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 March 1, 2006The Truth About HDMI, DVI-D, and the Oppo Digital OPDV971H DVD Player
I recently purchased a Vizio 50" plasma TV that has an HDMI hookup option. The issue is that I hooked up both component-video and HDMI cables from my hi-def cable box, as well as the Denon DVD-2910 (remember that one?), and in both cases the component-video connection gives me a sharper, blacker (blacks), brighter color picture. This seems to fly in the face of popular thought, but I spoke to a local high-end shop and they agree that HDMI does not usually provide a better HD picture. What gives? Is there something I’m missing? [Name withheld to protect the local high-end shop, which is getting ready to take a good-size pummeling from me.] That letter was recently sent to Home Theater & Sound contributor Roger Kanno, who passed it on to me for comment. It’s sad that at a time when we desperately need dedicated high-end shops to help sift through the ever-increasing complexities of our hobby, there are undertrained or misinformed or dishonest people willing to delude the consumer. Well, those few bad-apple "local high-end shops" like the one referred to in the letter had better start trading in truth; the world is getting smaller, and one of the first causalities will be shops that trade only in half truths. Sadly, the problem with the statement that a component-video signal occasionally looks better is that it’s sometimes true, but explaining why takes time and might lead to a lower-ticket sale. In short, people are misusing HDMI. Simply inserting an HDMI cable between a source and your TV is not enough for a significant improvement -- you have to make sure the settings are correct at both ends. For a store to simply say that "HDMI does not usually provide a better HD picture" smacks of trying to keep the consumer dumb so the store can continue to sell overpriced goods made with yesterday’s technology. People can get a little confused about the different types of digital video transmission cables. The main ones of interest to us here are DVI-D (which, the Department of Redundancy Department tells me, stands for Digital Video Interface -- Digital) and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface). People were anxious to kill off DVI because they are relatively large and because there are actually three different types: DVI-D(igital), DVI-A(nalog), and DVI-I(ntegrated). It was pretty confusing -- and then came the HDMI folks, who rightly said, "Let’s take the best, DVI-D, add digital audio, and put it in a smaller cable. Anyone who still wants to use the DVI-D male or female jacks can get an inexpensive adapter, and everyone gets what they want." The problem is, there are still a lot of people who don’t understand, and are talking when they should be learning. As Exhibit One in my case against disinformation, I call to the witness stand the Oppo OPDV971H (hereinafter referred to simply as Oppo). This is a brilliantly simple little DVD player made by a huge Chinese company intent on breaking into the US market by offering jumbo performance at mini prices, in this case $199 USD. The Oppo has DVI-D capability and comes with good-quality DVI-D and DVI-D/HDMI cables -- nice additions that save the buyer some real money. The Oppo is capable of upscaling to 720p or 1080i, and plays DVD-Audio in addition to all the usual silver-disc formats. Analogous to the great digital CD transports of yore, the Oppo lives only to take a pristine signal straight off the DVD and send it, without having mucked with it, at 480p, via DVI-D, to your display. If your TV has a great scaler built in or you have a good outboard scaler, your life is complete. But shoehorned into the Oppo’s svelte body is its own great inboard scaler. If your display has 720- or 1080-line resolution, you’re in like Flynn. For the low price of $199, you can experience the wonders of an almost direct digital feed. Almost. Of course, the raison d’être for HDMI and DVI-D is to keep the digital signal from the source in the digital domain all the way through the chain. For these digital interfaces to make any sense whatsoever, you must have a digital display (plasma, LCD, DLP, D-ILA, or one of their variants; CRTs need not apply) that allows direct digital feeds -- i.e., direct 1:1 pixel mapping, which many displays don’t. In the best of all possible worlds, that means you would have a separate digital display for each digital signal: an 853.33x480 display for watching 16:9 DVDs, a 1280x720 display for Fox, ABC, and ESPN, and a 1920x1080 display for all the other HD sources in your life. Too much stuff. But any other solution requires scaling. Given that, your best option is to buy a display that matches what you most often watch, and try to get a direct digital feed from that into your display. The best way to do that is to use HDMI or DVI-D. You’ll have to scale everything else. Or buy an external processor and let it do the scaling. I’ve mostly been using 720p front projectors, which work beautifully with the sports-rich triumvirate of Fox, ABC, and ESPN. I scale 1080 back to 720 and 480 up to 720. Understand that for any input that does not allow pixel-perfect mapping, each time I change projectors or DVD players or home-theater processors or video switchers or wires or any other intervening variable, I have to check to make sure that the component best capable of doing the scaling is indeed doing the scaling; e.g., the source, the display, or, when I’m lucky enough to have one around, a good-quality video processor. And just like the days when companies rushed to have the first progressive-scan DVD players on the market at a low price, while foisting on us some unbelievable garbage in the act, the same thing is happening as DVD-player manufacturers rush to provide upscaling players at bargain-basement prices. Garbage in, garbage out applies to upscaling DVD players as much as it does to any other component category. Here’s where we need "local high-end shops" to step up and show their mettle. Just because a DVD player with a crummy upscaling circuit sends a pristine signal over an HDMI cable doesn’t mean that HDMI is bad. On the other hand, if you take a $750 DVD player, maybe with last year’s technology but with beautifully handled D/A video conversion, and throw in $1000 worth of cables to carefully handle the precious video signal, it will look better than the poorly executed scaling sent over HDMI. That’s not because component is better than HDMI, but because the signal fed into the wire was better. A properly handled digital signal -- HDMI or DVI-D -- with 1:1 mapping or with careful scaling will always look better than a component signal, which, by definition, is going digital-analog-digital. HDMI is not the problem. Let’s take this one step further. The letter-writer’s Vizio P50HDM 50" plasma display is usually sold at Costco and Sam’s Club (hmmm, high-end shops?). On p.13 of the Vizio’s owner’s manual, HDMI is named as the best possible connection, for this reason: "It is the first and only industry-supported, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface." Obviously, Vizio is in favor of HDMI. But there’s one problem. Like most 50" plasmas, the Vizio P50HDM’s resolution is 1366x768, a ratio that doesn’t easily match up to the 480/720/1080 standards. Consequently, everything will have to be scaled by the Vizio, unless you get something like a Lumagen and let it do all the scaling. Using an upscaling DVD player is a big mistake. It just means the signal will be going through multiple manipulations for no good reason whatsoever. In this case, the best solution is to send the signal via HDMI, but as a simple 480-line signal. The point is, HDMI is the best way to transfer a signal if you’ve set up the equipment correctly. With the Oppo -- which, by the way, may be the cutest DVD player I’ve ever seen -- I tried several ways of transmitting the signal to a projector, all via DVI-D. These are the steps you should try to be sure you’re getting the best picture:
I also tried a component connection between the Oppo and the projector, an Optoma H79.
I began with Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. In chapter 10, the colors throb, and lots of straight lines intersect at odd angles, all to confuse the Oppo’s circuitry. When I fed the Optoma through the Oppo’s component outputs, the picture was pleasantly soft. Moving to HDMI and setting the Oppo to 1080i gave the opposite: a picture that was grainy and uncomfortable to watch. With the Oppo at 480p, everything looked great because the Optoma’s scaling is nearly perfect. Jacking the Oppo up to 720p showed just the slightest improvement -- amazing that a $199 DVD player has circuitry as good as or better than that of a $5000 projector. Running the Oppo at 480p into the Lumagen gave a noticeable improvement; shadow detail had more depth, and everything was easier on the eyes. I was also able to watch some Region 3 and 6 DVDs, owing to the open secret of how to convert the Oppo to a Region 0 player (see right). The Region 3 DTS version of House of Flying Daggers is a stunner, especially the "Dancing Echoes" scene, which looked and sounded incredible. Again, the Lumagen won, but the component feed just looked too soft, the 1080i too hard. I couldn’t reliably distinguish between the 720p and 480p presentations. Next up was Boz Scaggs’ Greatest Hits Live DVD. The mellowest song of the set, "I Just Go," breaks my heart every time I hear it, and it’s beautifully shot and really well recorded. Again, using the Oppo’s component outputs made things too soft. Don’t let some fast-talking salesperson tell you that that’s more "film-like." This was shot on hi-def video, and it’s incredibly sharp on HDNet. Best was using DVI-D. First place to the Lumagen, second best was using the Oppo at 480p, third best was using the Oppo at 720p, and last was using the Oppo at 1080i. One nice side benefit of the Oppo: it makes a very nice digital audio feed. I found myself unconsciously gravitating to it for playing CDs, until one day it dawned on me that I was using the Oppo almost as much as I was using some pretty high-end machines. The Oppo’s sound quality when used as a transport was open, detailed, and very airy. What a nice surprise for $199. Using it as a straight player was less exciting, but given the price, the Oppo’s CD and DVD-Audio playbacks were very good.
In the past, I’ve really liked the Ayre Acoustics DVD players and the Lexicon RT-20. But are they 20 to 50 times as good as the Oppo? Of course not. When you want the very best, you pay dearly for incremental improvements. The difference in speed and handling between a Corvette and a Ferrari doesn’t justify the difference in their prices unless you just happen to have the money and are willing to spend it. If fact, for most of the planet, the difference between a nice, new Honda Civic and a Ferrari makes no sense. That’s a good analogy for the little Oppo. As with a Honda Civic, you get a lot for your money: It does what it’s supposed to do with no surprises, and to get something obviously better would cost a lot more money. What you do get in the Oppo OPDV971H is a really good digital transport; if you use its DVI-D output for a straight 1:1 feed, you’ll be very happy. As a nice bonus, you get a superb scaler that’s on a par with some of the best built-ins, if not quite up in the ozone with a Lumagen. Because the Oppo OPDV971H is not sold in high-end shops, you won’t get the (hopefully) good advice that would lead you to select the correct supporting equipment. I kind of wish some high-end shops would pick this little piece up and include it with, say, their Runco or Sim2 or similar projectors. Any projector that comes with a breakout scaler would love this little baby as a simple transport -- and think of all the money left over for DVDs! …Wes Marshall Oppo Digital OPDV971H DVD Player Oppo Digital, Inc. E-mail: service@oppodigital.com
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Dear Roger,
