Oppo Dv 981 Hd Dvd Player By Xezx on Jan 26, 2009 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

Hooked up to my Samsung 32" HDTV via HDMI (audio to my Denon via optical) and the picture look very similiar to real Hi-Def. No artifacts, wiggles or other annoying twitches. Sound is awesome through the TV or the receiver. Although all (most anyway) new HDTV's will "upconvert" (stretch) to 16:9...this machine does it so much better, clearer, cleaner and faster than my TV allowing the TV to spend it's time processing the color not the format and pixels. Without a doubt, the best video processing for standard def DVD's. A lot of nice menu features for the techno type but simple enough and more than good enough if you just pop in a DVD and hit play. Well worth the $ especially if your old DVD player can't upconvert and it must rely on the TV to upconvert the picure to 16:9 and then process the video too. This processor is soo much better than a TV's video processor. As far as the competition out there for upconverting players...this one is just as good as my $500 Denon when it comes to the upconversion and picture quality. If you are like many of us and are waiting for the 3rd (or 4th) generation of Blu-Ray (to work out their bugs and final standard) before jumping into that market, this is a very nice "tide-me-over". And this will probably still be better than a cheap blu-ray at upconverting and video processing. Enjoy