I know for flat panels it's a big help, but for my 34XBR800, is it worth it to get something like an HD-A30 or Oppo upscaler for DVDs? Or does the TV do just as good a job on 480p inputs?

I just got my DVI connection working for the first time. Couldn't find this in a search either.

You don't need to splurge on that kind of money to get a good upscaling DVD player. Get
any decent upconverting or progressive DVD player in your brick-and-mortar store. That
kind of TV will just do the rest.

My Pioneer Elite DV-37 on my 38" Loewe Aconda is about as close to true 1080p as you can get.

You don't need to splurge on that kind of money to get a good upscaling DVD player. Get
any decent upconverting or progressive DVD player in your brick-and-mortar store. That
kind of TV will just do the rest.

Well I have a 360, which just outputs 480p, I'm just wondering if I'd get a better picture from a player that output 1080i to my CRT.

I have Reon chipped Samsung BD-P1200. DVDs can look quite good on my Sony KD-34XS955. Still have my Samsung HD931 Faroudja DcDi chipped player
I bought in '04. Its not bad on the cheap. People are almost giving those away.

Well I have a 360, which just outputs 480p, I'm just wondering if I'd get a better picture from a player that output 1080i to my CRT.

I have a Toshiba HD-XA2 (obsolete), PlayStation 3, Panasonic BD30, and
DVDO iScan. While the iScan does make it a hell lot better it's expensive.
The Toshiba XA2 is rated one of the best upconverting DVD player it made
little to none when it's on my XBR960 or XBR970. While I can't comment on
the Xbox 360 upscaling performance my safe bet would be it's not going to
get any better than that unless you buy $200 worth which is makes a little
difference but not worth the money.

I have benchmarked the 360, and revealed bad results for upscaling.
Since the format war is over, I would go with the PS3. It has decent upscaling and bluray support. If you just need upscaling, non of these compares to the oppo. I have a 971h and it's better than the playstation3 at upscaling. I bought it used, for cheap!
You won't be dissapointed in an OPPO.

Quote:" The Toshiba XA2 is rated one of the best upconverting DVD player it made little to none when it's on my XBR960 or XBR970."
It made little to none what?

At least with my 38" Aconda it was usually best to send a 480p signal and let the TV natively display. On the other hand, I did find quite a bit of variation between the de-interlacing capabilities of different players. For example, the HD-XA2 was quite a bit better than the OPPO 980 which was slightly better than a Panny RP-91. The main differences were around noise reduction, video source processing and the ability to resolve detail without adding ugly artifacts. I also have to say that I'm pretty picky and many folks might not see a big difference.

For owners of Sony XBR and XS series sets you can just send a quality 480i signal in and set DRC to "Interlaced". The set will line double to 960i and you won't have any of the artifacting, etc that results from the cheap deinterlacer/scaler that is in most DVD players. Extracting 480p from a 480i source is guesswork. Some do it better than others, but why bother if you are using an inherently interlaced CRT?