Oppo 971H VS PS3--Thoughts?

[hahndo]

Hi folks,

I have a PS3 and love it. Like most of us, I have an extensive DVD library and only a few Blu Ray titles--I would love to be able to watch standard DVDs in the best way possible.

The PS3 does a serviceable job of playing the SDVDs (not any worse than my previous Blu Ray player, a Samsung BD-P1200, which supposedly had amazing SDVD performance), but I have to admit, although I wasn't expecting my DVDs to look near-HD quality, I wasn't expecting them to look worse. Which I have to admit that they have done on both my Blu Ray players (as compared to my standard dvd player on a CRT television.)

So I'm looking at a gently used Oppo 971H DVD. Does anyone have any direct experience with this player, particularly through an HDTV screen? Does it look much better than a Blu Ray's performance on standard DVDs, particularly a PS3?

Or, better yet, would it be your opinion that the somewhat dissapointing standard DVD performance is inherent to the HDTV trying to make as much 'sense' out of the standard DVDs limited data?

Would really appreciate your advice; I'd hate to spend the money for nothing.

Cheers!

p.s.

I'm sure you'll find this strange, but by far the best performance I've seen from standard DVDs was through my regular (non HDMI equipped) XBOX 360, hooked up via a VGA cable. As lousy as the 360 supposedly is, it seemed to do a great job on my standard DVDs--in fact, they looked FAR better than my old DVD player or either of my Blu Ray incarnations.