My 983H review gives all the nitty-gritty details, and I've got a comparison review that looks at the 983H alongside the 980H and 981HD (which offers performance nearly identical to the 971H). The bottom line, though, is that the 983H is pretty darn close to as good as you can get with standard DVD - regardless of price. You'll get the most benefit from it if you have a large screen (my 32" HDTV is not really the 983H's target market) and it's a bit pricey for a 2008 DVD player, but the cost is justified by what's under the hood. I suspect that mine will be in the equipment rack for a lot of years to come, as I don't know when I'm likely to find a standalone Blu-ray player that could reasonably match it.