PseudoRandom
Established Member
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2007
- Messages
- 117
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For some time I've been intending to buy the Oppo 981 as it sounds ideal for my application. However, time and again we hear it falls down on the generic macro-blocking "issue" suffered by Faroudja chipsets. But I don't understand:
Oppo are selling this as a serious player, and most public reviews are extremely complementary about the picture quality. Some high-end scalers use (or used) Faroudja scaling, and the Oppo is said to suffer less with this problem than some other Faroudja implementations. So it can't be terrible can it?
Yet some people have sent them back as "unwatchable" due to the problem!
OK, I've read the speculation that it varies depending on the display being used, but please just think about that for a moment. What can the display do beyond having different brightness, gamma or sharpness settings that would materially affect this? Is it as simple as someone having the black level set differently? (I've seen macro-blocking on a CRT from a PS2 playing a DVD if you turn up the brightness too high.)
If someone could post a photo of the Oppo showing the problem on their setup, I'm sure I'd not be the only person to find it extremely helpful in judging whether to buy one.
Oppo are selling this as a serious player, and most public reviews are extremely complementary about the picture quality. Some high-end scalers use (or used) Faroudja scaling, and the Oppo is said to suffer less with this problem than some other Faroudja implementations. So it can't be terrible can it?
Yet some people have sent them back as "unwatchable" due to the problem!
OK, I've read the speculation that it varies depending on the display being used, but please just think about that for a moment. What can the display do beyond having different brightness, gamma or sharpness settings that would materially affect this? Is it as simple as someone having the black level set differently? (I've seen macro-blocking on a CRT from a PS2 playing a DVD if you turn up the brightness too high.)
If someone could post a photo of the Oppo showing the problem on their setup, I'm sure I'd not be the only person to find it extremely helpful in judging whether to buy one.