Mustang, there's no benefit to buying a player that is from the same manufacturer as the TV, other than to utilize the syncing capabilities you alluded to. IMO, you're better to look elsewhere for a video player. I'm not saying that there aren't good players manufactured by Sharp, Samsung et.al, but it wouldn't come close to the video quality of an Oppo.
If I understand your last query correctly, HDMI has nothing to do with picture quality, it's just an "all in one" connection that passes audio and video. The image quality is dependent on the source (DVD player) and your display.
