hello fellow outlaws,

I would like to seek some opinions regarding the 997's video processing capabilities and the selection of a blu-ray player. I was planning on purchasing the oppo bdp-83 because of the reviews that its blu-ray and dvd upconversion output receives. Now they have the bdp-80 available. My goal is to achieve the best video display I can at somewhat reasonable cost. I consider all of these products reasonably priced. Would the difference between the 2 blu-ray players be noticeable if I had the bdp-80 outputting "Source Direct" mode to the 997 via HDMI and had it do any processing and upconversion necessary? Should I stick with the bdp-83? If so would the video performace be downgraded if I used the 997 as the single HDMI source to my tv or should I connect the player directly? Thank you in advance for any and all responses.

It's of course impossible to say anything definitive about the Model 997's video performance without having a Model 997 in hand, but since it is using the Reon chip we can make some approximations. If you look at my BDP-80 review, I talk a bit about the differences I saw between the BDP-80 outputting 1080p and the BDP-80 in source direct mode with an Onkyo PR-SC885. The 885 uses the Reon chip, just like the 997 will.

I didn't say anything about how the Reon-scaled image compared to the BDP-83's ABT2010. I have found a slight preference for the ABT2010 over the Reon, going back to my time with OPPO's DV-983H. If I had to choose, I'd prefer the BDP-83 to the BDP-80/Reon combo, but it'd be a close-fought thing. As for whether the 997 would "degrade" picture quality from the BDP-83, I wouldn't expect it to. Again, it's impossible to say without actually using one, but we are dealing with digital video signals here. The potential for video switching to degrade an image used to be a real issue with older analog video switching hardware, but it's not really something that I expect to see with HDMI switching. Besides, you would want to have the BDP-83's HDMI signal passing through the 997 to get the audio.

gonk,

thanks for the insight. it was helpful.