Oppo Digital DVD Player, Model OPDV971H

Mountain View, California, based Oppo Digital enters the digital electronics market with the OPDV971H DVD player. The OPDV971H is a multi-system (PAL/NTSC) DVD player that upconverts images to 720p/1080i with a DVI-D cable. It also plays almost all disc formats: DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, DivX, picture CDs. It has a Genesis FLI-2310 Faroudja chipset mating with the Mediatek MPEG decoder that is responsible for the crisp and sharp picture. At the time of this review, the OPDV971H was priced at $199.

The OPDV971H is a sleek-looking DVD player. It has a silver casing with well-designed front and rear panels. The front panel has the standard buttons (power, load/eject, play, stop/pause), but it also features a VFD display window that houses the remote control's IR sensor and player information like type of disc, chapter, playback status, etc. The VFD display window really makes it easy to know where you are on a DVD.

The rear panel features a well-designed, well-labeled presentation of the DVD players outputs. The connections are DVI-D, S-Video, composite, component, mixed audio, 5.1 audio, digital audio coaxial and digital audio optical.

USER MANUAL

The user manual is excellent. It features six pages with easy-to-understand illustrations on how to connect the OPDV971H to your TV system. It has a good balance of words and pictures to educate the reader on the operation of this device. While there was a small glossary, my one complaint is that the user manual didn't explain all terms used in the book. The manual is also in Chinese.

REMOTE CONTROL

The remote control has all the buttons you need to operate the OPDV971H. It is easy to use. My only issue is that it doesn't light up, which is nice when watching DVDs in the dark.

The OPDV971H is capable of playing the following discs: DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, DivX, Xvid, VCD, SVCD, HDCD, CD, WMA, CD-R/RW, DVD +/- R/RW and Kodak Picture CD. It also coverts PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL, which is good for foreign movie buffs on both sides of the ocean.

I connected the OPDV971H to my Samsung 30" HDTV with Tara Labs new RSC Vector component cables. I watched several DVDs, played a video CD, listened to CD-audio and burned a CD of pictures. With all functions, the OPDV971H passed with flying colors.

With respect to DVDs, an interesting function was the ability to control audio with the DVD remote, which was especially convenient with CD audio. The remote also had a 'GOTO' function that would skip to a chapter of choice by one press of a button. I experienced no loading glitches. The picture was crisp and the sound was excellent. I also liked how I could resize the screen by zooming in and out.

The OPDV971H played CDs just fine, but I was disappointed with the lack of on-screen menu. I expected something like Windows Media Player that would show track numbers, song titles and song lengths. But, that didn't exist. There was just a big OPPO logo on the television.

When I burned a CD on my computer to put in the OPDV971H, I wondered how I would choose a file from the disc. Upon loading, I was greeted with an easy-to-understand menu of the disc's contents. The only thing I had to do was highlight the desired file and press SELECT.

My first file to check out was a MPEG2 video clip. It played as a DVD would, and really I had no complaints. Though, the video footage was a little grainy, but not because of the DVD player. My MPEG2 file was a stripped-down version of a much larger AVI file, which meant it wasn't supposed to be viewed on a 30" monitor. This is where the zoom function came in handy. As I zoomed out, the picture increased in quality until I had my video file about half the size of the screen surface. Audio was CD-quality.

Next, I looked at JPEGs on the television. The disc I used had a folder with about 40 pictures. With the OPDV971H, I easily located the folder, opened it and selected a picture. It was easy to scan through the photos when enlarged, and it was good that I could preview an image before making it larger. However, the OPDV971H took about 5 seconds to show the preview image on the screen, and there was a 2-3 second delay when changing a full screen image.

Overall, I really liked the OPDV971H. It is a sharp-looking well-designed DVD player that will satisfy the most demanding of TV watchers. For anyone owning a budget DVD player, this device will be a huge upgrade.

Things I liked include:

• The overall look and design
• User manual
• The VFD digital interface on the front cover
• The variety of outputs, including DVI
• Ease of operation
• Picture and audio quality
• Ability to convert PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL
• Plays almost any disc

Things I didn't like include:

• Lack of light on remote control
• Delay in previewing still images and moving from image to image
• Lack of on-screen information when playing CD
• Having to press OPEN/EJECT button for about a second to access the disc tray

It is important to note that this DVD player will work with HDCP discs and monitors through the DVI connection, but I don't think it is HDCP compliant, which means it doesn't read HDCP codes. The DVI connection promises huge upgrades to picture quality, but I wasn't able to see it for myself. However, About Guide to Home Theater, Robert Silva, also reviewed the OPDV971H, and goes into great detail about the DVI capabilities of this DVD player.

The bottom line is that the OPDV971H rocks!!!