I received an Oppo 981 on Wednesday from CRT Projectors, and have it hooked up to 46" Sony X Series LCD at 1080p.
I haven't owned a premium DVD player before (I own a Toshiba SD220 and a Tevion 8000), so I'd expected some significant improvements, and so far I'm very impressed.
Very configurable, nice remote, and lightning fast responses. Haven't had the chance to watch much yet, but from testing out a few discs, I like what I see.
It can't work miracles with poor quality material, but the playback of recent discs (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire being one example) is the best I've ever seen. Good detail (although not a rival for HD, despite what people say), but the most impressive thing is that the motion is silky smooth, with few artifacts that I could notice.
Anyone expecting true HD performance will be disappointed, but if you have a 1080p set and a good sized DVD collection, I doubt that you'll regret buying an Oppo 981.