# Upscaling comparison - Toshiba HD-A2 vs. Oppo DV-981HD



## Carl Spock (Sep 3, 2004)

I bought the Toshiba HD-A2 last weekend because it played HD-DVDs and was on sale for only $98. After reading positive accounts here and on other boards about its upscaling capabilities, I had to try that out, too. Overall, I was very impressed with the Toshiba and unless you have an exceptional conventional DVD player, I'd recommend watching all your DVDs on it. That said, you will see in the end I still preferred regular DVDs on my Oppo player but the difference was slight and for $98, you can't beat the Toshiba. It's one hell of a value.

First the system: Both players were hooked up using identical HDMI cables to a Yamaha RX-V1800. The signal then went to a 42" Panasonic plasma, their TH-42PZ700U, capable of 1080p performance. I fed the native signals from both players into the TV. Using the TV's display, I was able to verify that the Panasonic was receiving a 1080i signal from the Toshiba and a 1080p one from the Oppo. I sit about 9' away from the set.

If you aren't familiar with the Oppo DV-981HD, you should be. It has been on the market for a good year now and has received phenomenal reviews. As I implied above, it upscales the picture to 1080p. I have been very pleased with its performance, both visually and sonically. For $229, it has been the performance player to beat.

I watched a two part episode of Star Trek: Enterprise on both players. It was _In A Mirror, Darkly_, their excellent romp through Trek's mirror universe. Shot in HDTV, this two parter should reveal the differences between the two players. I watched Part 1 on the Toshiba and Part 2 on the Oppo. Afterwards I did some straight A/B comparisons between the two.

Immediately I was struck by the vividness of the Toshiba player. It wasn't like a TV set on Vivid. The picture just jumped out at me. It was startling. And yet, it wasn't overly drawn. It wasn't like the picture controls were all yanked up. The picture was just very THERE. It was quite enjoyable. Detail was all it could be. I noticed no flicker and hesitation, even when jumping back and forth between a freeze frame and the moving image. I soon stopped evaluating the player and instead enjoyed watching the crew of Enterprise chew the scenery, playing as evil as it gets (these episodes take place totally in the mirror universe, with the tyrannical Terran Empire ruling this corner of the galaxy).

When I switched to the Oppo for Part 2, I noticed a softening of the picture. The vividness was gone. As I continued to watch, I was glad I wasn't doing a straight A/B at this point. A/B comparisons point out differences, not which is better. The softness of the Oppo became equally appealing. It wasn't lacking for detail instead had a nice film quality to it. The Oppo uses a Faroudja chip in it for video processing and Faroudja definitely has a bias towards a film picture. They want to give you the detail without making it seem stark. In its own way, the flowing picture on the Oppo was as enjoyable to watch as the vivid one on the Toshiba. I found half way through Part 2 wishing I could have both.

There was one way in which the Oppo was clearly superior. It had much better sound. The audio was more dynamic and warmer, and there seemed to be more energy in the bottom octave. I have always been impressed with the sound of the Oppo and I continue to be. The Oppo sounds special. Few electronic components do. There's only one way to describe it: the Oppo DV-981HD sounds sweet.

There is a picture in Part 2 that I knew I'd use to evalute resolution. Here it is, not off my TV but from _the_ site for Trek screen caps, www.trekcore.com.










You can see why this would be a good resolution test. It's on screen for about 2 seconds. I tried to read it both paused and in play on both players. Fortunately, it was much more readible on both players than it is in the above picture. It was slightly more legible on the Toshiba but just a hair. I could still read it on both. The difference was that I wondered what some words were for a little longer when I was watching the Oppo. Unfortunately, there was an artifact on the Toshiba that I wasn't happy to see. Around the letters, there was a slight halo. I've seen that before, photoshopping a picture. You get it when you crank up the sharpness too much. I have to say I never saw this halo while watching the episode itself. It wasn't a major artifact. But I did notice it on this picture, both in play and in pause.

This comparison was made essentially flat, without using the video compensation controls built into the players. I ran them as normal as I could. I wondered what would happen if I changed those settings? The Toshiba has a picture setting of Auto/Film/Video. It was set in Auto. I tried Film. Uhhh. Dull and lifeless. I went back to Auto. There are more adjustments available on the Oppo and while I have found in general the player to be a little clunky in its operation, I really appreciated being able to go into the Set Up menu while the Oppo was still playing. Nice. The Toshiba is like most players I'm familiar with. You have to go to Stop to set it up. There are a lot more controls on the Oppo and playing around with them for a bit, I turned the Contrast and Saturation both up one notch and took the Sharpness up to Low (it was on Off; Medium and High were the other choices and Medium looked grainy). This picture I like! The Oppo now looked much more like the Toshiba without going overboard. It kept the smoothness of its film-like picture but now had the pop of the Toshiba. And I had the Oppo's superior sound quality. Excellent.

There is a great danger in trying to match one component with another. We should be going after what's right, not what's similar. The picture is either correct or it isn't. Still, for now I'll keep these small adjustments in place and watch conventional DVDs on my Oppo player. I reserve the right to change them. You wouldn't expect anything less, now, would you?

All this said, in many cases I can easily see the Toshiba looking superior to whatever DVD player you have on your shelf right now. I didn't try my 6 year old Sony DVD changer that's been relegated to playing CDs. The Toshiba would trounce it. The Toshiba had a You Are There quality that was very attractive. Add that it's on sale for $98 and it's the player to buy. Only with a little tweaking could I get my Oppo in the same ballpark. Add in the Oppo's superior sound and I'll use it for regular DVDs but let me put it this way. I bought the Oppo just a couple of months ago. If I'd know I was going to get the Toshiba, I wouldn't have purchased the Oppo. The Toshiba is that good.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

What a _great_ review! Thank you.


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## Carl Spock (Sep 3, 2004)

Thanks.

I also should add I saw no difference between the two I could attribute to 1080i versus 1080p. Admittedly this was not the test to look for that but if anything, the 1080i player looked sharper. I saw no flicker.


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