The 983H is a remarkable player - a great solution for getting the absolute most you can out of an existing DVD library. If you are running a large CRT display, I'd feel good about either the 981HD or the 983H for you. The 980H does product a different picture from those two, and it is "sharper." Particularly with larger screens, that isn't necessarily the optimal approach.

A number of Sony's newer TV's include quite good scaling on-board. Your friend might want to compare 480i output to 1080 just to see how it compares.

How does DVD (particularly with the 983H) compare to Blu-ray? Well, it's not a very fair comparison - there's a lot less resolution to work with. It can get remarkably close (the example I use in my comparison article is the DVD and HD-DVD sides of Bourne Ultimatum, when differences between the two were almost negligable), but it can't match it when HD is done right (as in the case of the Blu-ray of Man on Fire). A player like the 983H isn't a substitute for Blu-ray, but it is a great way to preserve existing (and often large) DVD libraries.