Dvd pq q

Depends on which SD player and which BD player. Different brands, or even within brands, different models, will have varying degrees of playback quality. Some Blu-ray players, like the Oppo, are pretty good with DVDs, while others can suck, just like some DVD players are better than others.

If you're talking two quality players, assuming they had the same circuitry, then they should be equal.

Which brands were you looking at?

Not as a general rule, no.

I've generally found the opposite to be true. That is it takes a extremely good BR player(Oppo comes to mind) to equal a good upconverting DVD player.
Unless you plan on switching to BR in the near future it would be far cheaper to purchase a good Upconverting DVD player now and wait until you really need the BR player.
IMO the earlier BR players did a nicer job of upconverting DVDs, the newer ones seem to be saving money by concentrating more on BR playback than DVD. The conspiracy theorist in me says many BR mfgs. want to make DVDs look not so good so people will upgrade to BR discs but it's probably just cost cutting measures to get the players closer to the all mighty $99 PP

I've owned a lot of DVD players and my current El Cheapo Sylvania BR player I got for $60 upscales DVDs as well as the Yamaha DVD-S1800 or Oppo DV-981HD I had. Well, at least to my eyes it does.

That's amazing because they're two of the best.

I have a smallish set (37") and I'm sure that has something to do with it. Still, I calibrated it and ran back to back tests against both the DVD players and was pleasantly surprised by the Sylvania BR player. So much so that I sold both the DVD players - just didn't need them for upscaling. I read the Funai built players use the Panasonic UniPhier system for upscaling and most reviews rank it well enough for the task.

I picked up a panny BD85 its upconverting was horrible compared to my oppo 970

That's interesting, I have the Oppo 983, the Panny BD85, the Panny 70V and had the BD60. None of the Panny's are horrible at upconverting compared the the Oppo. I had the 970 and found the 983 better than the 970 for upscaling. The only place the Panny's will fall down compared to the Oppo 983 is with animated film where you have mixed and off beat cadences. Even the 970 had problems there. For normal film I actually prefer the Panny because of the way the colors pop with the Panny. For me, the Panny's are far from horrible.

It could be that my TV is a 720p.Transformers looked very pixelated on the panny