Sorry. that was a typo. I have the 980H. The 980H works well, but I'm interested in the 983H. I'm hoping I'll see a difference on the 61" screen.

I don't get any notifications of new posts on these forums. Any way to do that?

You have to use the "Full Reply Form" or "Reply with Quote" (which takes you to the full reply form), at which point there are three options available below the instant graemlins. The first is "Email Notification".

Nice review on the 983H, Gonk, but for me, and I'll bet a lot of others here, the only new disc player to be considered must play EVERYTHING: Blu-Ray, DVD, SACD, DVD-Audio (I have several discs and might still get others), CDs of all types, digital photo discs in HD, and anything else now extant that I haven't thought of here. One disc player, no more.

I went directly from the 980H to the 983H on my 32" display (direct-view CRT). There was definitely a difference, although how much difference there was varied depending on the disc being viewed. Curiously, one of the most obvious demonstration came from some of our daughter's DVD's - computer animation (The Backyardigans, specifically, for those other parents of young children) that exhibited deinterlacing problems with the 980H were extremely crisp and clean with the 983H.

ah thanks... I don't think I ever used the full reply form. I wish the quick reply form had the option.

I am pretty sure that you are far from alone in that sentiment. The one notable omission from the 983H in relation to this list is Blu-ray. It's too soon yet for a company like OPPO to have Blu-ray support, and the big manufacturers have largely abandoned DVD-A and SACD. I'm optimistic that the OPPO Blu-ray review candyman asked for will describe a player that meets the requirements you describe, but I don't expect that to happen in 2008.

Thank you for the review. In your audio section, you state: "You could get better analog output for DVD-Audio and SACD, but you'll have to pay a pretty hefty premium for it, even with the 983H's relatively high price tag."

Could you/can you name some names?

Sadly, while today is the launch day, the only thing that has happened is that oppo now lists the machine on the front page of their site. When one clicks on the 'buy now' button, one is informed that the machine is out of stock. No stock = no launch.

I suspect that the modified Denon that Lizard King has could beat it ($1500 for the 3930CI and another grand for mods), but I'm not sure that the stock 3930CI would offer an appreciable benefit.

They're shipping pre-orders - apparently when the Secrets review went live a week ago, it created such a frenzy that they accepted pre-orders for the first time and sold out their entire first run by late last week.

I am looking at the McCormack UDP-1, the Marantz DV9600 and the Lexicon RT-20. Secrets did a review of the Marantz a while back and seemed to like it quite a bit. They beat the McCormack up on its video.

Those are some high-dollar players, all right. The DV9600 uses a very similar scaling solution as the 983H (both use an ABT chip), but the 9600 uses a Pioneer deinterlacer - not an ABT deinterlacer like the 983. Based on comments from others (including Kris Deering, who wrote the benchmark test review at Secrets), the 983H will edge the DV9600 out for video quality via HDMI. The UDP-1 and RT-20 are likely going to be in similar positions - they likely won't be able to beat the 983H for digital video output.

The 5x to 10x (or 11x) list price of these three players should provide some performance benefits, and those benefits are likely to be in the analog audio section. How much benefit I don't know - although if you are able to demo any one of them at home, you could pick up a 983 (when they get stock back) and try it out for 30 days. That way you could go a head-to-head comparison and decide if the benefits are worth the extra cash.