Ron,

Did you try to press the P/N button to determine if your Oppo is set for NTSC and not PAL? I looked at the 981 manual and hopefully that could be the answer you are looking for.

OK...problem fixed. Received the HDMI-DVI adapter. Used the HDMI cable that came with the Oppo. Hooked it up. Works perfectly! Looks like the Belkin DVI to HDMI cable only goes one way! Since I paid nearly $80 for the Belkin cable I wonder what kind of warranty it has?

Ron,

Congratulations on solving the problem. Now it's time to completely enjoy your Outlaw 990!! Figures it would be a cable issue.

Ron,

congrats on getting your video problem solved. It had some of us stumped.. glad it was a cable adapter issue and not the 990 pre amp.

enjoy your video again.

Whew! Glad to hear you got to the bottom of that one, Ron - that was a pretty crazy problem.

Got this reply from Belkin regarding the cable:

Thank you for contacting Belkin customer support
The adapter works in both directions. DVI doesn`t have any audio out the video will work in both directions.
Thank you
Jay Bush
Belkin International, Inc.
Customer Support
www.belkin.com/support

I don't think anything Belkin could tell you would help make the cable work.

From their response, they basically ruled out you buying the wrong cable as the problem and pretty much means that you must have a defective cable.
Ca-ching!

On the one hand, not having directionality on the cable as the underlying problem is reassuring in a way - I'm not sure how that would work for DVI and HDMI cables. On the other hand, we're still left with the fact that a different cable worked where the Belkin one didn't.

Belkin has agreed to replace the cable. It has a lifetime warranty. Found this on the Blue Jeans website that might shed more light on the problem I had:

"In principle, HDMI is supposed always to be backward-compatible with DVI, so that any HDMI device should work with any DVI-D single-link device. In practice, although the two almost always work together, it's not uncommon to run into device compatibility issues."

Follow up. Called Belkin about a replacement cable (lifetime warranty). Put the new Belkin cable into the system. Works perfectly. Clearly the first cable was bad. Strange that it could pass signal from DVI to HDMI but not the other way around.