# Upconverting DVD Players



## DBS Commando (Apr 7, 2006)

I've been researching upconverting DVD players as of late and I have a few questions as in terms of video quality...

1. Do you still see the black bars in widescreen movies or is the picture scaled so that it takes up every single pixel on the TV? (like HD content)

2. Is there a noticeable difference in video quality? Does it really look better? Do the movies look fuzzy or noticeably stretched?


----------



## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

Upconverting resolution and screen format are two different things. The upconversion, I think, does very little to picture quality. IMHO I have seen a couple of different kinds of players, and I have a decent one, not even close to HD. Very hard to make 480p look like 1080p.


----------



## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

1. Yes if it's "anamorphic widescreen"

2. Yes, yes, yes. Even with the cheapest one. The Oppo DVD players are supposedly as good as you're going to get but they're a lot more than my $70 Philips from Costco.

Agreed it's still not HD, and isn't going to be. But my DVD of "The Blues Brothers" was quite close to the version shown on HDNet, just not as grainy in appearance.


----------



## wakajawaka (Sep 27, 2006)

1. The DVD needs to be "Enhanced for Widescreen TVs". Even still, if the movie was shot in anything higher than 16:9 (2.35:1 is common) there may still be black bars top and bottom. My upconverting DVD player also has a zoom in/out feature that can eliminate the bars for other standard widescreen DVDs. Although the zoom in sometimes causes video artifacts to appear, the quality really lies with how the DVD was mastered.

2. I have the Oppo 981HD, it is a fantastic player. It plays nearly anything you can throw at it (including DVD-Audio and SACD audio formats). The picture quality is very noticeably better than any DVD player I have ever owned. One caveat, the 981 will only output upconverted video via HDMI, no component connection is available. It has an S-Video out, but that is there for trouble shooting only and will not garner you any benefit up upconverting. Oppo has other upconverting players that have component out though.


----------



## DBS Commando (Apr 7, 2006)

wakajawaka said:


> 1. The DVD needs to be "Enhanced for Widescreen TVs". Even still, if the movie was shot in anything higher than 16:9 (2.35:1 is common) there may still be black bars top and bottom. My upconverting DVD player also has a zoom in/out feature that can eliminate the bars for other standard widescreen DVDs. Although the zoom in sometimes causes video artifacts to appear, the quality really lies with how the DVD was mastered.
> 
> 2. I have the Oppo 981HD, it is a fantastic player. It plays nearly anything you can throw at it (including DVD-Audio and SACD audio formats). The picture quality is very noticeably better than any DVD player I have ever owned. One caveat, the 981 will only output upconverted video via HDMI, no component connection is available. It has an S-Video out, but that is there for trouble shooting only and will not garner you any benefit up upconverting. Oppo has other upconverting players that have component out though.


I looked at that player. It looks nice but its almost the same price as a Toshiba HD-DVD player which also can upconvert. I'd spring for the Toshiba but Blu-Ray has better movies in High-Def that are exclusive to that format. (I'm really getting sick of these format wars)


----------



## wakajawaka (Sep 27, 2006)

ComputerBox said:


> I looked at that player. It looks nice but its almost the same price as a Toshiba HD-DVD player which also can upconvert. I'd spring for the Toshiba but Blu-Ray has better movies in High-Def that are exclusive to that format. (I'm really getting sick of these format wars)


True, but the Toshiba doesn't do all th Audio/Video formats the Oppo does, that was a big selling point to me. PLus I won't touch any of the HD stuff til they figure out what format is the winner.


----------



## quadbill (Jan 12, 2007)

i have the oppo 970hd and love it


----------

