but does it have all region playback?

There is no impending Blu-ray transition

I love my oppo, still use it in my bedroom now that I got blu-ray downstairs.

sexy

It costs as much as a Blu-Ray player. Why on earth would you buy (or even make) an upscaling player when you can buy a Blu-Ray player for the same price!?

@graffiksguru: same here, love it for precise and acurate upscaling of my normal dvds and divx... great pictures at normal viewing distance on my LG HDTV 37inch, sometimes I ask myself if they are not HD !

@graffiksguru: same here: love my oppo with its great and acurate upscaling of my normal dvds and divx: sometimes I ask myself how it could be more HD than the result I have on screen with a normal DVD... especially the recent ones: Ratatouille looks so gorgeous !!!

Same here: love my oppo with its great and accurate upscaling of my normal dvds and divx: sometimes I ask myself how it could be more HD than the result I have on screen with a normal DVD... especially the recent ones: Ratatouille looks so gorgeous !!!

WTF with the refreshing of the comments, it's a mess for days !

I too love my Oppo. Best money I have ever spent.
What was that Blue thing everyone keeps talking about?

Eh... but I don't like Blu-Ray. I mean, yeah, that's great that you can be interactive with a movie, but wtf? Seriously, if I'm watching a movie, I want to just watch it. I don't want to answer trivia while watching a movie. Yes, I want HD, but I don't want to pay extra for features I'll never use.

don't hd tv's upscale already? why upgrade a dvd player for this feature?

@Kiamat: Because the Blu-Ray players even in this pricerange don't specialize in up-converting the picture as well as the Oppo. This little guy soley focuses on DVD playback at the best possible picture.

@Kiamat: euh... let me guess... maybe because you want to see your hundred of owned dvds with the best quality possible on your brand new HDTV...
HDTV+OPPO+MonsterCable= normal dvds look like HD quality at normal viewing range. worst every penny !

I'm hoping for an Oppo changer.

It's funny to see the people looking at pricing - you find me a BluRay that does better upscaling than this.

Why didn't they put the USB connection on the front. Would have made connecting a zip drive much easier.

@Dude27: Awe and you were doing so well until you mentioned the monster cable.

Besides which, if you're going to splash out $399 on a play, you may as well buy a Blu Ray player. The PS3 has excellent upscaling capabilities that are frequently cited as some of the best around.

Or you can probably get the same upscaler chip used in the Oppo by buying a clearanced HD-DVD player for $75.

If nothing else, most things don't need 1080p of Blu-Ray - high-def blurry is still blurry, after all. You just have more pixels to represent the blurriness in greater clarity. (For a large majority of movies, the director's use of such cinematic effects (soft focus, depth-of-view control, etc) render the extra resolution useless, like 12MP digital point and shoot cameras.

Of course, there are a few (like Transformers) that are really just CGI fests, and do need 1080p to view properly, but still, for things like drama and action flicks, you're probably going to have a hard time telling the difference between the two.

Also why they use movies like Transformers to show why Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is better than DVD... (I see it in the combo player displays) but that's a marketing thing.

LOL @ people thinking upscaling = blu ray

It does not. Its not even close. My wife can tell the difference with ease.

Get a ps3/blu ray and get over yourself...put the oppo on your kids tv where it belongs now.

i used to have $1500 DENON dvd player...ebayd it. Oppo made a good upconverting player a few years ago...but its a 2nd room player now and so is this.

Oh and buy a true 1080p high def tv while you are at it and hook up the right cables...the yellow one isnt the right one FYI.

@Worf: Seriously! Get an HD-A30 for $129 and you have the same ABT chip (1018).

$400 for a DVD player....sorry no thank you.

@Worf: Depth of field.... Depth of field.
Point is, something is still in focus regardless of how big of an aperture you're using.

I had a PS3, sold it. I got banding on some playback, got it warrantied, sold it for what I bought it for, my wife and I decided 1 game player was enough, so we kept the one we used more. HATED the BT remote on it (stupid decision, IR is better), and upconversion was not as good as my HD-A2, let alone the Oppos, which have STELLAR upconversion.

I just bought a Denon 2845 for the HT setup, and while I didn't have the unit when I had the PS3, I know that this is on par with the HD-A2 for DVD playback (and adds needed SACD and DVD-Audio).

Blu Ray is only good if you are replacing your collection....I am not. This unit is for playback of DVDs, it is not even comparable.

Ill stick with my PS3.

@twylight: LOL at you for thinking people are talking about playing BluRay's. This is for upconverting your regular old DVD's. Something the BluRay players do...just not as well as the Oppo. So, if you have a STACK of DVD's, no BluRay movies and no plans to get a BluRay player this is what you want.

@icepick314: Every Oppo I've owned has the ability to be made region free from the service menu. This one has that ability as well.

And the best thing is that you can play PAL DVDs and have them convert to play on your NTSC TV on the fly...!

@Lizard_King: Wait, I don't understand. IR is better than Bluetooth? You must be one of those persons who likes to churn their butter rather than buy it at a grocery store. Get with the future!

@ninjamurf: I think twylight is referring to people who think upconverted DVD quality is equal to Blu-ray. I would agree that it is not. It may be close depending on the movie but for a lot of the DVD's out there there is no comparison.

wow this is a horrible recommendation. just get a PS3. it does DVD upconversion, too. It's really moot to debate which player does better DVD upconversion because upconversion is just adding data that wasn't there...if you want better picture at HD resolution...bite the bullet and go Blu-Ray.

@Lizard_King: IR is better than BT? are you serious? if you said RF is bettern BT, then maybe that's a better argument...but IR?

Oppo is the shit, I can't wait till they come out with Blu-Ray playback functionality.

my PS3 rocks at upscaling (currently have 2.10 FW), plus I can play blu-ray. In fact, I thought the picture was awesom - until I got some Blu Ray movies.

Granted, I don't have any of the same movies on both DVD & Blu Ray, but there is a definite difference between Spiderman & Spiderman 2 on DVD & Spidey 3 on Blu Ray. BRD feels almost 3D to me.

I can't imagine plunking down $400 for an upscaler, when for the same price, I can keep my DVD collection, start adding in Blu Ray & on top of that, Madden, MLB The Show, COD4 all in 1080p!!

@jzulli: You must be one of those types of people that cannot see the bigger picture. The future is no proprietary control, it's ubiquitous control.

Yes, IR is better than Bluetooth. IR can be used with Universal remotes (like Logitech's Harmony - god-awful software and all, or my choice is the Niles Intellicontrol). In some cases, those remotes are RF (like Bluetooth) but allow control of other devices that are IR.

Sony could 1-up the whole process by making a bluetooth universal remote with IR-eyes for IR devices, and no adapter needed for the PS3 or RF native devices.

@primetime4: But he's throwing the smack down on people that may want to buy this Oppo. He's telling everyone to just buy a 1080p TV and a PS3 and get over it already. Well, 720p is fine by me especially considering the fact that broadcasters don't even have 1080p on their radar. There are absolutely no plans to broadcast in 1080p in the near future. So I don't want/need BluRay OR a PS3. This Oppo is the bomb (when the price comes down a bit) for what I want to do, and that's watch the hundreds of standard DVD's that I have access to. Watching them on a good upscaler is a bonus.

@bubuli: You'r smoking crack if you think the PS3 upscaler is anywhere near the Oppo's. Upscaling does make a difference. A big one actually. If it was as "automatic" as you would like to believe why do companies continue to work on their upscalers? The first one out of the box should have been just fine right? Well...no. The Faroujda upscaler has been blowing the doors off the competition for years in the past. It's interesting to see that this new Oppo is supposed to have a better upscaler than it's previous Faroujda based machines.

@DrXym: depending where you got it... I bought mine on the internet for just 30US$ (the MC 400 hdmi instead of 99$ at Best Buy Canada)

And to all the other: I bought my OPPO because it's the dream machine for me: it upscale amazingly normal dvds as well as DIVX (try to even find an known brand upscaler DVD which do that for this format) and because It's region Free (with a little easy code), I bought mine for 200 buck, I don't regret it one second... my DVDs play with perfect details on my 37' HDTV and I'm very happy with it...

I have a PS3, and was a little disappointed at it's standard dvd upscaling, compared to a $100 Norcent (changed to liteon firmware) hooked up to my 1080 sony. Blueray disks are much better, much more detail, I compared Pirates1 on standard dvd upscaled, to blueray at the same time, blue wins hands down, so i'll be buying bluerays from now on. But the PS3 upscaling is not as good as my old Norcent, the ps3 seems to crop 16x9 movies, showing less of the screen, and the color rendition is not as good. Also the Norcent video seems to be smoother somehow, the ps3 has a slight 'flipcard' effect, or is it my imagination? So i'm sticking with 2 players for now, until perhaps sony upgrades the playback software for the ps3, hell my old samsung Nuon player did infinite smooth zooming. I'll also try loading linux on the ps3 and see how linux dvd players fair.

does anyone else find it funny that if you switch around the letters in oppo, you get poop?

I have seen upscaling players at video stores, and the only purpose is to do the best job of converting a 480p signal into a 1080p (or 1080i) signal for your TV. The result of that conversation is the quality of the upscaling. However, it does not change the fact that you are still looking at a 480p source. Yes, the resolution was changed, and yes, it might do a nice job of interpreting the missing pixels, but the fact is that it is still 480p.

I have to agree with the folks saying that your money is better spent on a PS3. Maybe the upscaling is not quite as good (although Sony can and has improved that), but then you will have a forward-thinking player that may eventually upscale as good or better.

@flynboarder07: GROW UP, MAN

@imTheKing:

In my eyes [opinion], my 981 upscales better than my PS3 does.

And while 983's features sound great, but the jump in price inspires feelings of "meh"- even a fantastic upscaler shouldn't creep into that price range. It's also not region free, which is a bit of a downer as well.

The PS3 does a damned good upconversion - maybe not QUITE as good as this Oppo, but for $400 either way, you get a lot more from the PS3. I would also just note that the Sta Wars trilogy disks (the real movies) played on the PS3 look better than the Cinemax 1080i broadcasts. Same 1080p 46" LCD TV, same HDMI switching Denon receiver. They are possibly the cleanest, sharpest DVDs I've ever seen - if all DVDs looked like that I wouldn't be bothering with Blu-Ray.

@ninjamurf: Do you still have your VHS's too? Cause you're acting the same way as a lot of folks when DVD first came out. Instead, buy a PS3, some Blu-Ray vids, and replace that soon to be obsolete dvd collection just like you did with your VHS tapes.
(And when I say "you", I dont mean YOU, I mean all the Poop @flynboarder07: upscaler fanboys.
This is technology, folks! Are you reading this on your orig. Apple computer?

@C4L3: Replacement of media is rediculous when you are talking about backwards compatible players. I cannot see myself buying an HD versions of all my movies. I want the best player for my DVD collection, and for many reasons, the PS3 is NOT it. Just because Blu Ray came out, does not mean DVDs are finished, there is no reason I cannot get good quality using an upscaler - currently, I am not going for Blu Ray until they make a better component player, when that happens, I will re-evaluate, until then I can watch my DVDs in very high quality

Picked one of these up to replace my aging (and lackluster) Denon DVD-2200. Figure this will probably be the last SD DVD player I ever buy.

Anyone who suggests buying a Blu-Ray player right now isn't forward thinking, they're a complete fucking idiot. The spec still isn't final and I'll be damned if I'd buy that piece of shit PS3 just to use it as a DVD player. It might have one good game in its entire lifespan that I won't be able to get on Xbox. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together will wait until the Blu-Ray spec is final and buy a standalone player, with an ethernet connection to upgrade firmware, when they finally drop to reasonable prices. (Christmas? Next Christmas?)

@Kered: piece of shit ps3? and you own a XBOX 360? hahahahahaha oh please. Your saying that your lame ass xbox 360 that has a higher failure rate than windows vista, is a great product? Talk about being the dumb average consumer...

By the way dickwad, PS3 can update via ethernet to the final spec. Now go hang yourself.