Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Oppo OPDV971H Benchmark total score: 90/130 (This indicates a very solid player at this price point)

*All tests were done with the DVI outputs at 480p/720p and 1080i when appropriate. Any failed tests were checked in other output resolutions as well. The test results above were based on 720p resolution.

Comments on Audioholics DVD Torture Tests

For the full list of features and testing, please see the new DVD Player Features and Benchmark Comparisons Chart . The player did very well with regards to maximizing the capabilities of the onboard Faroudja FLI-2310 chip and MediaTek MPEG decoder. It would be hard to discern the visual difference between this player and other Faroudja-based players running the same chip combination based on our tests. The odd performance issues included an inability to truly lock on with the Zone Plate tests once the speed picked up to anything above a crawl. Even at slower speeds there were hints of moiré patterns depending upon the direction of movement. This problem was only compounded when the test was combined with edit detection.

Like almost all Faroudja players we've tested, there was moderate noise reduction performance and a failure to lock on to any highly-unusual cadences. In addition, jaggie reduction could be a tad better at the extremes and when combined with mixed media elements such as horizontal scrolling text. Oddly enough, the known Faroudja macroblocking "enhancement" feature seemed to be rather tame on the Oppo. Though we were viewing content with known macroblocking issues, the player didn't seem to enhance these errors as other FLI-2310 chip-based players have in the past - which piqued our interest. After further exploration, we quickly realized that the player was significantly reducing black levels - thus making the macroblocking effects seem less intense. Putting up some test patterns on an ISF-calibrated display we saw that in order to get the player to have correct black and white levels, brightness (black level) had to be set to around +10 and contrast (white level) needed to be bumped to -1. With these settings in place, the FLI-2310 macroblocking enhancement bug was back as expected. This is the first time I have seen a DVD player so badly out of calibration in comparison to my other reference players. Now, realize that there are certainly two approaches one can take - I could have corrected the display to the player, however I have reviewed enough players on it to realize that the Oppo was the odd man out in this case and needed to be corrected.

Update: According to Oppo, baseline brightness will be calibrated (increased) in the pending next firmware release.

Layer changes were pretty speedy, coming in at around 0.75-0.8 seconds consistently. Boot up time, however was not nearly as fast - taking about 11 seconds before you can open up the tray to put a disc in. After the disc was inserted, it took another 15 seconds before it brought up the first video track. As mentioned earlier, turning off power while the tray is open also does not result in the tray being retracted. Overall, the player feels a bit sluggish with front panel and remote buttons responding in a rather delayed fashion.

Viewing Evaluation

After reading the benchmark test results you'll see that the OPDV971H is an excellent player. While not scoring a perfect 130 points, it does exceptionally well for a player in its price class and passes the majority of critical tests with flying colors. I would not, however, consider it refined enough to be competition for flagship universal players as some would seem to believe.

Viewing evaluations are always subjective, but they are a great opportunity to see the practical demonstration of the above test results. In selecting movies for our demo we chose some reference DVDs as well as some content with less than stellar source material.

DVD: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offered a wealth of material with which to check the visual quality of the Oppo player in a real-world home theater environment. There were plenty of scenes with difficult deinterlacing combined with moving on-screen elements. Noise reduction was possibly the area in which I would desire some improvement as this film has some very "dirty" looking scenes that could have come out looking a bit more refined. Still, I found that it reproduced the myriad of textures, colors and luminance values present in this DVD with grace. Detail on the Jim Henson creatures was impeccable at times, with fine hair and clothing accents making this a very fun movie to watch - this despite its disappointment as a screenplay adaptation of what I consider to be some of the best sardonic literature ever written. Paying attention to the many instances of black space and bleak environments (both on-ship and on-planet) I noticed that the Oppo consistently avoided banding, though macroblocking was apparent after the correct video levels were set.

DVD: Constantine

No, it's not an epic movie about a third century Roman Emperor... Constantine is done in the (seemingly endless?) style of comic book-turned-movie franchises which pepper the audience with dark, dimly lit scenes periodically erupted by peaks of action and explosions. I chose this disc, not for its great cinematic qualities - but to check out how well the Oppo did in low luminance level situations. What I found was that, while the Oppo passes blacker than black signals (and this DVD had quite a bit of very dark content) it tended to crush the blacks a bit more than my DVD-3910 reference player. Since there was no way to adjust gamma on the player, this condition was a consistent issue during dark scenes. For people who don't adjust the brightness on the player this could be a real problem. The picture in Constantine was not as noisy as the previous movie and so I didn't see too many occurrences of noise that detracted from the viewing experience. There was quite a bit of motion in this disc, which gave the Oppo OPDV971H a chance to show off its motion adaptive deinterlacing ability along with a consistent color representation that didn't seem to falter (lose bit depth) during action-heavy scenes.

Listening Evaluation

We plan on writing a follow up to this article that discusses the audio capabilities of the player. We were unable to do sufficient A-B testing and evaluations in the time allotted so we opted to publish the review with an emphasis on video performance. In a part 2 article we will publish reports on the bass management features and overall analogue audio output performance.

Conclusion

This player has been hyped almost to the point of being the holy grail of DVD players. In all honesty, for the $199 MSRP it really is a great player. The differences come down to black level, build quality, audio capability, bass management, and the responsiveness and usability. For the price you really can't pass up the video quality of this player - especially if you're looking for a source component to match with a digital display.