Pioneer 436XDE + Oppo 971H

Dan.Scott1234

Prominent Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2005
Messages
1,325
Reaction score
18
Points
291
Location
Wargrave
Hi all,

I have a Pioneer 436XDE and currently a Cambridge DVD85

Looking at splashing a bit of cash out on a new DVD player that will make allow my Pioneer to show off a bit!!!!

The Oppo looks like a winner but does anyone have experience with mixing the 971H and the Pio436?

Also I read somewhere that the scaler in the 436 could be better than that in the Oppo and the upgeade would be pointless, is this the case?

Also most (90%) of my DVD's are region 2 PAL so does this affect my decision?

If it looks like the Oppo isn't for me could people recommend a player that my Pioneer will love!

Thank-you to all for your time in advance:thumbsup:
 
I think the thing to remember is that the Oppo isn't just about upscaling.
It's about providing darn fine PQ for the money.

It's about this and this

And PAL is fine.
 
All sounds good to me!

Anyone else have any ideas?
 
I've got pretty much the same setup as Dan here (436XDE and 757) and funnily enough i've been thinking about upgrading from my pio 575. I've actually had alot of joy from my 575 as its perfectly decent but you really have to match a £2000+ panel with a relatively good player to get the best out of it.

I've got my choices down to the Denon 1920 (-so many fantastic magazine reviews, but a few ppl putting me off), Oppo 971H (-good recommendations on here but any detriment using DVI-HDMI?), Panny S77 or S97 (-someone recommended it, but is it really that good?) and perhaps a Toshiba HD-A1! I'm thinking about the Tosh because i've heard the quality of standard DVD's with upscaling is up there with some of the more expensive standard players. Plus it plays HDDVD's! :)

Could someone give me their opinion on these players or maybe recommend an alternative. I'm willing to spend up to ~£400.

Thanks!:clap:
 
thanks for the extra choices ykhan16 the extra choices will give me some more reading fodder tonight (Endlessly searching google for reviews!!!), glad to have someone in the same boat with the 436!!

Sounds really interesting what you say about the HD-A1, gives me an excuse to buy new technology without worrying about HD-DVD losing to Blu-Ray as it's still a great upscaling SD player!

Look forward to people's opinions on what to get (Please don't turn this into a Denon 1920 vs Oppo 971H battle thread!!!)
 
Dan.Scott1234 said:
All sounds good to me!

Anyone else have any ideas?
Just some bad points I've found in my experience with the Oppo:

1. It's very picky on DVD-R medium. When I bought one, I had to re-master over 20 discs (2 different disc manufactures), which wouldn't play on the Oppo, these same discs played fine on other DVD players I had.

2. Poor at playing MPEG2, these constantly stutter and skip (not medium related as it plays DIVX fine on the same medium).

If you bare these two points in mind, you'll find the picture quality excellent through DVI!
 
Caoimhghin said:
Just some bad points I've found in my experience with the Oppo:

1. It's very picky on DVD-R medium. When I bought one, I had to re-master over 20 discs (2 different disc manufactures), which wouldn't play on the Oppo, these same discs played fine on other DVD players I had.

Not had that problem myself. Quite a few dvd-r from 3 or 4 manufacturers. None refused to play so far. (is there a touch wood emoticon?)
 
Caoimhghin said:
2. Poor at playing MPEG2, these constantly stutter and skip (not medium related as it plays DIVX fine on the same medium).
What firmware version are you using?
 
PlexShaw said:
New firmware has just been released so you might want to give that a try and see if it makes any difference:
Thanks for the info. I have installed the latest firmware, but it makes no difference. All MPEG-2 (PAL) discs I've tried suffer from the same problem, stuttering sound, it isn't the medium as the same files converted to DIVX play fine on the same medium. The MPEG-2 files play fine on a PC.

For information the MPEG-2 files are encoded:
Video: 720 X 576 25 fps Lower Field First.
Audio: MPEG Layer 2 stereo 48,000Hz 224 kb/s.
 
try burning the discs at 1x speed and stick to dvd-r
(Avoid RW as they can sometimes cause problems)

Also avoid long filenames and I beleive Joliet has to bu turned off (Although not 100% sure)

Good luck:thumbsup:
 
Dan.Scott1234 said:
try burning the discs at 1x speed and stick to dvd-r
(Avoid RW as they can sometimes cause problems)

Also avoid long filenames and I beleive Joliet has to bu turned off (Although not 100% sure)

Good luck:thumbsup:
I don't think it's a medium or burn problem, as mentioned previously the files, when burnt, play fine on 3 PCs I have and the same discs (CD-RW) and DVD Re-Writer have been used to burn the same files converted to DIVX, which play on the OPPO just fine. Maybe it doesn't like MPEG-2s on CDR medium.

The problem may be in MPEG-2 encoding, I suppose, so I may re-do them to see if this solves the problem.
 
I've come to the conclusion that the problem is medium compatibility or medium imperfections, which the OPPO cannot handle. Burning the same file multiple times (5 X 1 file) to 3 different manufactured CD-RW discs (Lite-On, Philips and Verbatim) produced sound stuttering on the first two tracks, even if the tracks were ordered differently on the disc. The last 4 tracks played fine, even if ordered differently. What is strange though is that there were no discernible errors on the video playback. All tracks on each CD-RW played fine on 3 PCs I have.

The same tracks burnt to a Verbatim DVD+RW played fine.

I guess at the end of the day the OPPO is very sensitive to the quality of the medium used!
 
I've come to the conclusion that the problem is medium compatibility or medium imperfections, which the OPPO cannot handle. Burning the same MPEG-2 file multiple times (5 X 1 file) to 3 different manufactured CD-RW discs (Lite-On, Philips and Verbatim) produced sound stuttering on the first two tracks, even when the tracks were ordered differently on the disc. The last 4 tracks played fine, even when ordered differently. What is strange though is that there were no discernible errors on the video playback. All tracks on each CD-RW played fine on 3 PCs I have.

The same tracks burnt to a Verbatim DVD+RW played fine.

I guess at the end of the day the OPPO is very sensitive to the quality of the medium used!
 
Caoimhghin
I don't know what other (audio) equipment you have between the Oppo & your speakers.
Have you tried say hooking up headphones to the stereo output and listening to see if that stutters or skips at the same time as the speaker output.

Is it possible you have an amplifier that is the problem rather than the Oppo.

Just trying to pinpoint the problem rather than put the blame elsewhere.
 
Rahosi said:
Caoimhghin
I don't know what other (audio) equipment you have between the Oppo & your speakers.
Have you tried say hooking up headphones to the stereo output and listening to see if that stutters or skips at the same time as the speaker output.

Is it possible you have an amplifier that is the problem rather than the Oppo.

Just trying to pinpoint the problem rather than put the blame elsewhere.
Thanks for your interest. I have a cheapish Sony STR-DB895D amp, but the sound still stutters/skips in the same place when played directly through the TV.

As I mentioned I burnt the exact same file 5 times to 3 separate CD-RW discs, on each occassion the first two files exhibited sound curruption the last 3 played fine. On DVD+RW medium there was no sound problem with the same files. All CD-RW play fine through the PCs I have.

I'm just saying that the OPPO seems rather intolerant of the quality of the medium as I have had the same problem with some old Safedisc and Bulk Paq DVD-Rs, which play fine in other DVD players I've had.
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom