Q: Why should I buy the OPPO DV-980H player when my HD display has an internal scaler?
A: That's because, in general, the scaler in a high-performance up-converting DVD player, such as the DV-980H, is more specialized in de-interlacing and scaling DVD signals than a typical HD display's scaler, leading to better picture quality. The process of converting a standard-definition DVD signal to the native resolution of your HD display may cause a host of video artifacts if not performed properly. These flaws will be especially noticeable on large and high-resolution screens. Quality de-interlacing and scaling are the key components to stable, artifact-free movie watching, and frequently the components built into the display (and into many competing DVD players) to perform these tasks are not up to the challenge. In most cases the scaler built into the DV-980H is more suitable for up-converting DVD video signal to high definition video signal, because:
* The de-interlacing and scaling are performed at the point closest to the video source, thus avoiding video artifacts that can be introduced when analog video signal travels from the DVD player to the TV display. Once unconverted to HD signal, the video signal is carried to the TV in pure digital format via HDMI output, and is no longer susceptible to analog noise.
* The de-interlacer and scaler have a direct digital hookup with the DVD reader, so that it can get the flags and additional information encoded in the DVD disc directly and performs the up-conversion accordingly. Doing up-converting outside of the DVD player may lose this advantage.
On the other hand, for HD displays that have high-quality internal de-interlacing and scaling circuitry, and for external video signal processors found in high-end home theater systems, the OPPO DV-980H is an excellent universal transport. Its HDMI output supports 480i/576i resolution, which is the native video format as encoded on the DVD discs. By using the 480i/576i resolution output over HDMI, digital video and audio signals stay in the digital domain all the way from the disc to the display, without going through unnecessary digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions