Oppo DV-983H 1080p Upscaling DVD Player with ABT video processing

Oppo’s decision to introduce the DV-983H – a 1080p upscaling DVD player which costs around £310 – may seem an unusual one for 2008. In the 1080p arena, the DV-983H is competing against the Playstation 3, which, for around the same amount, can give you true 1080p quality from Blu-ray Disc. Given the PS3’s reputation as a great upscaling DVD player, people might wonder why Oppo’s DV-983H would even be necessary.

It’s probably worth mentioning this competition explicitly in this review, because, make no mistake, the PS3 is an attractive proposition. In fact, if you don’t already have some sort of Blu-ray player, I strongly recommend that you stop reading this review and get one of those first because there is absolutely no alternative to real 1080p. If you’re still with me though, then you’ll likely want to know why the Oppo DV-983H is better at playing back your large SD DVD collection than the Playstation 3 is. For a start, the PS3 is region locked, meaning that it’s difficult to take seriously for those of us with diverse SD DVD collections, no matter how good its image quality may be. Secondly, the image quality of the 983H is different (in a way which I personally deem to be better) than the PS3’s SD playback anyway.

Aesthetically, the player strongly resembles the earlier Oppo DV-980H, the major differences being the removal of the front directional pad (no real loss), and the movement of the USB port to the back panel. It’s slightly thicker, too, but overall it looks mostly the same (and by “the same”, I mean sleek, black and with the stylish brushed metal look). This is no real surprise, because the 983 is, in some senses, a super-charged Oppo 980 with more capable Deinterlacing and Scaling chips working inside.

In the 983, the familiar (and excellent) Mediatek MPEG decoder design, from which all of Oppo’s players are based, is supported by not one but two additional chips (which suddenly explain the player’s price). These are both from Anchor Bay (the video processing company, not the niche film label) and are the ABT102, which is primarily in charge of deinterlacing, and the ABT1018, in charge of scaling. This array of machinery, in theory, means that this Oppo will be able to tackle anything you throw at it.

Round the back, the 983H has outputs for HDMI, digital audio in both Coaxial and Optical forms, and support for analogue video and audio output formats. It also has In and Out 3.5mm jacks and an RS-232C port for system automation. For this review, the 983H was tested outputting 1080p over HDMI on both a Sony KDL-40W2000 40” 1080p LCD and a 123” projection setup using a Sony VPL-VW60. Component Video was also used for further testing.

Picture Tweaks and Setup

After power-up, the 983 greets us with the familiar Oppo logo and fairly unattractive, generic on-screen menus. Standard options to control the Aspect Ratio, Audio, and more are located within these 5 menu pages. The most interesting switches are to be found inside the Video Setup page, where the user can adjust Sharpness, Noise Reduction, Y/C Delay, CUE-Correction, Deinterlacing, Frame Rate Conversion, and Colour Space.


The Sharpness control is, for once, a really nice feature! This is the first reminder that this is a premium player. Gently notching it up can help bring out details in lesser DVD transfers whilst keeping ringing to a minimum, and there is also a lot to be said for reducing the Sharpness setting into the negative figures (it goes to -2). Since most DVD transfers contain very little high frequency information to start with, it’s possible in some cases to use this control to blur out compression artefacts without blurring out actual picture detail (obviously though, it should be used with caution).

The Sharpness control comes set to 0, which to my eyes actually doesn’t look like “0” at all and appears slightly edge enhanced. That said, the quality of the processing is such that many people will like this careful high-frequency boost, so I wouldn’t advise worrying too much. The -1 setting on the 983 actually exhibits slightly more ringing than the Oppo 980, but I doubt this will be visible outside of test patterns. Interestingly, the Component output does not exhibit this behaviour.

Moving on, the Noise Reduction control is actually a bit of a misnomer. The manual explains that this is actually a tool for removing compression artefacts, not the analogue-style moving noise that the name typically suggests. I could not see this control having any effect, which is actually probably a good thing because compression artefact reduction is still a very tricky area.

Y/C Delay will be a function familiar to video enthusiasts, and it describes the horizontal alignment of the coloured areas of the picture relative to the black and white background signal. Some older DVDs (and some displays) do not have the Y (Brightness) and C (Colour) components aligned properly, which can create a very distracting colour bleed effect. This option lets you correct this. The ABT1018 chip can actually perform this adjustment at the sub-pixel level, but Oppo have instead chosen to implement it in 7 stages (-3 to 3), with each adjustment shifting the colour component a few pixels at a time. This should probably be precise enough for most uses, though.

CUE-Correction is technically another misnomer. “CUE” stands for Chroma Upsampling Error and describes an error in the MPEG decoder of some DVD players, which means that films with bright colours appear with obvious colour jaggedness. The DV-983H does not have the CUE error to start with. Instead, the “CUE-Correction” option actually targets another very similar problem which has been termed “ICP” (Interlaced Chroma Problem) and is actually not an error on Oppo’s part, but an inherent flaw with interlaced video on DVD (which is why I make the distinction). Basically, this filter combats this inherent flaw and smooths out jaggedness from the colour channel, and can be set to Auto, On or Off. The “Auto” setting wisely deploys it only when necessary and leaves Progressive content untouched.

The De-interlacing mode comes set to Auto by default, but there’s also a Film Bias Mode which I turned on. There are also options to force Video Mode (I’m not sure why anyone would want to, unless they wanted to remind themselves for a second why cheap DVD players are best avoided), and two functions for forcing de-interlacing of trickier 2:2 cadence material, should the “Auto” or “Film Bias” modes prove incapable.

The mysteriously named “Video Mode” option can be switched to either “Video1” or “Video2”, and actually relates to frame rate conversions between 50 and 60hz. This is here more for the benefit of our North American friends and European users won’t have to worry about it, since our HDTVs accept both standards natively without potentially degrading conversions.

Speaking of degrading conversions, remember to set your TV Type to AUTO in the Preferences page to enable native scan-rate output.

Deinterlacing Performance: PAL Film Playback

To test the DV-983H’s PAL DVD playback, I picked out a few of the more detailed Region 2 film DVDs I could find. These were Panic Room, the Superbit release of Hannibal, and the arthouse film Choses Secretes (“Secret Things”). I also picked out Fox’s Romeo+Juliet, which is not very detailed but also does not contain much ringing, in order to fairly test the capabilities of the player’s detail enhancement (controlled with the Sharpness setting). Not surprisingly, my preference for this setting varied depending on my display device. On my 40” HDTV (LCD), I preferred leaving it at the 0 setting, whereas on my 123” projection setup (SXRD), I chose to add a little sharpening to even the most detailed discs (this is standard definition, after all).

Beforehand, though, I ran the Silicon Optix HQV evaluation disc (PAL version, naturally) and had a look at the Cadence Tests to gauge how well the 983H was detecting and compensating for the 2:2 PAL film cadence. The results were actually a little disappointing in this regard, because on the test clip, the player took a whole 11 seconds to lock on while in “Auto” mode, and in real world content would actually lose cadence and fall back to Video mode. You can of course force the player into 2:2 mode, a feature I was ecstatic to see on Oppo’s budget 980H model, but one which really shouldn’t be necessary on this flagship player. However, I should add that the version I reviewed was using American firmware optimised for NTSC playback. Oppo’s European division tells me that this will be improved in a later firmware update for European users, so watch this space.

Fortunately, once the player did lock on, normal service was resumed and the results were fine, with film content looking as good as it should. For more problematic material like the aforementioned Romeo+Juliet, the Sharpness control was effective at squeezing some more joy out of its softened transfer. The disc was never terrible to start with, but like most DVDs it has been low-pass filtered. Unusually though, it would appear that the disc encoding team have not used any edge enhancement to superficially compensate for the detail loss imposed by the filter, meaning that on today’s displays, it can look a little soft (but at least better than a disc with excess ringing added on top!) The Anchor Bay detail enhancing algorithm did a good job of giving the disc a new lease of life, while keeping such undesirable elements to a minimum.

Deinterlacing Performance: NTSC Film Playback

As a high-end player, it wasn’t surprising that the 983H aced any NTSC film playback test I threw at it. The NTSC HQV test disc showed that it almost immediately locked onto the correct 3:2 cadence in the Film Detail test.

Moving on, every single one of the film cadence tests displayed perfectly in a similarly timely manner. Those include 2-2 30fps film (as seen on some US TV shows such as Friends), 2-2-2-4 DVCAM, 2-3-3-2 DVCAM, (gasp for breath) 3-2-3-2-2 Vari-speed, 5-5 Animation, 6-4 Animation, and 8-7 Anime.

And of course, the most common type of NTSC disc – Progressively Flagged 3:2 content - plays perfectly, as you’d expect. This all means that this player’s NTSC film performance is, as far as I’m aware, bullet-proof.

Deinterlacing Performance: Video (50i/60i)

It’s hard to evaluate the quality of Video-based content, simply because the conversion to Progressive Scan can never be perfect. All we can ask of a video device is to conceal jaggies as much as possible and reconstruct information between the fields that is simply not present in the original source.

And conceal jaggies the 983 does. The HQV benchmark disc showed that the “rotating bars” pattern was as free of nastiness as could be expected. I also looked at some real-world content in the form of interlaced animated discs, and was pleased to see the “CUE Filter” correctly smoothed the colour channel when set to the “Auto” mode, eradicating jagged edges.

Scaling ("Upconverting") Performance and Other Tests

With the Deinterlacing performance covered, it’s time to talk about the second stage of adapting legacy DVD content to today’s HD panel displays: Scaling. This can really make or break an image in terms of detail, and is in fact the reason why upconverting DVD players exist in the first place: the scaling algorithms built into most HDTVs just aren’t good enough at resolving all of the detail possible from the 576 or 480 lines they are fed directly from the disc.

Again, it seems logical to use the Playstation 3 for comparison given its similar price point and reputation as a good quality DVD player (I have praised it myself). The PS3’s scaling algorithm is unique and has an easily identifiable look. It appears to pick out the highest frequencies (the smallest details), give them a slight sharpness boost, and then smooth their edges. This gives fine details an almost rounded, vector look, and works wonders for content like simpler animation and computer graphics – and on test patterns.

However, after spending time with the 983, the flaws of the PS3’s approach to scaling become more apparent. First, upon closer inspection, photorealistic film material can take on a slightly artificial, processed appearance. It’s difficult to describe, but at times, can look similar to the “notched” effect that’s used on paperback book covers. Second, MPEG mosquito noise is also technically high-frequency information, so it becomes more visible, too.

By comparison, the scaling in the Oppo 983H is a lot more natural looking. On a disc which contains a high amount of detail and originates from grainy film stock, the 983H retained all of the detail and presented the film’s texture as intended. The PS3, on the other hand, presented a more artificial picture. These differences, though, will be harder to spot on most discs – the ones I used for comparison were all notable for having a higher than average amount of detail.


Play spot the difference for yourself here (ignoring the quirks associated with taking pictures from a TV screen – I include them only because anything is better than words alone; the difference is much more noticeable in real life). Look especially at how the Oppo 983 (left) has retained the small “notched” details at the top of the explosion, whereas the PS3 (right) has smoothed them into one curve. Also pay attention to how the PS3 has created posterised effect and created ridges of different tones around the top of the white area.

Bottom line: the 983 gives a very cinematic picture.

Audio and Other Features

Another feature granted to the Oppo 983 by the capable video processing chips is the Zoom function. The most useful application of this feature is the “Full Screen” mode, which can be used to adapt any remaining old non-anamorphic (letterboxed) DVDs in your collection to retain their correct proportions on today’s widescreen displays.

Like the Oppo 980, the Oppo 983 can play DivX, Xvid and MP3 files from a FAT32-formatted USB stick or hard disk (the socket is on the back of the player). I don’t personally have any use for this feature, but in the interests of reviewing, I tried playing a few such files from a USB stick and sure enough, they worked and could be controlled the same way as a DVD would. I have heard that some people have experienced problems playing certain files, but given the fact that user-created content is rarely made to any strict standard or specification, this is to be expected in any case.

The 983 can also play Super Audio CD and DVD Audio discs, a feature I haven’t tested simply because I don’t own any.

Usability, Menus and Remote

I’ve written about the usability of Oppo players before, and the 983 is exactly the same. The remote control is identical to that bundled with the DV-980H, meaning that it’s visually slightly offputting, but satisfying to use (and the buttons glow in the dark for those of us with projectors). The menus are simple and impossible to get lost in, fast to respond to user input, but visually fairly unattractive.

The layer change time on this player is also incredibly short. On discs that are filled almost to full capacity, it can, in fact, be non-existent (this is because the laser only needs to refocus to the second layer and begin working inwards again, whereas on discs that are not full, it has to refocus and then realign itself before playback can continue). The layer change typically lasts about 0.4 of a second. There is no audio dropout after the layer change, so playback is almost completely uninterrupted.

Conclusion

Oppo’s DV-983H is one hell of a DVD player. If you don’t already have a Blu-ray Disc player, I’d advise that you put one of those on your shopping list before you go after DVD near-perfection. That “one of those” right now may well be a Playstation 3, which, compared to much of the competition is a very good DVD player.

But if you’re reading a review of a £310 standard-def DVD player, then “not bad” is probably not the benchmark you go by. When the time comes to squeeze more performance out of your standard-def back catalogue – or if you aren’t ready to take the Blu plunge just yet – then put the 983 at the top of your list. I would be lying if I were to say the player was perfect (in particular I’d like to see it’s auto-detection for PAL film content improved). But I’d also be lying if I were to say I could think of a better overall DVD player than this.