Get a BluRay Player for Upscaling SDDVD or a OPPO DV-981HD

If the only thing you want to watch are upconverted sddvd get the oppo, but if you want to enjoy some real HD material and upconverted sd-dvd then get a BR standalone or a PS3.

If you could get the hidef player for $100 LESS than the Oppo, and 7 free hidef discs to go with it, would you still be asking this question?

I find these Blu-ray and HD-DVD players make for poor DVD players. They seem to be slow compared to most decent standard DVD players. I choose to get a really good upconveting DVD player standrad movies and CD's, and keep the high-def players for high-def movies. If you have enough HDMI ports, I'd say go for the Oppo, it's a great unit.

I bought the Oppo 981 while back, and then a PS3 and Toshiba XA2. The Oppo was great in it's day, but knowing what I know now I would just get a decent Blu Ray player. In fact nearly all the recent Blu Ray players do a great job with film-based SD-DVD's; it's the interlaced video based stuff where quality de-interlacer/scalers do their work and there are some pretty large differences in Blu Ray players in that regard.

So the answer would also depend on the content you watch, and as a caveat nearly all of my SD-DVD stuff is film-based so I have a bias in that regard.

As an aside, the Oppo is great for PAL content, can easily be modded 'region free', and will output both DVD-A and SACD audio disks via HDMI if those are important to you.

Also, check out the 'video components' section for the thread about the upcoming Oppo 983.

I have a PS3 but I just picked up an Oppo for watching SD discs because the fan noise on the PS3 drives me crazy. The PS3 is a great HD player but I'm going to eventually get a standalone when the prices come down.

I'm sitting 14 feet away from my ps3 so i don't hear any fan noise from it. I do hear my A/V receiver fan kick in when there is a lot of low frequency stuff going around but the ps3 not a peep. I also have an Oppo 971H that I use now only as a multi region dvd player. I also have a Toshiba A2 for those movies that are not available on BR. I used the oppo also to watch my anime series (fansub, xvid) but now I stream them from my PC to the PS3, something you can't do with a stand alone BR or HD-DVD player :-)

I have an Oppo 981 and a BDP-S300 projecting on an 106'' screen. I bought the Oppo early in the year, and then purchased the Sony when the prices dropped. I believe the Oppo does a better job on upscaling than the BDP-S300, but not sure it is worth spending the extra dollars for the improvement. And, once you start watching high def disks, it is hard to watch standard dvds...

DVD scaling should in a perfect world look like 480p on a 16X9 tube.
If it looks better than that then the signal is getting altered with EE and DNR.
HQV or ABT can give it its 2002 crt sex apeal back.
The Sigma chip in the Sony's does EE and DNR also its a flag reading deinterlacer, so youll get combing.

Samsung bd-p1200 might be a great player for SD-DVD with its Reon chip...if only samsung releases the firmware for it.

Best bet is denon 2930.