The OPPO DV-980H DVD Player is the newest member in the company's prestigious line of upconverting units. OPPO has positioned the DV-980H between its flagship DV-981HD and the DV-970HD.

Even though both the 981HD and 980H can upconvert SD DVDs to 1080p, (the 970HD only goes as high as 1080i), the 981HD employs a Genesis/Faroudja chipset that squeezes out more video performance than the 980H's video processor. Though we have both players here and I have a hard time discerning a difference in picture quality.

When it comes to audio features the $169 980H, with its HDMI 1.2a output, boasts PCM and Direct-Stream Digital (DSD) multi-channel audio for DVD-Audio and SACD. Its $229 brethren only provides PCM.

As a reminder, even though the DV-980H produces 1080p signals, it is not one of the high definition DVD players, Blu-ray or HD-DVD. It can be a little confusing because both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players can read SD DVDs and upconvert them like the OPPO. The difference is that the OPPO cannot play either Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs.

But unlike some of the early high definition players, the 980H is extremely flexible in its ability to playback all sorts of CD and DVD formats like DivX, DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD (SACD), HDCD, WMA, and Kodak Picture CD.

Out of the Box
When you open the smartly designed box, you realize how much care OPPO gives to producing and packaging their products. The slim player is swathed in a trim black cloth envelope. Also as a gracious and generous nod to their customers, OPPO includes a six foot HDMI cable, something many manufacturers of multi-thousand dollar TVs refuse to do.

The low profile unit, (2" high), sports an all black brushed textured face with a blue LED readout, which can be dimmed or turned off. This model provides a Control and Navigation wheel rather than the more pedestrian Play and Pause buttons.

On the front, the big difference from the 981HD is the USB 2.0 port that accepts USB flash drives and card readers. If you are a photographer, this feature alone is almost worth the price of admission.

Oppo DV-980H Connectors

An inspection of the connection panel on the back reveals two other major changes from the 981HD. First, the 980H supplies a Component video output along with HDMI. (The 981HD just has HDMI.) OPPO does tell you in the manual that the highest resolution that you can expect through Component is 1080i. And it warns that most commercial DVDs contain CSS encryption which limits Component output to 480i/480p. So if you are watching a lot of movies, you will want to implement an HDMI pipeline in your system.

(Since they will not transmit an upconverted signal, the S-Video and Composite Out connections are really only for trouble shooting purposes.)

The second variance from the 981HD is the 7.1 analog audio outputs on the 980H. (The 981HD furnishes 5.1.) Of course, the HDMI cable also transmits audio and in addition, an S/PDIF optical digital audio output is included. I know that many of you feel strongly about the advantages of one connection or another. This player gives you a full range of options and the manual does a good job of explaining all the audio and speaker setup menus.

And let me reiterate what I wrote in my last OPPO review. The manual is great. With a feature rich product like the 980H, a clearly written document full of sensible suggestions for settings is a godsend. Even if you are allergic to manuals, I recommend that you spend a moment reading this one.

The 980H remote is not backlit but the fluorescent white buttons do glow in the dark. The layout is slightly different from the 981HD. And we appreciate that the white labels are a little bolder and easier to read.

Setup
We have two 50" plasmas HDTVs set up right now, the Panasonic TH-50PZ700U 1080p and the VIZIO JV50p 720p, so we tested the DV-980H on both of them. Since we have the DV-981HD in-house, we connected both players to the OPPO HM-31, a 3 x 1 HDMI switch, which allowed us to switch from one to the other to compare video quality.

With other players and setups, we occasionally have experienced handshake problems in that the player and the TV would not initially synchronize. We usually tracked the culprit down to a crummy cable. With this arrangement, handshakes, though not instantaneous, were automatic with both TVs.

To simplify the discussion, we'll focus on the connection to the Panasonic 1080p plasma. To change resolutions on the OPPO, you Stop the DVD playback and punch the HDMI button on the remote, which cycles through the choices, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p.

(The 980H also can output PAL resolutions of 576i, 576p, 720p 50Hz, 1080i 50Hz, and 1080p 50Hz. If you have an NTSC TV, you can play PAL DVDs. The OPPO will convert the PAL signal to NTSC. And vice versa with NTSC DVDs with a PAL TV. Finally, all 980H's shipped in US are Region 1 players.)

To compare the video performance of the 980H and 981HD, we set their resolutions to 1080p and ran them through the video processing tests on the HQV disc produced by Silicon Optix. As I mentioned in the intro, I could rarely discern a disparity between the two players. Both scored Excellent on the Jaggies tests and Good on the Detail.

Where I did see a split was on the Noise Reduction tests. The 981HD's Genesis/Faroudja chipset supplies a little more muscle in this area. You can see that clearly in the Video Setup Menu of the more expensive 981HD, which contains a TrueLife component. When turned On, it activates a Noise Reduction control. The 980H does not have any such features. With the noisiest of Noise Reduction tests, you can tweak the 981HD to produce a cleaner image than the 980H.

Otherwise, the video tool chest is similar with both having controls for Brightness, Sharpness, Contrast, and Saturation. We advise that you leave all these turned to Off or 00. Begin with the controls on your TV and leave the DVD player as the instrument of last resort.

Performance
You can reread my review of the DV-981HD. All of what I said about the high quality of video upconversion of SD material holds true for the 980H.

OPPO on their website attempts to recommend why you would choose one over the other as far as video quality. Assuming that the 981HD's Genesis/Faroudja chipset does a better job of video processing, they suggest it for projector setups where screen sizes can be eight feet or more, giving you a chance to maybe perceive a difference over the 980H. If you own an HDTV that is smaller than your wingspan, the 980H should satisfy your eyes unless you are a hypercritical videophile.

We have been watching a lot of HD-DVDs in the last few months and I must say that an upconverted SD DVD does not rival the picture quality of high definition source material. Don't expect miracles with either OPPO player. There is only so much magic that you can pull out of an upconverting hat.

That fact led me to ask Jason Liao, OPPO's CTO and VP of Product Development, when they planned to jump to producing high definition DVD players. He would not commit to a timetable or a format, but he did say it was definitely in their future.

I like the idea of the Digital Picture Play feature, but the execution needs refinement. Basically, if you insert a USB drive full of photos, (JPEGs only), the player will read them and present you with a list of the images. You can then pick one to view or play a whole slideshow. If the pictures are on a CD or DVD, when it's loaded, the slideshow will start automatically.

The biggest problem I had is that the image was squeezed vertically when it was displayed. OPPO's Nathan Plain explained that this was a known bug in the player that will be addressed in a future firmware release.

Also, since I was viewing on a 1080p TV, I was feeding it 1920 x 1080 images. Nathan said that you should set the OPPO to 1080i output when playing back the images. At 1080i, when a new image appeared, it initially was pixelated. Usually on the second pass, it would clear up. Though occasionally, it took a third pass. If you want to study each image, this progressive reveal isn't a problem. But if you wish to present a slideshow to friends, it's not ideal.

For a more elegant slideshow, you should set the OPPO to 1080p (or 720p). Then you can choose from a range of transitions like Wipe from Edge to Center. The one quirk with this system is how they pull off the effects. As Nathan said, the 980H "will decode the picture at 640 x 480 then scale it to the resolution the player is set to." For all the acrobatics, the result is still quite good.

Slideshow with a Wipe from Edge to Center Transition

(Here's a couple of hints that I didn't find in the otherwise thorough manual. To change the slide duration, click the Slow button. To cycle through the playback modes, [Random, Shuffle, etc.], push the Repeat button.)

Finally, we come to audio. If you were to judge the importance of audio from the tinny underpowered speakers in many HDTVs, you might think that it's not important. OPPO believes the opposite. Their attention to audio performance is much appreciated when watching a movie.

And perhaps you do not think of your DVD machine as a CD player. But the 980H's sound quality is so good that you'll be impressed whether you listen to Bruce, Barbra, Busta, Bonnie, Bob, Bjork, Bach, Bela, Bebel or Billy Ray. But please, for full appreciation, hook the 980H up to an A/V receiver and a dedicated speaker system.

Conclusion
The DV-980H, an 1080p unconverting DVD player, maintains OPPO's well deserved reputation for terrific video and audio performance. For the demanding videophile who is trying to squeeze every last bit out of an SD DVD, you may want to consider the DV-981HD. For the rest of us mere mortals, the 980H gratifies just fine.