SRP: $230 direct
Specs:
Disc types played: DVD-Video, DVD-Audio SACD, CD, HDCD, Kodak Picture CD, DivX, CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD+R DL
Output: Analog audio – 5.1 channel & stereo
Digital audio – Coax, optical
Analog video – Composite, S-Video
Digital video – HDMI with HDCP, 480p/720p/1080i/1080p NTSC; 576p/720p/1080i/1080p PAL
Audio Characteristics: 20Hz-20kHz (+-1dB) response
>100dB S/N <0.01% THD
General: Power supply – 100V-240V, 50/60Hz AC
Power consumption – 20w
Dimensions: 16 1/2 x 10 5/8 x 1 5/8 inches, 5.20 lbs.
OPPO Digital Inc.
453 Ravendale Dr., Suite D
Mt. View, CA 94043, U.S.A.
www.oppodigital.com
service@oppodigital.com
650-961-1118
Intro
This is the third DVD player to come from Oppo in the space of a year or so, and it’s quickly jumped to the top of the heap in many comparisons of players – and clearly not just for the very reasonable price. The U.S. office in Silicon Valley is an arm of a giant Asian electronics firm named BBK Electronics, which has been around a long time and whose output matches Sony and Panasonic.
Video Playback
We reviewed the Oppo 970HD uni player back in July of last year and found it a terrific deal in a budget DVD/uni player. The DV-981HD retains most of the features of that player but builds on them in several areas, making the slight price increase more than fully justified, especially if your video display is 1080p capable. There seems to be much more noticeable improvement with most video upsampling vs. audio upsampling. The 970 only uprezzed to 720p, whereas the 981 carried it all the way to both 1080i and 1080p. The player incorporates uprezzing technology from leader in the field Faroudja and does offer further improvement in resolution with greater clarity and fewer noticeable artifacts. Faroudja’s TrueLife sharpening filter is included but can be defeated if you wish. It is more likely you will want to defeat the other filter and processing options offering on the 981, unless your personal sensitivity to certain colors is abnormal and you want to try using the Color Weakness facility.
The 981 uses the Mediatek MPEG chip and a Genesis Deinterlacer. These are both enhancements over the 970, and some users feel the Deinterlacer gets the most allocades for enhancing the on-screen images from almost any video source, even if you don’t have a 1080p display. I found the various fine-detail lines in the Avid and DV Essentials discs confusing in making comparisons between the two players, so I selected some landscape scenes in the very high quality standard travelogue DVDs with classical music from Naxos, and paused them on still images. There was definitely more architectural detail in distant buildings, and trees had more clearly identifiable branches and leaves. Details in very dark areas also were revealed with more clarity. I was watching a short video extra of a German film on Mozart with very tiny English subtitles in a small frame against a pinkish background. They were a challenge to read with the 970 but became considerably more readable with the uprezzing on the 981.
Some of the latest HDTV displays have upscaling built in, so in some cases you would have a more advanced choice between using the uprezzing built into your TV or the Faroudja uprezzing built into the 981, and using whichever looked better. In the past similar comparisons could be made between a DVD player’s ability to do progressive scanning and/or the 3:2 “Cinema” pull down vs. your HD display’s circuitry.
Disc-loading with the 981 is fairly rapid, and the remote is easy to use, although just glow-in-the-dark rather than backlit. Since the unit is so thin and lightweight, it seems to respond to tweaking with feet and weights more than the 40 lbs. players. I used the Boston Audio Design TuneBlocks which we reviewed in the past with some Walker Audio brass/lead weights on top, as well as a Kimber Kable AC cord. It also has no problem accepting the Marigo Audio Signature Stabilizer Mat, which occasionally has caused other disc players to go into a sort of mental breakdown. (I am fully aware that this subtle tweak costs about the same as the entire Oppo 981 player!)
Service and Upgrades
Oppo’s customer service is excellent. Just call their number and a helpful representative will work with you. Reports of glitches and incompatibilities are dealt with responsibly, and Oppo has already made some firmware updates to correct discovered faults on their players. They will also tell you exactly how to set up your player for “0 Region” coding – meaning that you can play NTSC and PAL DVDs from anywhere in the world without problems.
DivX Playback
The 981 is truly a universal player, handling just about everything on disc except for the two new competing hi-def formats. I didn’t have any DivX material to test its ability with that heavily-compressed video format, so I downloaded several movie clips from the Net (along with some QuickTime clips) and burned them to a DVD-R to play on the 981. First I watched a couple of them on the 20-inch LCD screen of my iMac G5. In the small normal screen size in just a corner of the screen they looked fine, but when enlarged to fill the 20-inch screen they all became blurry and seriously pixelated. Then I moved into my listening/viewing room and put the DVD-R in the 981, feeding my Samsung 53-inch DLP display. I was amazed at the excellent images from nearly all of the clips – very close to the quality of a standard DVD and completely watchable. I could imagine many users subscribing to one of the DivX online sites, downloading complete feature movies in a fraction of the time other video codecs would require, and then – without needing another gadget to transmit the files from their computer to their home theater area – just burning a DVD-R and inserting it in the 981 player. I had already been impressed with the uprezzing abilities of the Samsung DLP display, which gave new life to the many old laserdiscs and Betamax tapes I have, which had looked fuzzy and washed out on my old CRT display. It appears that the 981 also forms a very synergistic combo with the Samsung display in upgrading the appearance of less-than-state-of-the-art videos.
Audio Playback
I’ve been nonplussed to see that almost none of the professional or user reviews of the 981 player have mentioned much of anything about its hi-res audio playback capabilities. For me these are absolutely as important, and perhaps more so, than the video quality. There are now many different DVD players in all price ranges which can handle both multichannel SACD and DVD-Audio discs, but if the 981 achieves even close to the audio quality on these formats that it does with video, it will be a tremendous winner due to the relatively low price point.
While the 981 has no Dolby or DTS decoders built in, it does have Dolby ProLogic IIx, which would be helpful for those whose AV preamp or receiver lacks that useful processor to create surround from stereo sources. It only operates on the analog outputs. If your AV center has HDMI v. 1.1 inputs, you can use that connection for the six channels of DVD-Audio playback as well as SACD. However, the six DSD channels of Super Audio will be converted to 88.2K PCM in the process. If you want to stay in the analog domain, there are the requisite six RCA jacks on the back panel of the 981 – which I used since my Sunfire TG IV AV preamp lacks HDMI inputs. The 981 now includes full support for DVD-Audio, including bass management and time alignment as for DVD-Video. However, such is not provided for SACD and would have to accomplished at your AV preamp or receiver.
I hooked up both the analog stereo connections as well as the coaxial on both the 981 and on an Arcam uni player I was also reviewing. In addition I had my trusty modified Sony 775 CD/SACD changer, and still had on hand the Integra DPS-10.5 uni player. And of course also the option of six-channel surround – using the six-wire analog connections and a Zektor remote switcher rather than the HDMI audio connections (my Sunfire AV preamp lacks HDMI). I used some of my duplicate pairs of hi-res discs for the tests. I tried a number of different multichannel SACDs as well as the Telarc DVD-A of the 1812 Overture (which also carries a good channel-level and ID test on its final track). I couldn’t use the RCA Living Stereo 3-channel SACDs I have used in the past for comparisons because the Integra player refuses to play most of them. (The Oppo has not displayed that “No Disc” notice a single time for ANY disc I slid into it.) I must admit to difficulty discerning any great differences between all the players on the hi-res sources – whether stereo or surround. About the only observation I could come up with was that the now-deleted Sony 775 had not quite the lower end support and transparency of the other players, but it was extremely close.
I have a number of duplicate pairs of standard CDs, and this time I used Bulgarian pianist Milcho Leviev’s solo piano disc on M-A Recordings. It has clean and realistic piano reproduction, and since I’m a pianist I find that among the best material for comparisons because I’m familiar with what it sounds like in the real world. I set all the players to feed thru the “Source Direct” input of my Sunfire AV preamp, which bypasses all of the digital processing and just feeds the original signal directly to the amps.
The results? Aside from the Sony 775 lacking just a bit of the sparkle of the other players, I couldn’t identify any major differences between them. Next I switched the input for only the Oppo 981 from Source Direct to Stereo – this meant going thru some of the digital processing. The Arcam and Integra remained at Source Direct. Now there was a very minimal difference – the players feeding the Stereo input sounded a bit more opaque and hooded. I then changed the other players to also feed thru the Stereo input. Now the Oppo sounded exactly the same as they did. Switching to Dolby ProLogic II added a fine surround feeling but also adding further opaqueness. Again, if all the players fed into this option they all sounded pretty much the same aside from slightly greater losses with the Sony 775.
I haven’t tested any of the CD-only players in the $2000 area for awhile; my suspicion is that they might surpass the 981 on standard CD playback. Or the use of an outboard stereo DAC could further tweak the CD playback. But my summation is that the other makers of universal DVD players – at least those selling for up to $2500 – should be greatly concerned about the Oppo 981HD.
– John Sunier
