Hi, I finally have the equipment for a friends new home cinema picked out, all bar the dvd player.

Onkyo 875 amp,
B&W 685 speakers
Infocus X10 projector.

Picture quality is the most important thing, particularly for films which is pretty much all she'll watch on it other than playing wii sport and occasional dvd's of tv series. She's a movie producer specialising in visual effects, so is incredibly picky about picture quality. There'll be a blue-ray player at some point but to start with we need a player to play her collection of SD dvds.

I've been looking at things like the oppo 980, pioneer AV600 and Denon 1640, which all seem to have good picture quality. However this all seems to relate to their upscalers. Given that the 875 amp is supposed to have excellent upscaling, is there any reason to go for one of the more expensive players or would she be just as well off with a cheaper player with hdmi and letting the amp do all the scaling.

Particular attention needs to be paid to 2:2 and 3:2 pulldown (think I have those correct). Is this related to 24fps? I don't know enough about this, but I'm told that being able to output true 24fps improves picture quality on films. Mostly the discs are region 2, will a smattering of R1. I'm wondering which upscaler would be better, the one in a player like an oppo or the ones in the receiver.

I'd appreciate any advice you can offer on the technical side and on player suggestions.

Cheers,

J.