WD TV vs Oppo DVDp vs Philips 4750

[madbullram]

Finally, Venkat and I got time to do the Oppo vs WD TV vs Philips 4750 PQ test.

Venkat, a polymath, whom I was expecting to have a lot of grey hair and old, turned to be very very young gentleman not at heart but also in the looks department. My mom is still grappling with disbelief that this man has a son who is in his 20s.

Then asks my fianc , Ram you mean you have never meet him and he travels all the way with his expensive opa (oppo in her language) player to your house? I say yes dear, the look on her eyes is worth any visa and master card :yahoo::yahoo:

Promptly Venkat adds,we are a small group of eccentrics who are on the verge of being mad. I think "but then you see that's what made Einstein"

Anyway, back to the review.

We connected all the three, Oppo and Philips to my PV8 with HDMI connection. Oppo was giving out 1080p, Philips 720p and WD TV 1080p. We didnt push Philips to 1080i as we thought 720p is better.


I picked up Serenity as I love the movies treatment and also it has enough deep space scenes to check out. As soon as we popped in the DVD, Venkat picked a scene where a close-up of a girl was shown and she had freckles in her face which was a good point to check. So we decided three scenes:

1. Girl with freckles close up, this will give a good analysis on the sharpness and also colours
2. TITLE: the title has some good text and also a fire kind of effect in orange so this we thought will be test
3. The usual space scene to test the blacks and colour production on the space craft.

We played the DVD on Oppo and WD TV and I ripped the DVD movie to my hard drive and connected it to WD TV.

Here are the pictures for you to judge. The order of pics are oppo > Philips >WD TV

Click thumbnails for high resolution
Scene 1 - Girl with freckles:
Check the sharpness of the freckles near the nose.
Oppo:


WD TV:


Philips:



Scene 2 - Title:
Oppo:


WD TV:


Philips:



Scene 3 - Deep Space and space craft (the pictures are of the spacecraft with seconds difference in the scene, so the lighting on the spacecraft would be different so analyze with that in mind)

Oppo:


WD TV:


Philips:




My verdict: (Venkat will post his)
Oppos definitely is a clear winner. The sharpness, contrast, and colour production of Oppo was the best but I personally felt WD TV (Venkat will scream ) gave a very very close chase to Oppo and it lost marginally with Oppo. Philips was good but definitely not in the same league of Oppo or WD TV.

The picture shrapness and colour production of oppo was awesome and matched closely by WD TV.

My Rating:

Color Reproduction (1 to 5, 5 being highest)
Oppo: 4.8/5
WD TV: 4.6/5
Philips: 4/5

Picture Sharpness:
Oppo: 4.8/5
WD TV: 4.6/5
Philips: 3.8/5

Overall Picture Quality:
Oppo: 4.8/5
WD TV: 4.6/5
Philips: 4/5

Now it is not fair for us to compare Philips 4750 with Oppo as Philips is an HTiB at 22k which is less than Oppo which costs 25K just for the player.

My parting thoughts, WD TV at 5k (7k India price) vs Oppo at 25k, the price margin is too high to justify BUT thats a price for perfection today and also with WD TV it has the hassle of ripping it to a hard drive and playing it.

You have the money and wont settle for anything less than perfection: Buy Oppo
You cant spend so much but are looking for 95% Oppo quality: Get WD TV

Choice is yours. Thanks for reading a long post

Venkat: Thanks a ton for bringing the Oppo and plsssss add your review, even I am waiting eagerly to know what you thought


Peace
Madbull-Ram

P.S:
Oppo's opening screen:

 

[madbullram]

MODS,
Pls move this thread to DVD players as it fits there better.

 

[marsilians]

Good stuff MBR & Venkat though I am not sure how you came up with the final numbers out of 5 (I am an analytic nit pick).

I am assuming the Oppo is the 983 as I think I have read that Venkat owns one. Pls. confirm as my memory is not as sharp as it used to be.

Good comparo, pic quality wise.

Oppo also offers excellent audio reproduction as well as support for high res audio and a number of video formats support. So, I guess the owners are paying for its versatility as well.

I have not seen a WD too much in action though in passing. Need to make time to see one in due course.

 

[moserw]

Thanks MBR. What you say makes sense in going for the WDTV over the Oppo.

Waiting for Venkatji's inputs now...

 

[spirovious]

Thanks madbullram,

I found that you ripped DVD & run on WDTV,thats why WD lost marginally to Opptherwised pictures posted gives idea that they are realy closed.

According to me WD can play VOB/DVD image,then(sorry but) why diidnt you tried a direct comparison?Compressed format will loose some points.

Otherwise review is very helpful.

One thing I wld like to know the sound Q.
As we discuss oppo comes with good st SQ.Can you post some view?

 

[madbullram]

Thanks madbullram,

I found that you ripped DVD & run on WDTV,thats why WD lost marginally to Opptherwised pictures posted gives idea that they are realy closed.

According to me WD can play VOB/DVD image,then(sorry but) why diidnt you tried a direct comparison?Compressed format will loose some points.

Otherwise review is very helpful.

I didnt compress it, i just ripped the entire dual layer dvd and played the VOB directly.

 

[moserw]

I didnt compress it, i just ripped the entire dual layer dvd and played the VOB directly.

This brings up another question? Does the WDTV support an External USB DVD Drive? Has anyone tried it? I will still say ripping onto an external HDD is way better for storage and easier handling, but if someone has an External DVD Drive that works on USB then this might be a good way of putting it to use. I'm asking since I have a couple like that lying around.

 

[madbullram]

This brings up another question? Does the WDTV support an External USB DVD Drive? Has anyone tried it? I will still say ripping onto an external HDD is way better for storage and easier handling, but if someone has an External DVD Drive that works on USB then this might be a good way of putting it to use. I'm asking since I have a couple like that lying around.

It doesn't and its a pain. But like how I was discussing with Venkat, it makes sense to anyway backup original DVDs. I am in the process of ripping it to my 1TB Maxtor.

 

[spirovious]

I didnt compress it, i just ripped the entire dual layer dvd and played the VOB directly.

That meens you shrink 8gb(DVD9) mov to 4.5gb(DVD5)(I do that to play DVD on DVDP) .
In that case picture Q will change.On oppo you tried full DL DVD.
Is that WD cannot play DL DVDs?

And I wld like to know SQ too.

Moserw-WD cannot read DVD writter.

 

[madbullram]

That meens you shrink 8gb(DVD9) mov to 4.5gb(DVD5)(I do that to play DVD on DVDP) .
In that case picture Q will change.On oppo you tried full DL DVD.
Is that WD cannot play DL DVDs?

And I wld like to know SQ too.

Moserw-WD cannot read DVD writter.

Nope, i did not, I just copied the original format with all bells and whistles of the entire dual layer. I never compress or shrink Its 7.8 GB as same as the original content of the DVD.

 

[spirovious]

Nope, i did not, I just copied the original format with all bells and whistles of the entire dual layer. I never compress or shrink Its 7.8 GB as same as the original content of the DVD.

Thanks,
I got confused with word ripped(generally to Divx/Xvid)
And did you tried stereo SQ?

 

[madbullram]

Thanks,
I got confused with word ripped(generally to Divx/Xvid)
And did you tried stereo SQ?

We did not. I wanted to do that Venkat's place as a Philips HTiB is not the best system to check the SQ.

 

[moserw]

MBR,

Does this mean you just rip the DVD and not re-encode to Divx/Xvid? That way your 1 TB HDD will not last long. I rip most of my DVDs to Divx at around 1 GB per movie i.e. 1/4th the original size and I can tell you the PQ is great and not much different from the original. The MPEG4 of Divx compresses with great PQ when compared to the MPEG2 of DVDs. Only issue will be having to settle for Dolby Digital in the Divx rip compared to DTS in the original DVD, but then most DVDs don't have DTS anyways. My only grouch is I ripped all DVDs to 2 channel i.e. stereo and then had to re-rip all in 5.1 when I went the HT route something similar to changing from MP3 to FLAC with my music collection. But I would recommend you give Divx ripping a try. It will free up a lot of space, and keep the original DVDs safe.

Of course if you're already ripping to Divx then a pointless discussion from my end and my apologies in that event...

 

[spirovious]

We did not. I wanted to do that Venkat's place as a Philips HTiB is not the best system to check the SQ.

To my surprise when I downloaded full picture,I found WD picture(with curser at bottom) is sharper than Oppo.

Spots on girls face look sharper on WD than Oppo(atleast in picture)
Even in dark sceen ,the stars on background are clear than oppo.

 

[phantom76]

This brings up another question? Does the WDTV support an External USB DVD Drive? Has anyone tried it? I will still say ripping onto an external HDD is way better for storage and easier handling, but if someone has an External DVD Drive that works on USB then this might be a good way of putting it to use. I'm asking since I have a couple like that lying around.

Though officially not yet, the hacker community has hacked the firmware and now you are able to attach an external DVD on to it! They are even working on bringing network support to it.

If you love playing with custom firmwares, give this a try: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1126753

 

[madbullram]

To my surprise when I downloaded full picture,I found WD picture(with curser at bottom) is sharper than Oppo.

Spots on girls face look sharper on WD than Oppo(atleast in picture)
Even in dark sceen ,the stars on background are clear than oppo.

LOL, trust me, I called up Venkat and said the same and he was like I cant believe it. But Oppo colour production was tab better. Thats why i said its a very very close call, I am sure Venkat will disagree

 

[madbullram]

MBR,

Does this mean you just rip the DVD and not re-encode to Divx/Xvid? That way your 1 TB HDD will not last long. I rip most of my DVDs to Divx at around 1 GB per movie i.e. 1/4th the original size and I can tell you the PQ is great and not much different from the original. The MPEG4 of Divx compresses with great PQ when compared to the MPEG2 of DVDs. Only issue will be having to settle for Dolby Digital in the Divx rip compared to DTS in the original DVD, but then most DVDs don't have DTS anyways. My only grouch is I ripped all DVDs to 2 channel i.e. stereo and then had to re-rip all in 5.1 when I went the HT route something similar to changing from MP3 to FLAC with my music collection. But I would recommend you give Divx ripping a try. It will free up a lot of space, and keep the original DVDs safe.

Of course if you're already ripping to Divx then a pointless discussion from my end and my apologies in that event...

My good man, almost all of your discussions are never pointless Thats the area my next research is. As you 98% of original ones i have are DD.

I want to this which format gives best PQ. What software are you using for Divx

 

[moserw]

My good man, almost all of your discussions are never pointless Thats the area my next research is. As you 98% of original ones i have are DD.

I want to this which format gives best PQ. What software are you using for Divx

I personally use HandBrake available at HandBrake. It's free and updated on a regular basis. The Divx rips are virtually indistinguishable on SD/CRT TVs and on the PV8 too they rock. Seeing that you have the same TV I am sure the PQ will be great on it too. Play around with the output size to find what works for you. 700 MB rips by AXXO are the most popular on the internet and I too found the PQ simply awesome on his 700 MB rips. Only problem is his rips are in stereo and not in 5.1. I personally go with 1400 MB per rip, that way 3 movies fit on one DVD and they come out great in terms of PQ and SQ. Most of my friends though prefer it from 700 MB to 1 GB so they can fit more data per DVD, but then not all of them are sold on true 5.1 or a HT like us both so stereo is fine with most of them.

 

[madbullram]

Will do a Divx 1.4 GB and will compare with the rip I did. Will post pics the same way I did for WD TV. What do you we do a DivX 700 vs 1400 vs VOB test

 

[phantom76]

For guys who have WD TV, it is better to rip in H.264 (MP4) format than DiVX. For the same file size, H.264 gives a remarkably better picture than Divx. Mosquito noise is also not noticeable in H.264. Handbrake can be used for H.264 ripping

As a sample, try the BDRips of newartriot. You will be surprised by the quality in 1 GB files.