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 June 1, 2008 Oppo Digital DV-983H SACD/DVD-A/V/CD Player: Another Giant-Killer
The answer has to do with the targets Oppo has chosen. They’re not trying to prove that the performance of the DV-983H can beat that of a $40 disposable DVD player. They’re aiming instead at components like the Arcam DV139 DVD player ($3200) and the iScan VP-50 Pro video processor ($3500), both of which, like the Oppo, use the top-notch ABT102 deinterlacing chipset from Anchor Bay. Or maybe they’re targeting the Esoteric SA-60 ($4600), which uses the same video-scaling chipset as the DV-983H: Anchor Bay’s ABT1018. Oppo is obviously aiming at the stars of the home-theater world. The DV-983H is the first universal player Oppo has called a "flagship." To ensure that it lives up to that description, they’ve added some luxury touches. The DV-983H comes in a tough box and is wrapped in luxurious black fabric, and its manual is a work of art. I love manuals that are written in the US, and not merely translated into pidgin. The DV-983H is a complex machine with deep menus, but the manual is so helpful that you couldn’t do better if a tech-support guy was walking you through the setup. Speaking of tech guys, at first my review sample wouldn’t play SACDs. I called Oppo, didn’t identify myself, and started talking. The first surprise was that I wasn’t talking to someone in Bangalore. Instead, I got a native English speaker, and damn quickly at that. He helped me troubleshoot the issue for about an hour. The problem turned out to be a setting on my Integra DTC-9.8 processor that I hadn’t known about. How often do you get a tech-support person who’s a native speaker of English and is willing to spend an hour figuring out a problem in another company’s piece of gear? To me, that quality of support is an incredible value at any price. But all is not perfect. For those of you that already own an Oppo player, Oppo has changed a few buttons on the DV-983H edition of its basic remote, which looks very similar to earlier versions. Stop is now where Play used to be, and the Chapter Skip and FF/FR buttons are in different locations. I would have preferred a completely different remote; but if we have to have one similar to past Oppo remotes, why couldn’t they have left the buttons in the same places? I had the feeling the designer might have been the same sadist who designs mall department stores to get you lost. The more important difference between the DV-983H and earlier Oppo players is in the processing system. While the DV-983H includes the Anchor Bay VRS suite mentioned above, the DV-981HD uses Faroudja’s still-good DCDi system, and all of the DV-980H’s video processing is on a single Mediatek chip. The DV-980H has been the darling of videophiles with high-end outboard video processors because it can output 480i/576i via HDMI. The DV-983H and DV-981HD can output at 480p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. The component outputs don’t get all the processing power of the HDMI, but then, I wouldn’t use any output other than HDMI -- it’s the embodiment of simplicity.
Once everything was properly set up, I threw a torture DVD into the DV-983H to see if I could make it sweat. Charlie Wilson’s War isn’t a great movie, but there’s one scene in which Wilson (Tom Hanks) visits a refugee camp in Pakistan. The pan shot from Wilson to the thousands of refugees moves fast enough to create problems with many DVD players. The Oppo was rock solid. I tried some martial-arts flicks. The Edko Region 3 DVD DTS version of House of Flying Daggers came through with gorgeous detail and stunning sound, especially in the Dancing Echoes scene. The scene in the bamboo forest was sharp, clear, and never once strained my system. (By the way, the DV-983H is delivered as a Region 1 player, but you can easily change it to an all-region player using the same procedure as with other Oppo machines: Push Setup, then "9210." This gives you a menu that lets you set the player to any region, 0-6. Push "0," then Setup again, and your player is region-free: you can now shop at yesasia.com or hkflix.com. You’ve got some fun times to come.) Next up was a comparison of the DV-983H with the recently upgraded Sony PlayStation 3 (thanks, Sony). I have most of the versions of Blade Runner, and hoped to be able to tell you that the Oppo playing a DVD looked as good as the PS3 playing a Blu-ray. It didn’t. The Blu-ray was better at everything: clarity, microscopic detail, and a tremendous increase in sonic transparency. Given the fact that, unless someone comes up with a way to quickly download HD video, Blu-ray will eventually supplant DVD, buying a DVD player is almost like buying a buggy whip. Unless . . .
If you, like me, have a nice collection of DVDs, I can’t imagine any DVD player beating the Oppo DV-983H. The PS3 didn’t. The Oppo was so clear and so unflappable that my eyes actually relaxed while watching it. The DV-983H played SACD and DVD-Audio discs with amazing sonic clarity. Using the Oppo’s HDMI output to feed my Integra DTC-9.8, I began with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon [SACD, Capitol CDP 582136 2]. Alan Parsons’ recording still sounds remarkably good, and the detail and transparency were as good as I’ve heard in my system. Ditto for the DVD-A of Paul Daniel and the Bournemouth Symphony performing Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony [Naxos 8.557059]. The Bournemouth Symphony Chorus just burst out of the speakers. My collection of SACDs or DVD-As isn’t huge because I keep worrying that manufacturers of disc players will give up on those formats. But I’m keeping this Oppo, so I feel a bit less constrained. Oppo Digital’s DV-983H is an end-of-era product. $399 is more than you’d pay at any big-box store for a simple DVD player, but if you’ve been considering an expensive player from a high-end company, you owe it to yourself to first try the Oppo DV-983H. I now use the Sony PlayStation 3 for Blu-ray and the Oppo for everything else. I’m happy as can be. …Wes Marshall Oppo Digital DV-983H SACD/DVD-A/V/CD Player Oppo Digital, Inc. E-mail: service@oppodigital.com
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There’s
chatter across the Internet about the advisability of Oppo Digital bringing out a DVD
player for $399 USD -- that’s so last year, runs the lament. After all, Best Buy
sells good DVD players for $40. Why pay ten times more, especially as Blu-ray players are
likely to soon get cheaper?
