OPPO DV-980H 1080p Up-Converting Universal DVD Player with HDMI and 7.1CH Audio

"Oddo? No, Oppo? Who's that?" was my first reaction to my mother-in-law when she bought this unit. It was not long before I saw what she did, high quality, easy to set-up, and best price before we bought one for ourselves.Pro:-Light (a meager 7-8 pounds) and slender (only about 2" tall!), footprint is small, almost too small at ~17" wide, ~10" deep-Easy set-up-"Upconverts" DVDs so that you get a better picture... a must have for large HD TVs to avoid expensive Blu-Ray and to keep your DVD collection from becoming obsolete!-Seems to support all major/traditional disc formats (except Blu-Ray I think) and up to 1080p resolution (awesome)-HDMI ready, with a 6 foot long HDMI cable included (yes, 6 feet!)-A decent remote, we think it's good looking and easy to use-Box contains: the unit itself of course, a 4' black power cord, a paper manual, HDMI cable, Red, white, and yellow audio cables, a soft black cover for the player, remote, 2 AAA batteries-Packaging looks really durable, unit appears to be protected quite well-Recycling information... contains: a few wire ties, several #04 plastic bags (for manual, cords), some cardboard, several small pieces of ''plastic" foam (I doubt that this foam can be recycled). Also, the plastic on the batteries and foam protecting the HDMI cable ends doesn't look recyclable. Recycling is a pro due to the small amout of materials in play, most of which (by weight) can be recycled.Con:-We find that the display is somewhat hard to read/see... the digits just seem to run together at a distance of even only 3-4 feet. A combination of the blue light and/or small size doesn't seem to work for us well. It's perhaps too bright.-Power cord should be longer-Disc eject is painfully slow... will it ever open?-Feet on the unit could be taller... if stacking this on top of something else you'll probably want to insert some sort of shim to raise the unit up some to create more ventilation space-Our cable box did not list this manufacturer so that the remote could be programmed (although most of the functions worked without any programming at all, a lucky thing)Bottom line: Well worth it if you're in the market. High quality. Recommended.

I really spent a lot of time looking at reviews of upconverting DVD players. I read a review of the new Toshiba upconverting DVD player that got me started. That is a fine looking machine but reviews of it indicated some initial flaws in its capabilities so I kept looking. Somehow I found OPPO while surfing the NET. Their Web site gives you a recommendation of which of their three machines would be best, based on your needs and current equipment. I was intrigued with their recommendation that their cheapest machine would be best for me. It was hard to pass up their most expensive DVD player which passes all the really tough video benchmark tests. I had to keep reminding myself that I could purchase two of the 980H's and still have some change left over from the price of the expensive machine.I do have an audio streak but it's a little odd. The OPPO 980H has tremendous audio capabilities. I am not very demanding in that regard given that my speakers are the original Bose 901s - so I am only asking for stereo. I was enthralled by the sound of Simon and Garfunkel master-level CDs. The producers of these CDs spent three years tracking down the best they could find for each song. So to summarize audio capabilities, I have only tested stereo and have found that to be terrific.My testing of video capabilities was a little more demanding. We have two HDTVs. The one downstairs where the speakers are hooked up is a Protron with a best video capability of 1080i. But we also have a Panasonic Versa with 1080p capability. So I had a lot of fun putting the Panasonic through its paces. I used The Kingdom of Heaven as my review DVD. Ridley Scott is my favorite director. I used his director's cut of this movie, which is very different from what was released in the theaters. He uses all kinds of video tricks in this movie so at least for me, I was able to see tremendous differences going from no upconversion to various levels of upconversion. I saw things in the movie that I had never seen before and saw fine degrees of things like fire and woodgrain that could not really be seen at all before. There is one critical scene near the beginning in which a man with crossbow appears for an instant. He was barely visible at 1080i upconversion and really visible at 1080p. I had never seen him before testing the OPPO.I did encounter one unexpected problem with the OPPO. At first, when I tried 1080p, I would get a message that 1080p was not activated or something similar to that. The OPPO initially would not go past 1080i. There is one HDMI cable that comes with the OPPO. I had used that to connect it to the Panasonic Versa. I had also purchased two HDMI Cables To Go which are certified to run 1080p. So I had the bright idea of replacing the OPPO-supplied cable with one of the Cables To Go cables. And, voila, 1080p was activated. So it wasn't the DVD player or the HDTV, it was the cable. It's sort of an unexpected extra to receive an HDTV cable at all with an HD player. On the other hand, if one is supplied, then it should be one that will work at 1080p. I did not complain at all to OPPO, so if they read this review, this finding will be news to them. Otherwise, I would rate the OPPO DV-980H as a full five stars. I almost did that anyway.If anyone out there is doubting the need for upconversion, put away your doubts. Join the party. The OPPO comes with the plus of outstanding audio capabilities that generally only are included with much more expensive players. Definitely visit the OPPO Web site to determine which of their DVD players fits your needs best. Then compare that machine to others available. You likely will purchase an OPPO.I was trying to find a DVD player that I could use to preserve my collection of DVDs without having to move to the new Blu-ray standard. I have not tested a Blu-ray player. All the reviews that I read stated that upconversion of DVDs on Blu-ray players left something to be desired. Now I don't foresee the need to move to Blu-ray at all for a very long time.

I owned the OPPO CV 970H before this one, and got this one mainly for the USB2.0 compatibility and the hope it would play movies and shows from my Harddisks.While the videoquality playing regular DVDs is good, the sound seems weaker than compared with the previous model, although I use HDMI as before. The amplifier has to be turned up much more and an unpleasant humming becomes audible. This was not the case with the 970HD, and I tried all different audiosettings with both the Receiver (ONKYO TX-SR705 7.1 HD) and the DVD player, but unsucessful.And as per the DIVX compatibility I want to mention that it takes about 5 minutes until the whole Harddisk is read (ok, its a 500 GB HD, quiet full), but this is not acceptable when you want to continue watching your shows and turn your HD and DVDplayer off over night. And it doesnt support subfolders, meaning when you have multiple seasons of shows the have to be all in one folder, and the name should be shorter than 12 letters else you wont be able to see which episode you are about to watch. This could have been solved better.Unfortunately, if you are looking for a USB capable, upconverting DVD-player, I cannot recommend this DVD-Player anymore, unlike the previous model (which had the annoying limitation of only being USB1.1 compatible)The PS3 is way superior to this player, and for only 200 USD more you get a bluerayplayer, upconverting DVD player and a high end console in addition.