Posted by robert.drea on 10/31/40 11:54

Mike wrote:
> This unit gets good reviews. http://www.oppodigital.com/OPPO-News.html
> anyone have any first hand knowledge/experiences? I am particularly
> interested in video performance via the component outputs. Thanks.

I bought one recently. I'd been looking for something that plays
_everything_, has no layer change delay, and good image quality.

I believe that the upsampling functionality only works via HDMI, rather
than component. So admittedly I have not really spent much time with
component on this unit.

However - a few other points which may be of interest...

-The upsampling does make a discernable difference, but only with
'reference' type stuff like 5th Element, and likely stuff like Pixar
flicks, where there's lots of really precise images.

-720p looks good - 1080i - not sure; I think I'm seeing the interlacing
taking place. Certainly not much benefit of 1080 over 720, for a non-HD
source.

-With every player I've used so far, I have had to change an aspect
ratio setting on the TV each time I put in a widescreen disk. With this
player, using the HDMI interface, it seems to lock into the correct
aspect, saving me that step. I'll try it with shows I know to be of
different aspect ratios, to be sure.

-Plays everything I've thrown at it, so far. One Divx file showed
occasional graphical corruption, and the artifacting looked a little
stronger than on my Pioneer player - but I realized later on that I'd
neglected to set the brightness and contrast on my TV for that
particular input (these settings are not global on my TV), so it was
really set rather bright. This was likely part of the issue there, at
least for the artifacting - I'll have to try more DivX stuff to see
about the corruption.

-One Divx file had two types of subtitle files in the directory (.sub
and .srt, I think) - whenever a bit of sub text appeared, the screen
went nuts. Completely scrambled. On another Divx file, which had only
one type of subtitle file, the display was fine and the subtitles
worked. Have to nail that one down yet.

-Plays Dual Layer +R disks. SWEET. When I did the burn (Batman
Returns), the software griped that I hadn't actively assigned a layer
change point. But, I noticed no change delay at all on playback.

-Normally when I power off a player, the tray retracts on its own. Not
in this case. The tray just sat stuck out. Weird. Retracts fine if I
hit the 'tray' button, but the power-off doesn't pull it back in.
Mildly weird. Could be a firmware thing.

-Fast forward, until you go to about 8x, appears to catch almost every
frame - so it feels very smooth, rather than jerky like in most
players, updating every quarter-second or whatever.

-There are also regularly-updated supported firmwares, and a
non-supported community as well. Last rev was in March of this year. So
people are still tweaking it. I thought I'd read that this unit might
see 1080p with an upcoming firmware, but who knows - and again, for
non-HD, I can see no difference between 720 and 1080.

-All in all, I'm happy.

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