Progressive scan or upconverting player?

[mighty mint]

A review and explanation of why the new Oppo is cheaper.
Oppo 970HD review
It is exactly what I referred to - it doesn't use the same processing chip for upscaling.

[plissken99]

So, your sacrificing a little performance for a few features with the 970, either will be excellent so it's up to you. I see it lacks 2:2 pulldown in the review, which will make most PAL discs look like crap, but if you have none it won't be a biggie.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by mighty mint

A review and explanation of why the new Oppo is cheaper.
Oppo 970HD review
It is exactly what I referred to - it doesn't use the same processing chip for upscaling.

Here is another review to check out.

As for the 'importance' of DCDi, read this from this page

Originally Posted by Home Theater HiFi

A look at Faroudja DCDi™

No matter how good a deinterlacer is, sometimes it must scale up all or part of a single field to a full frame, which produces ugly stairsteps on diagonal lines. DCDi™ is Faroudja's method of minimizing those jagged stairsteps. It is important to note that it only helps with video mode deinterlacing, which is used on video sourced material, and during those times when the deinterlacer can't get a good lock on the 3-2 cadence on film-sourced material. In film mode, DCDi™ is not applicable.

When a deinterlacer scales a 240-line field to a 480-line frame, another word for that process is upsampling, because it uses 240 lines worth of input samples (or pixels) to create 480 lines of output samples. Hence the number of samples is going up. Simplicity itself. To do this, each pixel of the 480 line output is created by applying a weighted average of several of the input pixels. Under normal circumstances, those input pixels will be the ones just above and below the output pixel's location. In other words, the sampling angle is completely vertical (or 90 degrees).

With DCDi™, the direction of sampling can vary from pixel to pixel. When creating an output pixel, the algorithm looks at a small local patch of input pixels, and looks for a strong diagonal contour. If there is one, then the sampling direction is set to be perpendicular to the local contour. For example, if the algorithm determines that there is a 45-degree diagonal line running through the pixel in question, then the input samples will be gathered along a diagonal line that crosses the line in the image at a right angle (or 1350). When there is no easily identifiable contour, the algorithm falls back on the standard angle of 900.

The result of all this math is a much smoother image, with fewer annoying jagged edges. It doesn't necessarily look exactly like the "true" image that you'd see if the source were higher resolution, because the algorithm can't magically recreate details that aren't there in the source, but it does represent a better interpolation of the image, more like what a human might do if asked to smooth out the image by hand. It's also possible to see artifacts at times where the algorithm looks worse than the simpler strategy (for example the resolution wedge on the WHQL disc), but those are few and far between. Most of the time, DCDi™ is a big improvement.

Peace...

[Iguana Man]

Tom, you realize you linked a review to the 971...right? Not sure if you wanted to compare them or show an alternate 970 review.

It seems to me both the 970 and 971 are excellent for the price players. I don't see how you could go wrong with either of them Might Mint.

I may order one myself to replace my oldy-but-still-goody Elite DV-05.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by Iguana Man

Tom, you realize you linked a review to the 971...right? Not sure if you wanted to compare them or show an alternate 970 review.

Yep I knew that but that's the only Oppo unit the Secrets guys have evaluated. The information they provide in addition to the info in the 970 review might help make a purchase decision, either way.

Peace...