Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI

However, many of us with high definition TVs have a substantial library of regular DVDs that we still wish to watch and enjoy on our higher quality systems. In many cases these are DVDs that may never be released in a high def format, or personal videos that are simply not in high def format. That's where upconverting DVD players come into play. They help to convert the lower quality signal on a DVD into a high def level of quality, as best they can, by interpolating the existing signal and filling in the details.

We've tested several upconverting units as they get released, and to be honest in most cases the TV did a better job of this task working with a regular DVD player, vs having a DVD player that tried to do that task for the TV. So we approached the test of the Oppo DV-981HD with some trepidation. Would it really work well?

First off, the packaging. We were VERY impressed with how this came shipped! I've got to say it's one of the best packed electronic items we've ever seen, and being game reviewers and electronic gadget fans, we get quite a lot. Kudos to the shipping team for this. "Brilliant", says my boyfriend.

The unit itself is extremely nicely designed. We have several other slim items in our shelves and this really takes the cake. The lights and displays are still easy to read, but the height is extremely short. Perfect for people short on space. It stays nice and cool, too.

The remote has great, glowing buttons that make it very easy to use in the dark. The fast forward / reverse buttons have a great range of speeds. We've got probably 8 remotes on our table and this really stands out as being one of the easiest to use.

All of this wouldn't matter if the picture was awful. But we were really impressed with how *lovely* this made regular DVDs look on our high def TV. Blacks were lush and deep. Colors were vibrant. On a title screen with metallic letters, the regular DVD player had them looking lifeless and flat - but with the Oppo they really did look three dimensional and metallic. Facial textures in particular were extremely nice. Yes, it's still not *true* HD - but that's not the point here. You get a HD player to play HD discs. This is for handling the library you already have of DVDs.

You really do get spoiled - if you're going to watch your existing DVDs, why not watch them with the highest quality image that you can?

Now, this unit isn't 100% perfect in every way. Case in point - the menus. These have got to be some of the worst looking menus I've ever seen on a unit. The letters are kludgy and fuzzy looking. Some menus have options off the bottom of the screen - but there's no scroll bar or other indication that there are more items down there. You just have to page down and see if anything happens.

Also, while I'm reviewing DVDs I often want to get a screenshot of an image to use. When you hit "pause" on this unit, the pause icon stays on the screen. With pretty much every other DVD player I've seen, the pause icon vanishes after a few moments. Not here! I'm also not overly fond of the logo floating around on the screen - but heck, you just turn that off. The tray itself is super thin and fragile, to go with the thin design. However, our PS3 and Wii all have a simple insert slot which works perfectly. Why didn't they use that here?

Really, I can airbrush out the pause lines from my screenshots, so really the only thing I'd want them to switch for a new version is to make it trayless. For an enhancement, we really would love to see a unit with a hard drive recorder as well, so that we can both play DVDs as well as record shows. This combo would make this our primary entertainment unit. Still, until then, this is a fantastic buy for anyone who has DVDs they'd like to watch. Highly recommended.

Buy the Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player with HDMI from Amazon.com

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Note - Lisa Shea wrote this content for the genealogy site at BellaOnline.com - you might still find this content there as well. That's fine :) I gave permission!