Jonathan Takiff | 2 DVD players go head-to-head

THE GIZMO: Oppo DV-981HD vs. LG BH100.

BATTLING FORMATS: The war of the high-definition-video-disc formats rages on, leaving many consumers on the sidelines waiting for a winner and stewing that they can't show off their new HDTV set to full advantage.

When asked for my advice on this crisis, I've been offering two options - one inexpensive, the other pricey.

PLAN A: My first option is the purchase of a new variety of standard-definition DVD player, selling for as little as $99, that offers "up-conversion" of conventional 480-line DVD pictures to a 720p, 1080i or 1080p line output that complements your HD set boasting the same line display.

To boot, these signal-tweaking players deliver their improved picture (and sound) to the set via a high-resolution HDMI connector cable that maintains the information in the pure, digital domain.

One of the best (and priciest) of these players is the Oppo DV-981HD ($229), which uses a high-end signal-processing chip (the DCDi by Faroudja) for the up-conversion and has a lot of other bells and whistles, including the ability to play multi-channel DVD-Audio and SACD discs.

PLAN B: The other option is to go for broke with LG's new BH100. Selling for $1,200, it's the first video-disc player on the market that can spin both varieties of high-definition disc, Blu-ray and HD-DVD (as well as up-converting standard-def discs).

You won't have to fret even a second over the fact that the high-def titles coming out of Sony, 20th Century Fox and Disney studios are only available in the Blu-ray format, while Universal's only come in HD-DVD. (Among the big operators, only Warner Bros. and Paramount offer movies in both formats.)

TESTING, TESTING: To prove the efficacy of these strategies, I decided to test the Oppo and LG players side by side. I'd run them with conventional (on the Oppo) and high-def (on the LG) versions of the same movies: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's "Casino Royale" and "Stranger Than Fiction," 20th Century Fox's "Eragon" and Universal Studios' "King Kong."

The signals from both players would be fed to a Radiient HDMI switcher and then to a 61-inch, DLP-based, rear-projection TV that outputs a 720p picture.

First I looked at a scene in standard def, then replayed it in high def. Or vice versa. Sometimes I was able to keep both movies running, with a few seconds' lag between the two.

BOTTOM LINE: If I never had a high-def disc player for comparison, I'd be very pleased to watch movies on the Oppo. Even blown up big, images remain reasonably sharp and color reproduction seems true.

I only detected one scene in "Eragon" with obvious "mosquito"-style picture noise that could have been caused by the up-converting circuitry.

Subtle but meaningful image improvements were certainly detected, however, when viewing the high-def versions on the LG player. It's as if a thin layer of gauze had been removed from the front of the screen.

On "Stranger Than Fiction," I could now clearly detect the nuts-and-washers pattern in the tie worn by Will Farrell's IRS agent - a subtle commentary about his bolted-down character.

When Daniel Craig's James Bond chases a baddie across a sky-high construction site crane in "Casino Royale," the added clarity greatly enhanced the three-dimensionality and the sense of danger. Likewise, that baby dinosaur really popped out of its egg in the HD "Eragon."

"King Kong" was the most improved. Shot largely at night and bathed in blood-red light, the film in standard-def version often has a smeared, soft-focused look that even the Oppo couldn't fix. In HD on the LG, the movie got its edge back.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS: If you're into checking out all the "extras" on movie discs, be forewarned that the LG BH100 can only share those treats packed on Blu-ray HD discs, not on HD-DVD titles. That's due to the player's lack of support for HD-DVD's Advanced Navigation (aka iHD or HDi) software.

I sense that a (near) future second edition of the player will fix that shortcoming. And if LG won't, archrival Samsung probably will, with its seemingly back on track "Duo HD" player, now rumored to be arriving in the summer.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment recently supplied me with a Nielsen "next generation disc tracking report" that showed Blu-ray discs outselling HD-DVD by a 7:3 ratio. But HD-DVD backer Universal, responsible for about 24 percent of all "next generation" titles and 38 percent of HD-DVD disc sales, has some big hits coming in the next couple of months, which could rebalance the scales.

Oddly, the Oppo wouldn't play the dynamic, multi-channel DVD-Audio discs (like Donald Fagen's "Morph the Cat," the Talking Heads' "Speaking in Tongues" and the Beatles' "Love" soundtrack) unless the TV it was connected to was also turned on.

Super-sounding SACD surround discs, like Tierney Sutton Band's "On the Other Side" and Cincinnati Pops' "Russian Nights" had no such problem. *

Send e-mailto takiffj@phillynews.com.