If you're not ready to get a high-def player, the Oppo DV-980H DVD player delivers excellent performance and an unparalleled feature set for the price.
With its sterling reputation among home theater connoisseurs, every new Oppo product is greeted with higher expectations than the last. While many have hoped that Oppo would roll out a HD DVD or Blu-ray player, the latest model is another standard DVD player for those still sitting out the format war. The Oppo DV-980H is an update to the DV-970HD, adding refinements such as 1080p output, 7.1 analog outputs and a black finish. This is on top of all the other features we've already come to expect from Oppo, such as DVD-Audio/SACD playback, DivX/Xvid playback from CDs, DVDs and USB flash drives, and playback of PAL movies. As with other Oppo players, the performance of the DV-980H is excellent, proving to be comparable to players costing much more.
While the DV-980H pretty much does everything right, its $170 price tag may cause buyers to wonder if it doesn't make more sense to buy the Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player instead, which can be had for about $240 at the time of this review and should get even cheaper when Toshiba rolls out its new lineup in October. That's a tough choice and probably comes down to how often you'll use the extra features of the DV-980H--the HD-A2 lacks enthusiast-friendly features such as DVD-Audio/SACD playback and DivX support. On the other hand, the audio and video quality on most HD DVD discs blows away anything DVD players can offer. The DV-980H is a top-notch DVD player with excellent enthusiast-friendly features and performance, but with the falling price of HD DVD units, we have a feeling it may be the last high-end DVD player we can recommend.
Design
In terms of functionality and performance, the DV-980H is really an update to the DV-970HD, but you wouldn't know it from the way it looks. While the DV-970HD has a reflective silver faceplate that looks a little cheap, the DV-980H sports an all-black look that we prefer. To the far left is the power button, followed by a resolution indicator, with a light that tells you whether you're in 1080p, 1080i, 720p, or 480p mode. We definitely like the idea of the light, but we would have also liked the option to turn it off--especially for home theater buffs that are irked by any additional light sources in the room. Further to the right is the LED display--which thankfully can be dimmed or turned off--along with some front panel control buttons, including chapter forward/backward buttons. Although it doesn't have anything to do with how the product looks, we do have to commend Oppo on their excellent product packaging--the soft protective sleeve and included HDMI cable make you feel like you got your money's worth.
Major retailers often try and upsell you on HDMI cables, but Oppo throws one in for free.
One of the small gripes often mentioned about Oppo players is that the disc tray feels a little flimsy. That's definitely still the case on the DV-980H, although it feels may a tad sturdier than previous models. Still, although we've mentioned the flimsiness before, we don't think it's a major issue--we've been using several Oppo players in CNET labs for a while and have never run into any problems.
The remote will look familiar to fans of Oppo gear, as it's essentially identical to the remote on the DV-970HD and DV-981HD. While we've become accustomed to Oppo's remote design, there's still some room for improvement. Most of the buttons are similarly shaped, which makes it difficult to navigate by feel. On the other hand, the buttons are all glow-in-the-dark, so it's pretty easy to navigate in a darkened home theater.
Features
The DV-980H's main function is to play back DVDs, but it is also capable of playing back the two niche high-resolution audio formats, SACD and DVD-Audio. Unlike most other SACD and DVD-Audio players, the DV-980H is capable of sending the multichannel audio over the HDMI connection to compatible receivers--it can even send the encoded DSD stream to receivers with onboard DSD decoding. It's also able to playback numerous file formats (MP3, WMA and DivX) burned onto DVDs and CDs, or from a thumbdrive connected to the Oppo's USB 2.0 port. We had no problem playing a few 175 MB DivX files off a thumbdrive.
The USB cover can be pulled away to use it, but it stays connected so you won't lose it.
Although the DV-980H touts its HD upscaling, that doesn't mean it can play either of the new high-definition disc formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, upscaling generally only yields slight increases in picture quality, and the degree of those increases depends on your HDTV. Every HDTV already has upscaling processing built-in, so the increase in quality can only occur if the DVD player does a better job than your TV does--and we'll cover the DV-980's performance later. The DV-980 is capable of upscaling to 720p, 1080i, and 1080p resolution through its HDMI output; as with virtually every other DVD player, there is no upscaling available over the component video output.
We were pleased with the way the DV-980H handled older nonanamorphic wide-screen discs. Some older HDTVs, such as the HP LC3760N and the Philips 42PF9831D, do not have aspect-ratio control when fed sources in a high-def resolution, so it's nice to have the upscaling DVD player handle it. This is not an issue for most high-quality DVDs, which are anamorphic, but nonanamorphic wide-screen discs will look distorted via on many player/TV combinations that lack proper aspect ratio control. To correct for this, engage the 16:9 Wide/Auto under TV Display on the Oppo's General Setup screen. The player will automatically detect nonanamorphic discs and squeeze them into the proper aspect ratio and zoom the appropriate amount to fill the screen. You're also able to zoom other material to fill the screen, eliminate black bars, or magnify a section of the image.
The DV0980H has you covered with analog audio with a 7.1 output.
Connectivity is another strong point on the DV-980H, which has as many outputs as you could want. For video, there is an HDMI output, a component video output, an S-Video output and a composite video output. The extra inputs are nice, but remember that to really take advantage of the DV-980H, you'll want to use the upscaling HDMI output. That output also carries audio, and other audio outputs include both optical and coaxial digital audio jacks and a 7.1 channel analog multichannel output. Rounding out the connectivity, as mentioned before, is the USB port on the front panel.
Performance
Like every other Oppo we've reviewed, the DV-980H delivers excellent image quality on standard definition DVDs. We started off by looking at some test material. The DV-980H did a superb job with the vast majority of tests on Silicon Optix's HQV test suite. The initial resolution test looked absolutely solid, displaying the full resolution of DVDs with no flicking on the image that we sometimes see. The player also passed the jaggies tests, showing very little jaggies on a rotating white line or three pivoting white lines. We did notice more jaggies than we'd like on a shot of a waving flag, but overall it was still better than most DVD players we test. The DV-980H also aced on the 2:3 pulldown test, locking into film mode very quickly with no moiré in the grandstands.
The Oppo fared well with additional test patterns as well. Using the Windows DVD Test Annex, we noted that the DV-980H did not suffer from the chroma upsampling error (also known as the chroma bug), which occasionally still pops up in new DVD players. Using Digital Video Essentials, we were able to confirm that the DV-980H does not crush whites or blacks, as it successfully passed both blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white signals. While the real-world benefits of passing these tests are slight, videophiles will be happy to know that the information is not lost.
We switched to actual program material and the DV-980H didn't disappoint. The introduction to Seabiscuit looked great--a sequence that even HQV-equipped players struggle with. For a DVD, Seabiscuit has exceptionally rich colors and the DV-980H made DVD look just about as good as it gets. The introduction to Star Trek: Insurrection is another good test of 2:3 pulldown, and the DV-980H had no trouble smoothly rendering the curved lines of the bridge railing and the hulls of the boats. We looked at several other discs, including Serenity and King Kong, and had difficulty nitpicking the image quality even when we were looking for flaws. When we matched it up with the DV-981HD, spotting repeatable differences was very difficult, although we'd give the nod to the DV-981HD if we had to choose. Overall, the DV-980H's performance is outstanding for its price range and should satisfy nearly everyone.
Oppo DV-980H DVD player
