I have the 360 HD add on, but I have heard the Oppo does an incredible job upconverting standard dvd's.

Would you all recommend one of these players? I love HD-DVD's, but the fact remains that I have a TON of standard dvd's that I would love to see in better picture quality if there is technology out there that can do this.

Thanks.

I have had the Oppo for over a year and love it. It's upconversion capabilities are bar none the best I've seen. While the pic is still less than HD, it's is far better than a 480i/p image from a standard player. I watched the HD DVD of Superman Returns on my 360 add on and then watched portions of the standard def version on my Oppo, the difference was negligible. But when I played the Standard Def through the Xbox 360, it looked pretty terrible.

I can't recommend this player enough, especially since Oppo regularly provides firmware upgrades on their site and the player is region free.

Are you using a VGA cable with your 360?
From what I've read, that's the only way to get the 360 to upconvert.

I love my Oppo. I have an Hd-A1 and I actually prefer the Oppo for upconverting with my setup. It doesn't beat an actually Hd Dvd, but it's great for SD.

I've heard bad thing about the DCDi by Faroudja with the use of Panasonics. Is this true? I could be mistaken, but I thought I remembered reading on the avsforum about some major problem with the faroudja chip and macroblocking or something like that.

This is true to an extent, but I have not noticed many instances of it. Depends on the disc. For instance, I've seen next to no blocking in the dark space scenes on Revenge Of The Sith, but on some older DVD's, black scenes do show some blocking.

I've seen owners of both the HD-A1 and Oppo split down the middle on which one upconverts better. I think they both give a top-notch upconverted picture.

if you have Master and Commander, I believe the fog scenes are a good indicator. I don't own the movie, but it someone does and has an Oppo, I'd be curious to hear if it can handle all that fog.

If I get a chance this weekend I'll try and check that out. I haven't watched that one since before I got the Oppo.

Well I had the Oppo and thought it did a good job, but I think my A1 does a better job at upconversion. Just my opinion obviously and I do have a Panny TV. I will say on Revenge of the Sith I could see the blocking pretty clearly with the Oppo and with other dark scenes that I just dont get with the A1. The one thing hands down the A1 is better at is sound obviously so that may be something to consider as well.

I found I had to adjust my brightness on my display for the Oppo form where I used to have it for my other players. It's probably a little lower than "average", which may be why I don't see as much blocking.

If you're worried about Macroblocking, there is that other Oppo model that does DVD-A and SACD and has an HDMI port. I heard it's not quite as good image-wise, but better image with macroblocking versus slightly worse image without is sort of a toss-up.

That's the 970HD. It's the one I have, it doesn't use the Faroudja scaler and so it doesn't suffer from the macroblocking. The picture looks great to me. Some movies the HD-A1 will do a better job, but not so great that it's worth it for me to boot up the HD-A1. Plus the Oppo is region-free and plays PAL discs, not to mention DVD-A. It pretty much plays everything you throw at it. I have far too many R2 and R3 dvds not to use it. If you want an HD-A1 then I would go with that as no upscaled dvd, no matter how good, will beat HD DVD, but since OP already has the 360 add on, I would probably pick up the Oppo. At $150 it's pretty hard to beat, even if you just use it as a secondary player.

I have an Oppo and was never dissapointed in it's upconverting. It even plays DIVX files, which comes in handy when the DVR misses an episode.

I also have the HD-DVD playing Toshiba HD-A1, and I think it's a tad better at upconverting.

If you have no want for HD-DVD, grab an Oppo. It works great, and you can't beat the price. It even plays PAL discs (cause it upconverts it to 720p or 1080i from the 560i or whatever PAL is.)

The oppo PAL at 50hz. upconverted to 720P looks exceptional too. It can convert to NTSC or play native PAL.

Hey guys...

I'd just like some clarification. I feel like I keep hearing that the Oppo can upconvert to 720p or 1080i, etc. I also hear, though, that the Oppo isn't true HD content.

But aren't 720p and 1080i high definition terms?

Upconversion is when you take a source of one resolution and artificially add information to take advantage of a higher resolution display. In the case of the Oppo, it's taking 480p information and artifically creating a 720p/1080i image. These images aren't considered truly HD because the source isn't HD. And anyone who says that upconverting can look just as good as an HD DVD has either seen some awful HD DVDs or doesn't know what they're talking about.

Agreed. The Oppo is fantastic at what it does, but no matter how good an upconverted Batman Begins looks, it will get destroyed by the HD DVD version.

Ok, I've been looking into upcoversion/hd-dvd for a while now.
Currently I just have a normal dvd player and my 42 inch samsung dlp.
I noticed some dvds don't look that hot anymore, But I just finished Batman Begins on normal dvd, and thought it looked fantastic. The question now is ... I know a dvd of batman begins upconverted won't look as good as the HD dvd of batman begins ... but how much better will it look compared to just the normal dvd on a hdtv?
And since I hear the A1 hdplayer does upconversion as good as the oppo. How much more would I have to pay to get that then the Oppo?
thanks

Well the Oppo is $150-$199 and the A1, if you can find one, is $399-$499.

If the a-1, a-2 could be made region-free and play PAL discs, I would sell my oppo and jumo in already but they can't. I have ALOT of PAL and multi-region discs, many of which are titles that one can't get in R1, so I'll be keeping my oppo for now.

The A1 and A2 are region free and HD-DVDs are not region encoded. So what's your excuse now?

They are not region free AFAIK. They will not play PAL or DVDs from a region other than 1. HD-DVDs are not region encoded right now, so yes, the A1 and A2 are region free but only when talking about HD-DVDs. Not SD DVDs.

That's correct. The HD-A1 will not play non-R1 SD DVD's.

I just wanted to mention a comparison I did the other day.

I watched the new Home Alone disc upconverted via HDMI-DVI on my BDP-S1. It didn't look quite as good as I thought it could, especially based on some decent reviews. Of course it's a 16 year old film, but the print is in excellent shape and the transfer should look quite good.

I decided to check out the disc upconverted from my BDP-S1, my HD-A1 and my Oppo 971. Since I don't have three copies of the disc I couldn't A-B them in real-time. However, I got a good feel for some specific scenes and remembered their traits.

On my display via my display's DVI-HDCP, I found the HD-A1 and BDP-S1 to be near identical, with a slight edge going to the HD-A1. However, the Oppo was noticeably nicer looking. Better detail and less noise.

Since the 971 has a DVI port on the back and not an HDMI port, I have to wonder if maybe I lose something in the HDMI-DVI conversion.

I should note that PQ has been excellent via HDMI-DVI from the BDP-S1 for Blu-Ray discs. I've been using my HD-A1 via componenty for HD-DVD's due to the black crushing via HDMI, but the component looks just as good as the Blu-Ray via HDMI.

I had the oppo on my Sammy DLP HLP6163. It upconverted best of the sub $300 players. BUT, I noticed macroblocking on some movies especially dark scenes. It annoyed the hell out of me.

Chronicles of Narnia: LWW was worst. Im sure its display dependant, but it was bad on my sammy. I sold it to my brother.

The A1 does a much better job in my opinion. The movie above plays brilliantly. BUT I have problems playing some DVD-Rs now and it doesnt process errors as well as the Oppo.

For example, I can pop just about any disc in my 360 and it plays (I use it for dvd-rs and PAL discs). Some of the same discs will skip in the A1. Its just more finicky I guess.