For those of you out there who have an upconverting DVD player, like the Oppo 981, does it really do what it claims to do? Can the Oppo take your standard DVD's and upconvert them to a 1080p picture? I know a lot of this has to do with the native of your tv, so lets say that the tv is 1080p? Can this do as good a job as others? And until something happens with Blu-Ray & HD would this give me the picture that the Blu-Ray and HD boast?

Can the Oppo take your standard DVD's and upconvert them to a 1080p picture?

Yes. However, note that if you have a 1080p TV, it can already do this for you. The argument for players like the Oppo is that they have very high quality upconverting circuits that might be able to do a better job than the upconverting circuits in your TV.

would this give me the picture that the Blu-Ray and HD boast?

No. The upconversion process cannot add detail (data) that does not already exist on the DVD. It can only interpolate extra pixels and modify the original ones in a way that hopefully produces a pleasing result, for example with minimal "jagginess" in diagonal lines.