Upgrade from Oppo 971H to 983H?
 

I just got a new Panasonic 50" 1080p plasma monitor and I was thinking of upgrading to one of the new Oppo 1080p upconverting DVD players. I asked the folks at Oppo, and they have advised me against the upgrade, saying that I probably won't see much improvement. The new Oppo 983H sure sounds fine but if I won't see much improvement in picture quality, why bother dropping the $400. The alternative would be to wait for them to release their Blu ray player and upgrade then.

If the manufacturers are telling you that you won't see much/any improvement, why even ask here? That'd be good enough for me. I mean, they only stand to make money on selling you that. That's honesty you rarely see these days. Big ups to Oppo for that :thumbsup:

Oppo is not the cheapest out there, but they are definitely at the top in the bang to buck ratio...What they are definitely known for is customer service. Same day e-mail responses and e-mailed beta firmwares to fix specific problems don't come from the "big boys." The 983 really looks like a great machine, but the "big secret" that nobody (except Oppo apparently!) will admit is that these kind of upgrades (I'm not talking 1080 vs. 480 or something significant) only become readily apparent at larger sizes with close seating distances.

Get the player, it's amazing. I don't know why Oppo said you won't notice a difference. I went for the same upgrade and I saw a difference and my TV is much smaller than yours. The 983 also has an HDMI port, and a USB input. The ABT processors are also top-notch. You'll see a difference, for sure. The best $400 I ever spent on my home setup.

i sold off both sets of my 981 in anticipation of the 983 :)

I bought my Oppo two years ago when the format war raged on with no end in sight.

At this point I am not sure I would upgrade to another Oppo versus buying a Blu-ray player. There are quite a few new Blu-ray players coming out soon and since they can upconvert too it would seem to make more sense to go that route. But that is just me.

Oppo's new 983 player includes Anchor Bay Tech deinterlacer and scaler. These are powerful chips and are virtually unheard of when it comes to DVD players.

There are no BD player that has anything close to that processing power. The only thing that even comes to this are the Sammy 1400 and 5000 players, using the HQV processors. ABT has better processors, in my opinion. The reason I wouldn't get those players is that they only play region 1 DVDs, an my collection contains a high proportion of non-region-1 DVDs.

I would recommend getting the 983, especially with a nice Panny plasma. :) With a projector, there would certainly be a difference, as well. :)

Thanks all. I think I might go and pick up a 983 (when they become available again). I certainly have a lot invested in my DVD collection. I'll probably wait to buy a Blu-ray player until they start releasing disks that I actually want to watch.