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Thursday August 9, 2007
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 I have to confess that as far as DVD players are concerned, I'm about two years behind the curve; living overseas will do that to you. (Heck, the HDTV finally came to the U.K. with the World Cup, and there's a laughable amount of HD-ready TVs over there lacking any sort of content.)
In any event, ExtremeTech's Loyd Case informs me that OPPO Digital is well-regarded among DVD players, and although there seems to be a number of upscaling DVD players, the company claims that its DV-980H is the first to upscale a standard-definition DVD to 1080p and 7.1 channels of stereo sound. Who needs Blu-ray or HD DVD?
The price? $169. More specs after the jump.
The DV-980H is among the few players today with an HDMI 1.2a output; the player can render in 1080p/1080i/720p/480p/480i formats It features PCM and DSD multi-channel high resolution audio through its HDMI 1.2a output for DVD-Audio and SACD. Additional features include a USB 2.0port and DivX playback. The OPPO DV-980H is compatible with DVD-Audio/Video, SACD, DivX, WMV9, WMA, Kodak Picture CD, as well as many other formats, the company said.
For me, it's sort of worthless without region unlocking. However, although it ships locked to Region 1, a quick search of Google for "Oppo region unlocking" should net you the code, according to a little OPPO birdie. The unlock code is the same for all of OPPO's products.
EDIT: OPPO representatives were kind enough to release the region unlock code on the record: press "Setup->9210->0->Setup to exit".
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August 10, 2007 12:17 PM
I tested upconvert DVD with my recently got Sony PS3 to 1080i. It seems that the resolution gets better but the color is not improving at all which can't compare with HD source. I tried Harry Potter DVD along with others. I have watched Harry Potter HD TV broadcast from ABC (?) HD.
August 10, 2007 12:26 PM
Might be worth the $169 until the format war settles and Blu-Ray wins. My guess is the U.S. will see a BD player for around that price by Christmas 2008.
Joe
August 10, 2007 6:52 PM
@ anonymous: Why would you expect the colour to "improve"? It's upscaling. That means dimensions, not colour. Besides, DVDs don't have colour limitations - HDTV is just higher res, not higher colour. If the colour is off on your DVDs there must me something wrong with your setup.
August 12, 2007 11:37 PM
@ anonymouns/Hatless Bob - "Placebo Effect" - you want to see the difference when upscaling, however the difference can't be seen.
I don't know how many times i've had people over watching TV on my 65in HDTV and them saying - WOW that HD signal is so clear and nice --- except, the station wasn't presently broadcasting in HD at the time.
Same goes for Audio, The stereo in my car($$$ lots) is set up active and is tuned littlerally daily - to the point where there is a noticable imagine difference when the car is going around corners. Even with a system like this 'friends' and family can never tell the difference between crappy 128kbs Mp3's and higher def media with bit rate of around 1Mbps. - in fact sometimes the poorer quality version sounds best.
But if you think you can see a difference/hear a difference, then that's all that matters.
I'll wait until you can watch HD movies PPV.
May 31, 2008 5:53 PM
Thank you for the region unlock information. Worked perfectly for me, and I can enjoy all of my dvd collection in upscaled 1080p.
Andy.