I did a bit of searching on your TV the other day, and somewhere I saw mention that it offered 1000 lines of resolution. HD CRT's are most often classified as 1080i displays, and yours appears to be no exception. And, yes, any source would be scaled to that resolution if it doesn't come in at that resolution. No amount of scaling of 480i sources will achieve picture quality truly equal to good HD (I qualify that because I have seen upconversion of really good DVD sources that was on par with some mediocre HD sources). On some discs, I have seen minimal differences when comparing my old S1500 (sending 480p to my 32" CRT HDTV) to an OPPO Digital 981HD (sending 1080i to the same TV), but on other discs (particularly scenes with a lot of fine detail) I can tell a difference - and on a larger display, the differences are more likely to show up.

If your player were still working fine, I'd say that you may not need to upgrade - while you can always make use of OPPO's 30-day trial policy, your display's lack of a digital video input makes it a less-than-ideal upgrade just for upgrade's sake. If the player is starting to flake out, though, the 980H is a very good candidate for replacing it.

I've controlled the 971H, 981HD, and 980H with my MX-700 without a single problem. I even have setup files for each in my MX-700 review .

Yeah it's a 5 year old 53" CRT, it was considered one of the best CRT's for SD back then...The video scaler is quite good on the old pioneers....

Gonk, like you said, if the Yamaha really craps out I can't lose with a Oppo 980 for my TV situation and as you guys have stated, the MX-700 remote will have no issue controlling it.

Thanks for the advice........
Vince