Rated 
Outstanding Product
Video Quality, Audio quality, ease of use, HDMI cable included, price, universal player, upgradeable firmware, packaging, construction.
Appearance, slow load times, USB 1.1, does not read XD cards, USB devices must be formatted with FAT, not NTFS, jagged edges around objects when pausing or slow motion (read below).
Posted Feb 28, 2007 - This is an amazing unit for the price. I can't say enough good things about what it can do. The DV-970HD will play virtually anything you throw at it, (as long as it is on a 5.25 inch optical disk) and does it pretty well. I have this unit hooked up using HDMI to a 52-inch LCOS projection TV. The construction of the unit is not as "cheap" as other reviews might have you believe. In fact, the chassis feels taught and very solid when you hold it in your hands and the unit is not as lightweight as most inexpensive universal players. Get all the preconceived notions about old APEX players out of your mind...this is much nicer. The clear disc tray also opens and closes quickly and without the "cheap" sound you might expect, but does feel flimsy. I was especially amazed at the unique, high quality packaging that Oppo uses; the packaging is a little smaller and less bulky than most other manufacturers, and it looks great. The inside of the box includes a soft black cloth with the Oppo name printed on it which wraps the unit in lieu of the traditional Styrofoam wrap. They even include two instruction manuals, one for basic use and the other for advanced users! They really spared no expense on the packaging and instructions! I was not too crazy about the remote at first but have learned to deal with it- it is well laid out and easy to use and definitely not as bad as other companies' remotes such as JVC. The on screen menu is simple and easy to use but is not as "pretty" as other more expensive players. After using this product for a month now, I have seen it has some shortcommings such as USB 1.1, NOT 2.0 (very big issue), devices connected using the USB/card slots on the front must be formatted with the older FAT file system, not NTFS or other (even bigger issue- count out my iPod and flash drives!) and you cannot copy from disk to card or USB device (would be nice to have) It also will not read the XD-style picture cards and there is no adapter to do this (big issue as well, a lot of digital cameras, esp Fuji use these!) I also noticed that pausing and slow motion leave the picture with jagged edges around objects, my previous Marantz DV-7010 player did not. Oppo states this is an inherent characteristic of the Mediatek decoder chip they use and they have not ben able to fix this with firmware upgrades. I also noticed that when you scene select or episode select on a series disk that there is a 5 second audio delay. Oppo also states that this is an inherent design flaw that cannot be rectified. These are all major issues IMHO that a buyer should be aware of before purchasing this player. On a slightly less important level this player also takes a very long time to load discs and doesn't have too much sex appeal. All in all I would recommend this unit for anyone on a budget due to the price and capability to play most formats on a 5.25" optical disk. It certainly has it's limitations, but that comes with the price. When i bought my previous player (Marantz) 6 years ago, I paid almost $700.00 for it, and it can't play half the stuff this device can, but there's another side to that coin- you do get what you pay for in picture quality, load times, build quality, ease of operation and looks. That old player was easily 10 times faster loading disks and skipping tracks than this and the picture was smooth and nothing short of amazing. The picture here is good, but could be much better. The bottom line is that there will always be tradeoffs that you must consider before buying a product.
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