newbie here to the site. need recommendations for a blu-ray player to hook up to my 950. i know i am somewhat limited in choices but that's ok, i honestly dont understand alot about the abbreviations and jargon and whatnot with blu-ray ect. but i want to upgrade from my oppo 970 to something that will play blu-ray and normal dvd's. cheap is good of course but ease of use is also good. any tips/suggestions and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

To be able to use the new audio formats (Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD) as well as the discs that have uncompressed multichannel PCM, you will need a player with a 5.1 channel analog output and onboard decoding of those formats. One option that you may be able to find at a nice price is the Panasonic BD50 - it doesn't have a 7.1 analog output (which the BD55 and Sony S550 do offer), but the 950 doesn't have a 7.1 input anyway - and otherwise it is as full-featured as those two players. The layer change on standard DVD's won't be as fast as the 970HD, but the DVD scaling and deinterlacing should be pretty close (my 980H had an edge over the older BD30, but the differences between 970HD and BD50 should be reduced).

so is that best bet/deal or are there other ones that would fit the bill in case of black friday sales??

For pairing up with the Model 950, the BD50 is probably your best bet for features vs. price. I don't know that you'll see black Friday deals on it, but that's because it's been discontinued - so you can get a decent price on it right now. Also, the players most likely to get big mark-downs on black Friday are going to be ones that lack the combination of onboard decoding and multichannel analog output.

hmm, so, do you happen to have any idea on much difference blu-ray will be compared to "normal" dvd's on a 42" plasma at 10 feet over an oppo 970?

reason i ask is that next feb. i will be getting a severance pkg from work which means $. so i can afford a more expensive blu-ray player. but, i dont want to spend the $ if the difference is not going to be worth it.

The move from DVD to Blu-ray is pretty darn significant - even the best DVD players (like my OPPO 983H, which is a noticeable upgrade from the 970HD or 980H) can only do so much, and a good HD transfer will be at a different level than upscaled DVD.

hmm, so should i wait till next feb. then so i have more $ to spend or will a sub $400 one be almost as good?

If you wait for the BDP-83, you can expect to get better standard DVD performance and maybe a few other extra features (SACD, for example). I don't know how much difference in Blu-ray performance you'll find, though.

the 83 will work fine then with the 950? and any idea on price?

Yes, it will work fine with the 950. I don't know about the price yet, though. Minimum of $500, possibly closer to $700. My SWAG is that it may likely be $600, but don't hold me (or OPPO) to that...