Not for the impatient. But the quality may be worth the wait.

In a world where you can buy a DVD player in the convenience-store checkout line, why would you spent $200 on a premium player? Digital video is the answer.

This player's nameplate feature (and in fact, as far as I can tell, it's only notable feature) is DVI/HDMI digital output. If you can take advantage of this, you probably know. You either have a digital computer monitor, or a HDTV television with matching inputs. I won't dwell on this topic, since others will.

In every other way, this player fails to meet up to the competition. The remote is miserable... with little clear buttons that distort the labels beneath. But perhaps you don't care because you use a universal remote?

Operational Details

This is the slowest player, ever, in terms of loading and ejecting discs. Email to tech support at oppo was answered with "it's a hardware problem, we can't fix it". The thing is even slow at powerup -- it insists on reading the disc already in the drive, before it will even start the process of ejecting it.

Fast forward and reverse go to 32x, which is pretty good. And needed, since this player can't seem to skip some content that other players can.

Unlike other players the firmware CAN be updated, just burn a CD with the update. But, as I said, the most serious flaws are in hardware and can't be fixed.

The support for reading other formats is... sparse. There's a basic menu that lets you view picture disks, or play audio discs. But it really is the bare minimum. There is no CD-TEXT support, for example, so you don't even see track names if they are on the disc.

Setup is easy because... with so few features there's really nothing to tweak. Just set 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen, and you're done.

Front Panel
First thing you'll notice is the brightly glowing blue LED. Too bright. Another strike.

Unless you happen to look at the unit exactly head on, you'll also see just part of the track/time display (the display is set too far back into the case).

And you'll note a clean uncluttered appearance. So clean and uncluttered that they left off useful buttons like "skip forward". You get Play-Pause/Eject/Stop -- hope you don't want more. Better not loose that remote control.

PAL/NTSC and Region Free
Yup, it plays PAL DVD's perfectly, even anamorphic ones. And you, not the movie studios, decide which discs you are allowed to play.

Visit the maker's website at http://www.oppodigital.com/ . Their tech support is USA based, and responsive.

Oh: you don't NEED a digital monitor to use this DVD player, it has the other outputs also. But just what would be the point? There are cheaper, faster, and more polished players out on the market. Lots of 'em. Check your corner gas station...