On my screen after adjustments... The S550 exceeds the the oppo 980 h, and is virtually equal to the 983, Again most DVD's have errors or flaws which will ghost or be fuzzy, or just crappy washed out color
No oppo fixes this.. however GOOD dvds' are just as Good on the S550
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And of course Blu ray is simply flawless, and thats not necessarily a function that just the Sony machine is better at because many blu ray players are really good, so are 700 dollar LCD's vs 7000 dollar lcd from 5 years ago! The format of blu ray fixes many issues no standard DVD will, however I have many newer and well done DVD's that are in fact basically as good as Blu ray in many ways, and during 1080p 6o fps DVD upconversion is done just as perfect on the S550 as it is on any oppo, again in some cases even better, and The Sony does in fact do Blu Ray 1080p 24 fps which is not beat anyway.. Again the guys holding onto some kinda "Special Function" or specific niche in a product that will cost more money GO FOR IT!! But if your looking for flawless Blu ray and DVD quality, with some nice functions and Perks for audio than the Sony is your machine for a price that will not be matched
If you want much more for whatever you have a special need for no doubt anything can be bettered for your specific requirments.. However I am simply talking for CORE performance nothing will be better and especially at the near dirt cheap pricing we are talking here than the Sony.. And I am a custom hard core Audio video guy.. More audio, but videophile is a whole thing that almost anybody can see differences visually and much easier to explain than somebodys audio taste
You want perfect video go for it, if you need many other specific functions go do your own comparisons and find the best for your needs.
By the way a confusing but maybe slightly important factor here is OPPO sells with their machine the best HDMI made
It is a generic so to speak but basically the best available on the market, and I use this same cable to do all comparisons.. Now somebody going and purchasing a new panasonic, or sony whatever and using some 50 dollar Monster cable might get a different result, and they are not even as good of cables!! I forget who makes the cable its on oppos site I believe and it is highly accepted as being a perfect standard cable.. I can also tell you even an OPPO on a cheap Radio shack HDMI which I had looks worse!! They will tell you even they specifically use this cable and are one of the only companies that ships their units with a cable anymore to specifically make sure you get the video performance they want you to see. This may or may not be a factor to keep in mind, also I DO NOT use standard Power cables in my system, on the oppo or on the SONY, I have found a BIG difference in GHOSTING on the screen, color depth, and simply Video noise using far better heavy shielded power cables for best performance on these units, so yes for some you may not get or be able to expect perfection out of the box without some attention to tweaking your display on each machine, and delivering the results with the best cables and power feeding all this equipment. So again I will use the stupid audiogon tag line 'YMMV'
In the end once again you can chance ordering and risking anything you like, but the good thing is about the sony is it hits all points to be a good standard in performance, AND it can be bought right down the street from your house and returned in 30 days if you can't get it to work out for you!
