Front Projection and the Oppo-983

[AlaskaDon]

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks, and finally I'm getting to it. Recently I purchased Oppo's new 983H upconverting DVD player. Let me first state, the reason I'm posting this here rather than in another section of the forum, is because I believe that we front projector enthusiasts are possibly the only people that will see the benefits of this exceptional piece of gear. Is it Blu-ray quality? No way, but it does improve the picture.

I decided to take the plunge and try the 983 out because I have a lot of older titles that may be years coming to Blu-ray. I figured that if it could make these titles look at least adequate, then it would probably be worth the $400 asking price. If you look at Oppo's website, they kind of hint that the projector crowd will be the audience that will benefit most from the 983. I imagine that they don't really want to make that statement as it would hurt sales to flat panel users. I feel that that is really the case though. I have tried upconversion using my Panny BD-30, my PS3, and now the 983. Oppo wins it hands down. Why is this important for people using projectors? The answer is, I can barely see the difference in PQ on any of the 3 players when connected to the 55" plasma display in my living room. Viewed on the projector the results become very obvious.

As an example, a few months ago Commanche Moon (prequel to Lonesome Dove) was on TV. After watching that miniseries I realized that it had been a while since I last watched Lonesome Dove. I dug out my old DVD set and figured I would see how it looked on the big screen. The result was so bad as to be completely unwatchable. Massive amounts of noise, compression artifacts, and jaggies galore. I had never noticed how bad it was when viewed on my plasma, and that got me thinking about the need for a better upconverter. After receiving the Oppo, the first thing I threw at it was Lonesome Dove. I figured if it could make that look good then I had a success. The results were mixed. While the picture still didn't look great, there was a noticeable improvement. My feeling was that it took the PQ from completely unwatchable, up to what I would describe as still ugly, but you could live with it. I'm still very thankful that Lonesome Dove is coming out on Blu in a couple of weeks

Next I tried out some of my old Hammer Horror. Dracula fared quite a bit better. Christopher Lee looked sharper than he ever has off my old DVDs.. I also gave Aliens a try. That title looked ok to begin with when played using the BD-30, but I wanted to see if I could perceive any improvement using the Oppo. Sure enough I felt that there was an improvement in fine detail as well as a reduction in visible macroblocking.

The bottom line that I wanted to share here, is that I think the benefit of having this high-priced upconverter really only becomes apparent to us projector people. So if you find yourself still watching a lot of DVDs and when the PQ starts to get on your nerves as it eventually will, then the Oppo 983H may be worth looking into.