteries, manual and 1.5m DVI cable (still cant believe that)
Nice looking unit with the same build quality of other players in the $300 - $500 price range. Remote is well layed out, with an illuminating face. Play/Stop and Pause buttons could be more prominent.
Pics of the unit, remote and supplied accessories can be found here:
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h_images.html
Manual is easy to understand and looks to explain all that needs explaing for initial setup and basic playback.
Copy of the manual can be found here: http://www.oppodigital.com/Download/OPDV-971H_Manual.pdf
Power lead is US standard and non detachable, so I needed to use a $5 plug/adapter from Hardly Normal. This is the first and only problem I have with this player. Being multivoltage, no other adapters or converters were needed.
Before I get to picture quality, I should mention my only reason for getting this player was for upscale playback over DVI. This player WILL NOT upscale over component, and I did not test component. Testing was done on DVI only.
Equipment used:
2 X Panasonic AE700 Projectors calibrated with DVE and AVIA (Borrowed the second unit to make testing easier) native resolution is 1280 X 720
Momitsu V880 DX connected via DVI > HDMI cable
Oppo DV971H connected via DVI > HDMI cable
Zensonic 330 connected to a CRT TV (this unit has no DVI out and is used in this test to compare for disc compatibility and error handling on faulty DVDs only since, to date, it is the only player I have that can play anything I put in its mouth)
Onto the testing.
Colour:
To my untrained eyes, this player produces excellent colour with no blue or green push that has been associated with some of the denon players sharing the same chip. My projector has a colour warming filter that, when properly calibrated, gives me 65k from 20 to 100 IRE. Flesh tones with this player look like flesh tones, not orange, pink or red. Although the Oppo passes blacker than black over DVI I was unable to get fine shadow detail on very dark scenes simply because this LCD projector DOES NOT pass blacker than black regardless of what DVD player or source is feeding the signal.
Sharpness:
AE700 display uses smooth screen technology and at times can seem a bit soft. With the Oppos sharpness controls on "low" I was looking at a very sharp, crisp image. For me, this is great, for others whose display either doesn’t have sharpness controls to soften the signal form the player or who like a softer picture, this may be an issue for you. This is completely display dependent and won’t bother most people. Oppo Digitals future firmware release may resolve this (they are aware of some users who would like to lower or disable sharpness and to date they have implemented users requests when possible)
Disc compatibility:
The Oppo played DVD-R/RW DVD+R/RW and DVD+R dual layer. I did not bother with CD material since I believe any player should handle these across the board by now. This universal player had no issues playing material at both R4 PAL @50z or R1 NTSC @60Hz (progressive and interlaced) at resolutions of 480i/480p 576p 720p and 1080i. No stuttering at 720p or 1080i for PAL or NTSC which is an issue with many upscaling players including the momitsu.
DVD-A.
I don’t have DVD-A, so lets get that out of the way now. The following review for DVD-A has been cut and paste from AVS forum form a trusted source.
-----------------------------------
DVD-A review
ted_b
Senior Member
Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Westlake, OH
Posts: 380
My Oppo arrived yesterday and I let it sit for a day before installing it today. As I posted earlier, the first review of the machine would be for DVD-Audio quality only. It first needed to best my first-generation built-like-a-tank Technics DVDA-10 in sound quality (esp mulitchannel) before I unpack the Dtrovision converter to test it on my Runco pj.
I initially set it up via component just to be able to navigate the menus and set up the audio correctly. The first glitch came there. In the "downmix" menu screen I attempted to set the machine for 5.1ch in order to set the rear and center speakers, and make sure the multichannel was enabled. The first attempt at doing that resulted in no surround sound and a muffled center channel, along with the inability to reset the center and rears in the menu, regardless of setting (5.1 is the only setting the enables those line items but I tried everything.) They remained grayed out until I unplugged and replugged he machine. All is well and has been since that first and only glitch.
My Technics A10 uses an old MASH 24/192 dac chip, but uses very good op amps and the remainder of the analog circuit is well-made. Conversely, the Oppo uses a much newer (duh!) Crystal 24/192 dac but the rest of the analog stage looks to be spartan. Well, what did I expect for this level of player. Then came the music. I used the following DVD-A's: AIX DVD-A sampler, Donald Fagen's Kamakiriad , Beck Guero, Paul Simon You're The One and a little snippet from the Chesky set-up disc.
The Technics player is plugged into a PS Audio P300 Power Plant (ac regenerator) with a tube multiwave setup. The Oppo was initially plugged into a cheap power strip and then into the wall. The A10 is characterized by a lush sound with a somewhat bloated or exaggerated midbass, but it's a sound I'm used to. I spent about an hour listening to several cuts, the last being from Kamakiriad. Then I switched cables and put the Oppo into play. Jaw-dropping soundstage expansion, jaw-dropping resolution, jaw-dropping micro-dynamics. The only thing missing was the prodigious midbass that I'm used to. So I tried a few other cuts, inclduing the Cello concerto from the AIX demo. Very well-defined, very clean and almost clincal in its precision, but lacking the last octave and a half vs the A10. Hmmm, the Oppo is clearly the king, but damn, it's a bit clinical (not hrash mind you) and I'd love to have it all.
Then I removed the A10 and plugged the Oppo AC into the PS Audio Power Plant tubed multiwave. Voila. The lowest ocatve is there in spades. The midbass is back and not nearly as exaggerated, but that's probably a good thing; I just need to listen a bit longer. Overall, I am blown away by the sound of this little machine. I'm sure the Denon 3910 trounces it, and my HT system is articulate enough to hear the difference, but at this point in time in the life of hi-rez, blue-ray, etc it just ain't worth it.
My A10 is a great player, is built with incredible quality and has an SDI modded output for video scalers. I will be able to sell it easily for the SDI capability.
Now it's onto the video side of the house to see if my new resident DVD-A player will also become my video source for my crt pj(Dtrovision DVI-to-VGA converter will be unpacked and set up tomorrow). It needs to beat a very simple but rock-solid Modwright modded Sony 999ES with extra large power supply, 480p output. I'm guessing it will go 2-for-2 this weekend.
Ted
------------------------------------
Hope that covers DVD-A performance for those who wanted to know.
Back to the video side of things.
Error Handling:
A few months back I went to several AV stores with a copy of "The butterfly Effect". My copy of this DVD has extremely exaggerated pixilation at a certain chapter point on many players. So I played this chapter on about 8 different players with mixed results. Two Sony players failed, Samsung failed, a pioneer player skipped the chapter entirely, Deneon 1910 and 3910 played through with no pixilation (this surprised me since I thought the loaders in Denons were sensitive to such things), my momitsu failed, zensonic 330 passed with flying colours and the Oppo?............ What pixilation.
Next in my collection of buggered discs is a poorly authored copy of Independence day. This did not load on the denons on the same day I tested the "the butterfly effect". The momitsu will sit trying to load this disc for 5 mins and then decide it is a data disc and load the ISO menu. The zensonic is far more forgiving and loads/plays fine. The Oppo also played this DVD without complaint. Lastly, I have a very scratched DVD that most players lockup on at several parts of the disc. The best I can ever hope for is for the player to continue playing when it gets to these points. Many players lockup completely and wont play past the first read error it encounters. The Oppo faired well here too, at all times the Oppo froze for 1 -3 seconds then continued on. This DVD is unwatchable of course, but it was interesting to see the Oppo just keep slogging away at it.
Macrobloking:
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the macroblocking bug, here is a brief rundown:
Macroblocking appears on some DVD’s as an artifact of heavy MPEG compression. It is normally very subtle, but the Faroudja chip exaggerates it, so that it becomes distracting on some displays. Macroblocking looks like patches of moving/pulsating off-color blocks, and is most often seen on background walls and floors, in mist, and in fade-in/fade-out scenes.
The momitsu doesn’t have this problem since it doesn’t have a Faroudja chip.
When I had the opportunity to play around with the denon 1910 and 3910, both of which use a Faroudja chip, I did notice some enhanced macroblocking on some DVDs. This was very minimal on my display and I had to look for it to see it. Two that come to mind were "Finding Nemo" and some of the fog and water/horizon scenes from "Master and Commander" So I used these two discs to see if the Oppo has the same issue. On my display there was some very minimal macroblocking in Finding Nemo, and less in "Master and commander". It should be noted that the presence of exaggerated macroblocking is very display dependent. Some users see it, others do not. A properly calibrated display minimizes macroblocking even further almost to the point of non-existence. The degree of macroblocking was not an issue for me with this player, I've seen much worse on much more expensive players.
And now the problems.
The Oppo has only one issue at the moment.
The problem has been noted by many users on AVS forums and that is vertical edge enhancement. This fault rears its head on only some displays and again when properly calibrated can be greatly reduced or eradicated. If you imagine watching an image of someone in a black pin stripe suit, the high contrast white vertical lines of the pin stripes can appear to shimmer and crawl. The effect is extremely pronounced and very distracting. This crawling shimmering effect is on Oppo Digitals priority list at the moment and we can fully expect the next firmware to address this.
Other notes:
The DVI output of this player is non HDCP compliant. This means users who own an older display with a DVI port can still take advantage of the upscaling capabilities of this player. (This does not affect upscaling on displays that have a DVI port that IS HDCP compliant)
Going from one scaled resolution to another is alot easier on the Oppo than the momitsu. The Oppo remote has a DVI button that, when depressed, will cycle through resolutions in stop mode. With the momitsu, and others, you need to stop play, enter setup menu, enter video options, then cycle through to the resolution you want, press enter, then exit setup menu... ACK!
Conclusion:
Aside from the vertical line shimmering issues, this unit excels. The picture that this player produces is the best I have seem on my display. The image is sharp and clean with excellent colour reproduction on PAL and NTSC. The overall impression when watching a movie at 1080i was simply breathtaking. I'm impressed with Oppo Digital’s first offering, if the coming firmware resolves the issues pointed out earlier then this unit will become my resident player and the 2 momitsu v880DX units and a Samsung HD 747 I have will be destined for eBay.
Hope this has been of some use
Regards
Peter
This unit can be purchased directly from Oppo Digitals website www.oppodigital.com