I'm holding off on buying a Blu-Ray ![[WikiPedia]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
or HD-DVD player, so I've decided to upgrade my current 480p component DVD player to an upscaling player. My Samsung DLP [samsung1080i, samsunghlr4667wservicemenu, samsunghlr4667w, samsungpronto, samsunghlr4667wsettings, exchangesamsung] looks superb with a 1080i HD signal, so I bought 3 upscaling players to compare their picture quality, and compare them to my current player as well as the DVD playback on the Xbox360. I set up all of the players side by side, and compared their performance using the following DVDs:
The three players I bought were the Oppo 970, the Oppo 971, and the Sony NS75H.
| DVD Player | Connection | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Panasonic XP-50 | Component | $299 (circa 2002, my current player) |
| Oppo DV-970HD |
HDMI | $149 |
| Oppo DV-971H |
DVI to HDMI adapter | $199 |
| Sony NS75H |
HDMI | $129 (HDMI cable not included) |
| Xbox360 |
Component | $399 |
All players had special features such as sharpness, noise reduction, etc, disabled.
The XP-50 is a benchmark DVD player, known for its excellent 480p output, as well as premium CD and DVD-Audio output (with an optional disabling of the video circuity). I've moved this to another room to serve as a dedicated audio player, but I still haven't found another player that could do such a great job of covering up compression flaws on most DVDs. The main reason I want to upgrade this player is to get better dark colors. Dark colors from this player tend to cause the Samsung DLP to dither, which I find distracting at my viewing distance of 6.5 feet.
The Oppo 970 was just released by Oppo, and it's a terrific DVD player. It is the first player I've used that gives a real sense of High Definition. No other player came close to the sharpness of the picture on the 970. This player looks outstanding at 1080i, with deep blacks and hardly any noticeable DLP dither. This player makes me feel like I've purchased a whole new collection of DVDs, as all of my existing disks look amazing. The only downside to this player is that it can reveal some subtle problems on DVDs that you may not have seen on an older player. On ATOC, for example, you can see some compression blocks on the floor of Palpatine's office in chapter 4, if you look closely.
The Oppo 971 is supposed to be Oppo's flagship player, and it is very nice. But compared to the 970, it could use an update. At 1080i, there was a noticeable judder in the picture, so I had to test it at 720p. But even at 720p, although the picture looked quite good, it didn't look that much sharper than the component 480p output of my XP-50, and it still has some dark color dithering. It also added some purple motion artifacts to black scenes, such as the spaceflight of the Naboo ship in chapter 3 of ATOC. Judging by the wildly high review scores for this player, I suspect it was created for, and tested with, CRT-based HD monitors. For my DLP, the 970 is a much better match.
The Sony NS75H is a surprisingly good player, with several picture quality enhancement features. However, most of them over-softened the picture, which is already a tad soft, even at 1080i. The Sony remote seemed really unintuitive, but people with universal remotes like the Logitech Harmony won't care. If I had a Sony monitor, I would likely get this player, as it has nice blacks with little dithering, but not quite the sharpness of the Oppo 970.
For DVD viewing, Microsoft really blew it with the Xbox360. The 480p component output is some of the sharpest I've seen, but with the power of this machine, why no upscaling or HDMI? To make us buy the HD-DVD add-on coming this fall? Even then, I doubt I'll watch movies on this machine, as the fan and drive noise is horrendous.
All in all, I would be happy using any of these players (if the Xbox was in a sealed enclosure). But I'm keeping the Oppo 970 as my primary player, as its upscaling performance can't be beat.
