would the only advantage to buying the oppo blue ray player is being able to just watch a blue ray dvd? my tv. is not 1080p it is 1080i.or would there be some audio enhancements over the 983h??

The standard DVD performance differences between the 983H and BDP-83 are very very small - they used the 983H as the baseline for the development of the BDP-83. The analog audio is upgraded, though, and of course you gain Blu-ray support (which is still a worthwhile upgrade if you have a 720p display).

When I got my BDP-83 in March the first thing I did was hook it up to the 26" Samsung LCD in my bedroom (my HT system still used a 20" wide screen computer monitor). The Samsung was capable of 1080i. I put the setup BD packaged with the player in and watched the demo. It was amazing, even at 1080i. But I was upgrading from a Pioneer Elite 59AVi DVD player, not from a 983H.

I'll say this about Blu-ray vs. DVD: as good as the 983H and BDP-83 are with standard DVD, a good Blu-ray transfer will always win, even on a modest size HDTV.

Dumb question. I have an older Toshiba rear projection HDTV that supports 1080i both from component and DVI. What will the BDP-83 do with Blue ray disks if I hook it up over component? Based upon the manual it looks like it may downres to 480p is that true? Is there any way to get around this? If not are there any blu ray players including the PS3 that will output the signal over component?

I realize that I could probably get a HDMI to DVI cable but my previous experience testing this with an older Scientific Atlanta HD box that supported DVI only was that the picture was better over component.

The ABT processor does not do anything with the component video output, so you lose the benefit of that processor. Blu-ray will be output as 1080i, but the Mediatek chip will be doing the processing instead of the ABT2010. You also lose the ability to scale DVD content (specifically DVD content that is CSS encrypted, which is most commercial releases), so you only get 480p at best from most DVD's even when you select 1080i output. The BDP-83 comes with an HDMI cable. Spend $5 on an HDMI-to-DVI adapter and you're all set. Using component video output when you can use HDMI will be short-changing yourself.

The example of an HD cable box is not a good one to carry over to Blu-ray. For one thing, cable box makers are going for the cheapest quality possible, and the video processing I've seen from those boxes is dreadful. For another thing, their implementation of things like HDCP tends to be bad.

Thanks. I now have a new HD cable box and a cheap Sony upscaling player on another TV. I will try the HDMI to DVI adaptor with each to see how the picture compares. I can then go from there.

Ultimately, I probably need to upgrade TV's.