Re: Upconverting capabilities - Oppo 981HD vs. Toshiba AX2
I own the Oppo 971, the Secrets of Home Theater DVD Benchmark highest rated upconverting DVD player. I've happily used the 971 for over a year to enjoy the best quality DVD picture I've ever had. That is, until two weeks ago when I purchased a Toshiba HD-XA2.
The HD-XA2 is, hands down, superior to my Oppo 971. In fact, a friend and I recently did an A/B comparison of the standard def DVDs of King Kong and Happy Feet (two very-well mastered titles) in the Oppo 971 and XA2. Quite frankly, we were stunned by the differences. The XA2 image had more detail and was sharper than the Oppo 971 image. On one particular scene we still-framed on Happy Feet, where the Oppo showed some ringing around edges of objects, the XA2 looked much much cleaner. On another scene in King Kong, where the XA2's better detail clearly showed a defined bead of sweat on Jack Black's cheek, the Oppo 971 caused the bead of sweat to blend into the Jack's cheek and appear more like a smudge.
I am so very pleased with the standard def upconversion of the Toshiba HD-XA2, I consider its HD-DVD capability to be just a nice bonus.

Of course, when we compared the same two standard def DVDs (on either player) to the HD-DVD version on the XA2, there was no question which image was the winner! When you take the time to look closely on a decent sized screen (mine is a 70" JVC LCoS), no SD-DVD can touch the quality of a good HD-DVD. Anyone who thinks the differences between SD-DVD and HD-DVD are "minor", must be watching them on a 5" screen.
I have over 500 SD-DVDs that will continue to get regular service in my new XA2. Thanks to the XA2's upconversion quality, I won't be double-dipping (to HD-DVD) on very many of them (less than 2 dozen). But I also won't be buying any
new SD-DVD titles. From here on out it is HD-DVD only for this guy. If the title isn't available on HD-DVD, I'll rent rather than buy the SD-DVD version.
So, if the studios still want to sell me DVDs... they better get off their butts and put the titles on HD-DVD.
Mark