audio newbie,
I did a nice bit of listening last night, and will try to report later today when I get some time.

Thanks Papabear

OPPO 970
Hands down the OPPO 970's audio is better than the Samsung 841. Foward presence is enhanced and upper frequency mid and low opened up compairing the oppo 970 to samsung 841. Actually I am reexperiencing my B&W 703's again, its like a sheet was removed from my speakers when the OPPO 970 entered my system.
To be quite honest I had become a little dissapointed in my hi frequency detail and clairity of my system and recently visited an hearing Audiologist, my audiogram test reported my hearing as excellent in all frequencys.
I decided that my dedicated home theater room with carpet, padded walls, curtains either side of the projector screen and padded furniture may have deadend my room.
My problem was the Samsung 841 was my weak link in my system and that became apparent when the OPPO 970 showed up.
Here's a few songs on cd I previewed:

Crusaders (Carmel) Excellent Hi hat on drums and base. I have seen Crusaders live and this was equall to live.
Yellow Jackets (Revelation) cranked up in Bypass is awesome. Is it live or my HT. It is like someone turned on my tweaters.

DVD-A Peter Frampton. This sounded poor on my Samsung 841 and I never listened to it again untill the OPPO 970 showed up. Well the oppo 970 made me a believer in dvd-a sound quality again and I am very satified in that Frampton dvd-a now.
On the oppo's remote you can toggle the angle-zoom keys to view the gallery photos via dvd-a.

SACD Diana Krall (girl in the other room) Excellant on the OPPO 970 but I had to set my speakers to small to use cross over on my outlaw 990 to handle base. Actually I prefer large settings on all my speakers and do not utilize the outlaw 990's cross over to much, but I may need to reevaluate this setting for SACD.

NOW HERE IS THE KICKER:
Video: I used CREAM (Royal Albert Hall 2005 reunion) DVD..You have to get this dvd it is great and Eric Clapton Ginger Backer, Jack Bruce really get it done. Song White Room just really kicks ass
I did alot of messing around with my hdmi/dvi/componet connections. Hands down the RGB Componet connection into the Outlaw 990 for switching with RGB componet into my Sharp 90z projector was a very good picure in comparison to hdmi to dvi. Not only was the RGB componet picture quality brighter, clearer, contrast nicer I could make all on screen adjustments with this connection.
I ran Cream with DTS setting for audio on the dvd disc and then made sure the outlaw was also DTS and I tell you guys this is a must have DVD for your system and most likely be used for demo's to your Audio Buddies. I was lucky to record Cream's White Room several weeks ago on mtv's new MTV HD channel via my cox HD-DVR and the oppo's picture while not in HiDef is pretty darn sharp:)
Take care papaBear

Nice review Papa. I'll have to get the Cream DVD. I received my oppo Thursday and have limited information to report back. I did watch a couple of movies. Aeon flux and Eight Below. Upscaling to 720P over the HDMI does provide for better picture quality. Not a major improvement but an improvement none the less.

I am surprised that your picture was better with the Component vs. the HDMI/DVI connection. I am going to hook up my component connections to see if I get the same result.

Initial impression on the audio: Big difference. Definitely more dynamic for the movie soundtracks . I listened to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon in SACD.. The sound quality is absolutely incredible. Looks like I’ll be buying some more SACD’s.

edcon,

I'm looking forward to your review of the Oppo's component vs. HDMI performance. The HDMI video was better than component on my Dad's new Panasonic plasma and Oppo 970. My tv is about 3 years old so I don't have DVI/HDMI input.

Papabear,

Its great to hear that the sound quality of the 970 is such an improvement over your last player. Sound quality alone may be enough reason to buy the 970.

Keep in mind that the component output will upconvert to HD resolutions for non-CSS encrypted discs, but it will only do 480i or 480p for CSS discs (which is basically every movie studio title around). If your TV's scaler is better than the 970's MediaTek, then feeding it 480i or 480p might work out better anyway - a small number of folks at AVS have reported such results using the HDMI input at 480i where the set has a really good internal scaler. If you had better results with component, you might try setting the HDMI to 480i or 480p and seeing what your results are.

If you go to www.hometheaterhifi.com there is oppo 970 Product Review on that home page

The video quality using the HDMI to DVI connection from the OPPO 970 to the Outlaw 990 is definitely better than the component connection, at least with my set up.

As Gonk noted above, due to copyright protection requirements, when playing copyright-protected DVD discs, the component output resolution is limited to 480p. If the component output resolution of the DVD player is set at 720p or 1080i, automatic resolution downgrade occurs. HDMI output resolution is not affected by this limitation as it is copy-protected with HDCP.

My Mitsubishi supports scanning rates of 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i. The best picture quality I have observed is when all components are set to 720P.

I also connected the HDMI and component directly from the OPPO 970 to Mitsubishi DLP. I did not notice a difference in quality vs connecting through the Outlaw 990.

More on sound quality: In my rush to listen to music I neglected to properly set the LPCM Rate. The default is set at 48K. I reset to the maximum 192K. Big improvement in the CD sound quality.

I set the SPDIF Output to “Raw “ which passes the encoded multi-channel digital audio unaltered. This lets the 990 do the processing which in my opinion is the way to go. I am using the optical connections from the OPPO to the Outlaw 990.

The OPPO does allow you to calibrate or set speakers for small or large and turn the output on or off for the sub, center and rear speakers. As I said above I perfer to process through the 990.

All in all a pretty impressive set of features and outstanding quality for a player costing $149.

Nice write-up. It makes sense that 720p worked out best for you - I'm guessing that your Mitsubishi DLP's native resolution is 720p (or 768, actually).

Thanks,
You guessed correct 720P and or 1280x720. 768? You got me on that one?