Best Upconverting DVD Player under $300

Spiffyfast

Spiffyfast

Audioholic General
Well I won an HDMI cable from Impact Acoustics, coolest company out there now, and I need something to hook it up to now. So I wanna get an upconverting DVD player to see if there is any improvement in pic quality. So ive been looking around have found the Oppo Digital, Denon 1910, Samsung 950. So opinons on which is the best value please
 
M

Mort Corey

Senior Audioholic
The Secrets review shows the Oppo as the best of the lot...FWIW

Mort
 
S

Shallowmander

Audiophyte
I know the Samsung's are a pain. I have the HD 850 and it has a great deal of artifacting on all three of my LCD's. It looks ok on my 27" in the bedroom but terrible on my 30" Syntax Olevia and my 42" SONY. I have an LG upconverter in my ofice on a 17" Dell. There is a real problem with lip sync at 720p and 1080i. I would not recommend either of these brands. I do not know if the new Samsung is any better however. I have heard and read the Oppo is really good. There is also the NeuNeo http://www.neuneo.com/. SAve your nickels and dimes and get yourself a Denon DVD 2910. You can pick one up from 525.00 to 699.00. Worth every cent. The Audioholics review made me buy it. I AM NOT BRAINWASHED!!! I must kill Frank Drebbin...I must kill Frank Drebbin....
 
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B

benjwodruff

Audiophyte
I can really recommend the Oppo Digital player. I recieved mine yesterday. I have it hooked to the 34" widescreen sony xbr via DVI and it provides excellent video quality. I can't speak to the CD playback quality as Im sure it hasn't had time to burn in yet.
 
Spiffyfast

Spiffyfast

Audioholic General
brian32672 said:
I like the HVD-2081 they do have a new one out the HVD-2085. See sig below...
Here is a link to the 2085
http://www.neuneo.com/body/product/hvd2085/feature.asp
I like that one, but the Oppo has the ability to decode divx and xvid, which is something that I think I would take advantage of. But the fact that its a HD-DVD player and they actually offer a few titles makes it tempting. I think house of flying daggers and Hero would be great titles to have in HD. Also for anyone that doesn't have HDMI/DVI or a DVI that isnt HDCP that could be a great option.
 
WndrBr3d

WndrBr3d

Full Audioholic
Now, I have an oppo and love it dearly, but to say it's DivX decoding looks great in HD would be a stretch (pun intended).

The DivX video is 'upsampled' to HD using Pixel Doubling and is not processed by the FLI-2300 processor. Unless you encode your DivX movies in > 4mbps 4-pass VBR, you will see REALLY BAD macroblocking (an issue I ususally don't complain about).

The whole reason I encode my movies to DivX is to save space so I can burn them to a DVD-RW and watch them whenever at the same quality as DVD. Unfortunatly, that space/time savings is lost when the MKV file I create is the same size as the original DVD.

The only reason I'd suggest the Oppo over HVD-2085 is that the Oppo is cheaper and has about the same feature set. Basically YOUR monitor only supports up to 1080i, so why spend the extra $100 on a player because it can do 1080p? Probably by the time you upgrade to a monitor that does support 1080p, HDDVD will be the new format of choice.
 
WndrBr3d

WndrBr3d

Full Audioholic
ON SNAP! Someone is touchy!

Well, if you add in the $35 shipping and another $25 for an HDMI/DVI chord, that brings the price difference right up to aruond $100, now doesn't it?

Calm down turbo, I wasnt INSULTING your DVD player, just simply stating the the Oppo would be the most economical for his setup.

Simma.
 
brian32672

brian32672

Banned
WndrBr3d said:
ON SNAP! Someone is touchy!

Well, if you add in the $35 shipping and another $25 for an HDMI/DVI chord, that brings the price difference right up to aruond $100, now doesn't it?

Calm down turbo, I wasnt INSULTING your DVD player, just simply stating the the Oppo would be the most economical for his setup.

Simma.
Touchy??????????????

I was just asking where to get it for 125.00

And you would not be insulting my dvd player, I don't have the 2085.

Anyhow, he already has a cord.

And last, NeuNeo on holidays offers .01 shipping.

So a NeuNeo could be had for exactly 225.01 shipped.

However, I am not trying to change his mind. I'm pretty sure he is stuck on the Oppo. Actually I have even emailed Oppo and got a return answer. My question was when do they plan on upgrading the unit to a HDMI out.

There is a person Spiffy you can ask questions to that has the Oppo, and got it from my recommedation. So it has all the latest firmware upgrades installed. And he did not seem overly pleased with it. And it did skip on a few of his discs. PM GaryZ06 about his new Oppo.....


EDIT::: BTW who is Turbo???????????
 
jaxvon

jaxvon

Audioholic Ninja
I think Turbo had his post erased or something by the mods.
 
brian32672

brian32672

Banned
jaxvon said:
I think Turbo had his post erased or something by the mods.
I think he was referring to me.????????? No big deal either way.
EDIT::: I'll get a negative rep for that one. LOL :eek: :eek:

But I am still curios if anyone has seen the Oppo for less than 199.00 and shipping cost?????
I may get one for a backup if I find it cheaper.
 
WndrBr3d

WndrBr3d

Full Audioholic
brian32672 said:
Anyhow, he already has a cord.
Right, he won an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, his Mitsu only has a DVI-D interface. So he'd need to buy an HDMI to DVI cable, no?
 
brian32672

brian32672

Banned
WndrBr3d said:
Right, he won an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, his Mitsu only has a DVI-D interface. So he'd need to buy an HDMI to DVI cable, no?
Right, No. I would give him one... :)
 
Spiffyfast

Spiffyfast

Audioholic General
WndrBr3d said:
Right, he won an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, his Mitsu only has a DVI-D interface. So he'd need to buy an HDMI to DVI cable, no?
actually they were kind enough to exchange it for an hdmi to dvi cable so i would be able to use it when i upgrade my dvd player
 
brian32672

brian32672

Banned
Spiffyfast said:
actually they were kind enough to exchange it for an hdmi to dvi cable so i would be able to use it when i upgrade my dvd player
I really was going to give you one Spiffy. I remembered they did a exchange for you, but I thought it was an exchange from a hdmi/dvi to a dvi/dvi.

So now I'm off the hook. But I by chance have bundles of cords that I am not using. LOL.. Too many......................
 
Spiffyfast

Spiffyfast

Audioholic General
brian32672 said:
I really was going to give you one Spiffy. I remembered they did a exchange for you, but I thought it was an exchange from a dvi/dvi to a hdmi/dvi.

So now I'm off the hook. But I by chance have bundles of cords that I am not using. LOL.. Too many......................
lol, just like all your extra banana plugs
 
brian32672

brian32672

Banned
Spiffyfast said:
lol, just like all your extra banana plugs
Well actually I sold the extra bananas. But to a member here.
He will remain nameless, unless he wants everyone to know.
No big deal, but some people want their financial matters not to be talked about....
 
H

hulinning

Audiophyte
I got my Oppo and return the next day.
First, the color is too much red, and I do not want to recalibrate my to tv set to fit oppo. since I have more than one dvd hooked to amplifier. Other dvd brand never have too much red color such as jvc or pioneer. It seems chinese dvd design all have the same problema ( same thing in RJTech 1500dvdxII but picture is better than oppo and cheaper).

Second, I see someone have a comment that oppo produce good picture on their tv set. I am talking about resolution now not color of the picture.
If you have a small size tv set < 40 inch, then you do not see the different if input source greater than 480 which is standard dvd output.
If you have a large tv set 61 inch than you can see the different.
I can tell the oppo does not produce a better picture than my Cyberhome dvd player 300 (25 dollar) at some scenes. If that the case why I need to spend 200 dollar for this.

In order to get the best picture, the input source should be the same as tv resolution. For example , tv resolution is 720p then dvd output should be 720p.
Of course, the dvd source is not 720p but they upscale the output signal to 720p. There is one thing is to either let your tv set upscale the signal or let dvd upscale the signal for you.

To me, upscale dvd to 720p or 1080p is not worth it. Why?
All hdtv nowadays is either 720p or 1080i/p. It will upscale the input signal anyway or downscale the signal to its native resolution. I believe that the upscale engine of the tv set is much better than dvd engine.

The only thing we need is the true output source is either 720p or 1080i/p from dvd or Satellite
But no dvd have a high resolution right now, unless for some proprietary dvd player such NeoDigits ( not many manufacturing support).



That is my 2 cents.
 
brian32672

brian32672

Banned
Spiffy, did you ever PM GaryZ06 on the Oppo I had recommended to him. It looks like I will not be recommending it anymore. Specially now hearing from the above user that just got his Oppo as well.

I will have to stick with NeuNeo, that has the proprietary chips
 
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