Standing just 1.5 inches high, the all-black DV-981HD is nothing if not sleek. The aluminum faceplate lends it a solid, high-quality façade, although the illusion is shattered somewhat by the player's flimsy disc tray. The Oppo offers only a sparse selection of control buttons, so if you misplace the remote control, you'll definitely be in trouble. Speaking of remote controls, this one is a lightweight thing with a large group of similar-size buttons cluttering the surface. Fortunately, its keypad glows in the dark, making button searches during dim viewing sessions a bit easier on the eyes.
SETUP I hooked the DV-981HD up to an Anthem AVM 50 preamp/processor via HDMI (the player comes with a free 2-meter HDMI cable!) and also strung cables between the Oppo's six-channel analog audio output and the Anthem's six-channel audio input. The preamp then passed the player's 1080p/60 video signal directly to an Olevia 747i 1080p LCD HDTV via HDMI. To switch between video output formats on the Oppo, you press a button labeled HDMI on the remote. Selecting the 16:9 Wide/Auto mode from the TV display option in the General Setup menu automatically displays 16:9 (widescreen) and 4:3 (full-screen) DVDs in the correct aspect ratio (the other option, 16:9 Wide, stretches 4:3 pictures to fill out a 16:9 screen area).
The presence of Faroudja/Genesis processing in the DV-981HD means there are more video-tweaking options than you'd find on an average DVD player. True Life, a general brightness and color enhancement mode, can be turned on or off — my positive experiences with it encouraged me to leave it on. You also get standard brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness sliders, along with noise-reduction settings of high, medium, low, and off. Oppo's clear and very informative owner's manual — a rare thing these days — provides surprisingly straightforward guidance concerning the effects of the various video settings, warning of "ghosting" from a too-high noise reduction setting, for example.
The player's audio setup menus provide nearly every setting you'd look for, and then some. The speaker setup option lets you configure the six-channel analog output for systems with large or small speakers, as well as those with or without a subwoofer. And there's also a channel-delay option that lets you dial in distance settings for each speaker, sub included. Other key audio settings include 48-, 96-, or 192-kHz PCM output for the digital audio jacks, Dolby Pro Logic II processing modes (to create multichannel output from stereo soundtracks), and channel-level trims for the analog outputs. With the player hooked up to a receiver via HDMI, selecting Auto from the HDMI audio option also lets it automatically switch between regular Dolby Digital/DTS output for DVD soundtracks and multichannel PCM output (at the highest available sampling frequency) when listening to SACDs and DVD-Audio discs.
