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OPPO DV-970HD: Best Upscaling DVD Player

So, you have an HDTV and want to watch movies on it. These days, you have a few choices.

• Get a Blu-Ray player. The first-generation players (Samsung BD-P1000, Panasonic DMP-BD10, Philips BDP9000, Sony BDP-S1, Pioneer BDP-HD1) is getting very mediocre reviews, but Pioneer’s player appears to be on top if you have $1500 lying around for it. The cheapest and smallest Blu-Ray player lives inside Sony’s PlayStation 3, if you can even find one of those.
• Get an HD-DVD player. Toshiba is the leader in this arena, as they are releasing their second-generation players (Toshiba HD-A2, Toshiba HD-XA2) this month. The cheapest player is the HD-DVD add-on ($200) for the XBox-360 video game console ($400).
• Get HD on-demand with Comcast or any other TV service provider’s movie option.
• Get an upscaling DVD player. These players take your regular DVDs and scale them up to look better on your HDTV. When it comes to upscaling, no one does it better than OPPO.

For HDTVs supporting 720p/1080i with HDMI input, the best choice for an upscaling player is the OPPO DV-970HD ($149). This player comes with a free HDMI cable, which combines video and audio into a one-cable solution. For HDTVs without HDMI, you will have to buy some component and optical or coaxial digital audio cables (I suggest NXG on RadioShack.com).

The OPPO DV-970HD is a slim device (probably about less than half the size of the traditional DVD player). It is not the most consumer-friendly device in the world because you will have to do some configuration. First, the player ships set to 480p output. You will want to immediately switch it to 720p or 1080i (whichever you think looks better on your TV). Second, your universal remotes will NOT work with the player. OPPO is working on getting a code for universal remotes that meet its needs.

Fortunately, OPPO has great customer service. If you send them an e-mail, you’ll get a response the same day. It took them under an hour to respond to one of my e-mails. Try doing that with SONY!

If you have one of those new 1080P HDTVs, then OPPO also has a player for that (the DV-981HD. But, if you’re willing to shell out that much money for a HDTV, then you probably should invest in a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player (or both).

OPPO probably has in house email support! What happens if you call them? Wonder what that support is like. Most companies take 24 - 48 hours to answer. I’m not sure what SONY’s policy is on that.

I’ve heard good things about the phone support too, but that’s where they may differ from large corporations because they cannot offer weekend customer service hours.