Oppo Digital DV-970HD DVD Universal Player

Up-rezzing player does an admirable job of making DVDs look better

By Charlie White

DVD player technology is at an awkward time in its nearly 10-year history. HD DVD and Blu-ray players are now available, yet consumers still have a significant investment in DVDs. The Oppo DV-970HD Universal DVD Player ($149) strives to bridge the gap between the DVD format and high-definition TV, offering up-conversion from DVD to 720p or 1080i  video. The DV-970HD also claims to add more versatility with its playback capability using its USB port or 4-in-1 flash card reader. We connected the player to our 720p display via HDMI, and tried all of its different playback formats.

The feature of the 970HD that gets top billing is its up-rezzing capability into an HDMI output. The idea is to take ordinary DVDs, enhance their quality and send them through the HDMI output and into a high definition television, with the result rivaling that of HDTV. I played back a variety of content on the 970HD, and my assessment of its up-rezzing quality is that it's the best implementation of this dubious idea I've seen yet. The fact is, it's impossible to create pixels out of thin air, so this up-rezzing capability is a daunting task. But the 970HD does an admirable job of it.  It's a progressive-scan DVD player, so starting out with 480p resolution, it's able to convert that video into 720p or 1080i with convincing results. Sure, its quality is not up to the standard of HDTV, but let's just say it looks a whole lot better than the garden-variety progressive-scan DVD player beside which I compared it with the same video. That stellar performance alone makes this player worth its low $149 price of admission.

Another notable aspect of this player is the variety of formats it's said to be capable of handling. While its up-rezzing capability is the real thing, I think this aspiration to be a universal content playback center is more of a gimmick. Let's go through the list, where festooned to the side of its box is a veritable alphabet soup of formats it's capable of handling. First of all, of course it handles DVD video and audio, as well as all kinds of CDs. It also handles Super Audio CD, DivX, XviD, Kodak picture CD, HDCD, Dolby Digital, DTS, and it's also compatible with PAL and NTSC. Its 4-in-1 card reader reads SD, multimedia card (MMC), SmartMedia, and Memory Stick. Plus, it has a USB port. Wow. Sounds great.

The styling of the Oppo DV-970HD is thin and visually appealing.

The back has plenty of outputs, including HDMI, composite, component, S-Video, optical audio and coaxial audio.

This product claims to handle all that, but does not do a very good job of it. The first caveat is yes, it handles USB, but only USB 1.1. As we dug around the Midwest Test Facility to dust off an old USB 1.1 thumb drive (contrary to what Oppo says in the documentation, most modern USB thumb drives are USB 2.0), we loaded it with a few jpeg pictures and plugged it in. After about twenty seconds, it displayed a primitive-looking operating system from which a picture could be chosen. On the left side was a file menu, and on the right side was a thumbnail of the picture, and by the way, it was stretched and appeared to be not in the correct aspect ratio. It displayed the picture for just a moment and then attempted to go to the next one. 
 

Even when trying to view the smallest resolution files, it took way too long to get to the next picture, because it was busy decoding each picture into the JPEG format. And, there's no way to just advance to the next picture at all. Bah. Overall, it was not exactly a pleasant user experience to play back a slide show, and it's not practical at all unless the resolution of the pictures is quite low.

The unique disk tray is made of clear plastic.

Next, I tried playing back video files through the USB port and through the 4-in-1 card reader. This turned out to be less than useful as well. I loaded DivX files and DV files onto an SD card and put that into the slot, and I could get none of them to play. The DivX file didn't even show up in the directory, and the DV movie did appear as an icon in the directory, and the counter began moving when I selected it, but there was no video associated with it on the screen. The documentation requested that the user "please be patient," and so I waited and waited, and didn't see anything on the CD onto which I'd put a DivX file, either. Nothing happened. It couldn't handle Compact Flash cards at all. So perhaps I wasn't doing something right, but my judgment is that the ability to play back  XviD, DivX files, pictures and more is just a come-on to get you to buy the player.

There's a 4-in-1 flash card reader as well as a USB port underneath a door on the right front side of the player.

Never mind all that; get the player for its DVD up-rezzing capability. Its video makes DVDs look better than I've ever seen. Plus, the player includes an HDMI cable, which after a little quick price check, is worth $149 at Best Buy, so think of it this way: you buy an HDMI cable for $149 and get a free up-rezzing DVD player that does an excellent job of playing back standard definition that looks almost as good as HD. Recommended. 8 stars out of 10. Its clean up-rezzing is worth 9 stars out of 10.

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