Well i just recently bought a new Sony Bravia LCD TV hich supports up to 1080i and love it. My current Sony DVD player which is about 5 yrs old which still works good but does not support progressive scan only (480i) does have component video which looks so much nicer than just my old Sony Wega which was just Svideo. I was wondering would there be a noticable difference in picture sharpness and clarity to buy a progressive scan DVD player when mine still works fine or just keep mine until it goes boom.

 

Not answering your question but if u rent a lot of Dvd's then Panasonic models are good at tracking scratched discs. I had a Toshiba before and my Panasonic puts it to shame.

 

With your new tv, you could try an upconverting dvd player too.

 

you'll want a dvd player that has a good video scaler as well as a good video DAC. The $40 models do not fit this bill. For the video DAC, 10bit, 54Mhz is a minimum for a decent deck. The video scaler is another thing that is very important. Problem is, these specs are hard to find.

The decks that do upconverting generally have the good scaler and DAC so I would pick up one of those. Even if you don't use the feature, the DVDs will look their best.

Trust me, on a good TV you notice when you have a crappy DVD player. My brother's PS2 absolutely sucks. I have a Sony with a 12bit, 108Mhz DAC and the difference is night and day.

 

definately go with progressive scan.

Be carefull with upconverting DVD players....most will NOT upconvert commercial discs (ie storebought, rented, NOT BURNED) via component. You need an HDMI connection for the upconversion to work.

They will still upconvert burnt DVD's via component.

 

At least get progressive so you can get the benefits of your new TV. Also try to see if you can connect it via HDMI or DVI instead of component, the quality should be ever better with progressive + digital connection.

 

So I have questions on this subject also...
Why do my DVD's not look as good as my HDTV?

 

Because regular DVD produces in the range of 480-500 horizontal lines of resolution while HDTV displays either 720-1080 lines of resolution.

Wait until HD-DVD becomes the norm and you'll get the same HDTV quality pictures.

 

definitely read the following article.

http://www.denguru.com/2005/11/17/getting_what_you_don/

It will tell you how to pick a truly good dvd player.

There is such a thing as a bad progressive scan dvd player. in fact this is the norm unfortunately.