OPPO OPDV971H Digital HD-Ready Up-Converting DVD Player
Awesome Worldwide Player even with old hardware
We bought the OPPO 971H for its ability to play NTSC and PAL DVD's from any region out of the box (well... using the remote code). I have been feeding all 30 discs we have from around the world and all appear to play cleanly and very crisply.  <br /> <br />We thought of buying some of the cheaper players, but this player will allow us to upgrade to HDTV and experience the benefits of Upconversion. Plus my husband has a some movies in DIVX format clogging up the computer hard drive. It will be nice to burn some discs and free up some space. <br /> <br />The OPPO 971H also played a disk an old friend of my husbands burned for him way back in 1997 on an old Linux machine. Once again a crisp clean image and flawless play. <br /> <br />Other players we looked at were: <br />1) Toshiba SD-850HD High-Definition DVI/HDMI (regioncodefreedvd was selling for 179 at the time, 149 now) <br />2) Toshiba SD-6980 <br />(wasn't sure about its ability to convert PAL to NTSC) <br />3) Philips 642/ 37 Region Free - Code free DIVX PAL NTSC DVD Player  <br />(we didn't like the reviews on Philips customer service overall) <br />4) several other modified players. (worried about quality) <br />5) buy a european player. (hard to find good reviews) <br /> <br />We got a bit concerned about modified players even though regioncodefreedvd and its various other web names seems to have a good reputation. We liked the idea of a player being designed from the ground up to be multi-region, PAL-NTSC converting, and DIVX/X-Vid capable. HDMI upconverting is just icing. <br /> <br />In the end we liked OPPO's reputation for customer service and the obvious desire to design a better consumer product. We liked what people were saying at AVSforums. We like that the player is designed to be updated constantly. <br /> <br />We have had 4 other players and none looks as nice as the image on my junky old 27\\" Sanyo tv using good old S-video. I know that some folks say that you need to get HDMI/DVI to really have this player shine, and I look forward to getting an HDTV to try it out, but the image for other s-video users with older equipment is as good and better than all the other players I have owned. <br /> <br />Another complaint that I saw about OPPO was criticism of the tray. I love the tray. Not sure what people are talking about?? It is nicely flexible so it won't break if my kids grab a hold of it incidentally. I like that the tray forces you to stick the finger in the middle hole to get the disc out. That way stick tacky kid fingers don't gum up the outside tracks on the DVD's so I have to wipe them off.